"Size mock-up - 16th c. East Asian Warships" Topic

The idea of making small scale ships for 16th Century naval warfare in Japan/Korea/China has come up now and again in the Classical Asian Warfare board, and it got me interested. After much talk, I decided it was time to quit thinking and start modelling, to see how hard it would be.

I decided to start with a medium-to-large Japanese ship, and move on to more tricky ships after that. First of all, I want to find out if I'm making them in a reasonable scale to suit my very basic casting and modelling skills, and also make them feel good on the table.

So I made a size mock-up, and wonder if any of the people who posted on the topic before has any input. I decided to start out in 6mm or 1:285 scale, as I think that is the biggest reasonable scale for naval combat: anything larger than that would be a bit bulky for a naval game that doesn't focus on boarding action skirmishes or something. A bonus would be that you could use 6mm scale miniatures to add crew and soldiers, as well a 6mm scale terrain.

(28mm and 6mm miniatures for scale)

As you see, this is just the basic shape to get a feel for proportions. It's a Japanese sekibune type ship, and the model is about 85mm long and 25mm tall, which would be 25 meter long and 7 meters tall. AFAIK, medium sized ships in both Korea and Japan would be around 20-25 meters, while the larger ones would normally be 30-35. So there would be room for slightly larger ships, but most of your fleet would be like this or even smaller.

After handling it a bit, I find that it's a really good size for picking up. The block-like shape makes it fit perfectly in my hand, compared to the nightmare of fully rigged Napoleonic ships. I think the size is large enough that it will be possible to add extra details such as flags and oars after casting.

Anyway, I will probably use this mock-up to make a proper model, and see how it looks. I think I could possibly do these in 1:600 or so, but not smaller than that. I'd love to hear your input if you are interested in getting some tiny Japanese ships sometime in the next year.

Where do you fine plans or even pictures of Asian ships of this period?

There's a whole movie about them

imdb.com/title/tt3541262

Quite a neat film to watch – and the story about the Korean admiral beating a much bigger Japanese fleet is true

Osprey has several volumes. I picked up one super cheap at a used book store, despite it not being "my thing". I found it very interesting!

I haven't found many good written sources, I only have the Osprey asian fighting ships books. Those are far from comprehensive, there are not schematics or even size estimates for most ship types. However, if you google on the ship types, especially in Japanese, you can get some nice pictures of museum models. I will base my minis on those as far as possible.

Thank you for trying this, Setsuko. My own feeling is that if you feel the scale is right for your modeling, you should keep going in that direction. We tend to work best when it feels comfortable. It will be very interesting to follow your progress.

I'm almost finished with my collecting, but if a line of Japanese ships were produced, that's one I'd still want to pursue. I keep my 15mm Japanese in three-tiered bento boxes, and I have one tier reserved for ships should they become available.

Thanks for the input wulfgar! I also think that it will be easier to change scale later if I have already tried to make the ships once.

Turned out it was a bit too tall, as I needed a depressed area in the middle, and some railings. If I built it on top, it would look weird, so I started carving into it instead:

That was a lot of carving into solid magic sculpt. Phew.

That's a pretty good start, Setsuko. Have you thought yet about which rules you'd like to use?

Thanks! I am far from a naval veteran, I've only played two rulesets: Uncharted Seas, which I didn't like, and Trafalgar, which I found a lot more fun. So my idea was to start shopping for rulesets to adjust (as I doubt there are specific ones for east asian galley fights) once I have a few ships to try it with.

If you have an suggestions I'd be happy to hear. We're thinking of doing a "very very free-form Italian Wars" at the club, so it would be nice to tie in some imaginary East vs. West galley battles.

Progress, slow but steady:

Adding some planks on top. I have to do a few and then let them cure, to avoid fudgings things up:

I think I'll start on a few more over the holiday season, to speed things up.

Setsuko, this prototype just keeps getting better. Thank you for posting on its progress. I'm very interested.

For rules, I'm thinking of adapting Nicholas Wright's "Galleys and Galleons." He originally intended it, I think, to be a naval game to match the same era as his "Irregular Wars" rules set for the Renaissance.

However, it seems pretty adaptable for something like the naval wars of Japan, Korea, and China. The method of creating ship charts is pretty simple, and Ive heard of others using the rules for ancient Greek naval warfare, and Napoleonic era ships.

I've gotten to a point where I like simpler rules that are fun to play, and still give at least the illusion of being historical. If you decide to pursue this, at least a few of us will be happy to buy in for a couple of dozen ships, I'm sure.

Personally, I'm most interested in warfare on the Seto Inland Sea. Landings, pirates, and small warring clans on the water would be grand. Again, your model is very inviting.

Thanks! I did some more work yesterday finishing the planks, and now I started on a kobaya as well.

I'll check out Galleys and Galleons as well. The good thing is that there seems to be several rules options available for pretty cheap, so it's not a big deal to playtest them and see which one you like.

And I agree that it is probably easier to balance battles between two Japanese forces than against Korean ships, as they were very differently built and ended up shooting the crap out of the Japanese ships in most engagements. Not sure how to balance that to make an interesting game.

Slow progress is also progress I guess. The smaller ship is the start of a kobaya. Looking at a close up picture makes me see all the mistakes on the first ship though, the horror! I'll see what I can go back and fix afterwards.

Well, slow progress is also a kind of progress!

I've learned a lot from making this already, hopefully I can make the next one better. Still have a lot of the detail work left. The idea is to have the long "horizontal mast"-looking part separate, together with banners and other stuff that can't be cast as one piece.

Aaaand, after many delays, I finally gor around to finish it off, and made a mold:

It turned out pretty ok. The holes for guns were too small, so each one got a tiny bubble in it. Nothing that I couldn't drill out with a pin vice, though.

Awesome, Setsuko. I'm glad that you are still exploring this, and hoping that it will turn into a line of ships for sail. Thank you!

Thanks, it nice to finally have it cast, so that I can play around with them. The size and shape gives this weirdly comfortable tactile feeling when you pick them up and move them around: it's hard to say why, but it just feels _right_ in some way. It's just heavy, curved and tall enough to fit perfectly.

That looks just incredible. 1/285 – 6mm scale would be perfect to build fleets out of.

Have you considered Chinese junks, Wako ships, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish as adversaries? They all considered invading Japan at some time during the Sengoku/Edo Bakufu periods.

Keep us aprised on your good works!

cw: thanks! Yeah, I'm feeling kind of sure that 6mm is a suitable scale now, especially for smaller naval skirmishes.

My first idea for adversaries would be Koreans, but who knows what else I'd like to use. Honestly, I have very little knowledge of what's out there in this scale and period already.

cw: thanks! Yeah, I'm feeling kind of sure that 6mm is a suitable scale now, especially for smaller naval skirmishes.

My first idea for adversaries would be Koreans, but who knows what else I'd like to use. Honestly, I have very little knowledge of what's out there in this scale and period already.

Hi Setsuko^^

Are you still thinking about producing some of these? The reason I ask is that Nicolas Wright has included statistics for Japanese ships in his supplement to "Galleys and Galleons, " which is called "Fayre Winds and Foul Tides."

I'd be pretty content to play Japanese on Japanese naval battles, as well as pirate activity in the Inland Sea. It would fit nicely into larger campaigns.

Honestly, you'd never get rich from the amount that I'd purchase, but if you decide to offer some ships for sale, it would be pretty exciting for a few of us, anyway.

If its not a feasible venture, that's understandable. Perhaps I can start with wooden counters and try to find some way to make ships for home use. However, the work you have pictured here is really great.

Hi Wulfgar

Well, I still WANT to make them, it's just that a lot of things have come inbetween! My real job has turned into one that requires a lot more travel, and my nefarious clubmates got me into the ridiculous hobby poison that is Napoleonics. So I've been painting a lot of Frenchmen instead of working on my Japanese stuff.

So basically, it would not be hard for me to cast up a few of these for you, as the mold is done. It's not perfect (needs some pin vice work to fix the gun holes), but it works. However, I'm still quite far from adding different galleys to the range.

Napoleonics? I understand completely, Setsuko. I have a few of those, myself.

I think your work on the sekibune is pretty fine, but I can wait until its something you really want to do, again. Thanks for the kind offer to cast some up for me, though.

Using wooden counters will work well in the meantime. If you should change your mind in the future, I hope you'll advertise it here.