"24 Gun Frigate 1:1200" Topic

Just about an hour ago I put the finishing touches on another 1:1200 Langton ship, this one a 24 gun frigate from the Baltic line. I'm not planning on running any Baltic scenarios though, so for me this is more likely to make an appearance as a French privateer. The model comes with optional banks of oars, though I've left those off.

More pictures here:
link

That's beautiful! Well done indeed.

Very well done,started reading the Master and Commander novel series so starting to get interested in sailing battles again.

If you modified the spanker into a lateen sail she would probably make a good SYW or AWI era frigate. Nicely done…

Thanks very much guys, glad you like it.

14Bore, I've found that listening to audio books of O'Bryan's novels makes for a fantastic companion to building/painting/rigging.

Really great work, people must have the patience of saints to put that rigging together! :-)

Wow thatīs beautiful work!
If I had that kind of patience I would probably still be married.

Like all of your work, she's beautiful.

Nice sails, nice riggin, nice colour…. so… nice ship!

Thanks very much guys. As for patience, the trick for me is only to work on it as long as my patience lasts for a given session, however brief it may be. Though as some of the other guys here have written in another post on rigging, it gets to be a very calming, zen like experience.

As always a lovely ship. Knowing how small they are I can only take my hat off to you.
Be safe
Rory

Another masterpiece James! Painting is perfect and your bristle brush technique is enviable. I am still wrapping and tying unless the boat is just too small. Hats off to you sir!

Beautiful work. Very sharp.

Love it. Well done.

Very nice work!

Thanks for the kind words guys, glad you like the ship. She had her debut game this weekend, in a scenario I created for Post Captain. Had her fore topgallant mast shot away after being engaged on her starboard side by a 36 gun frigate at close range, and before she even had the wreckage cleared away she was raked in the stern by a corvette at about 200 yards. A rough handling, though thankfully not for the model itself.

You are the master of the extremely-small ships, sir! I'm always in awe of your ability to model the unrated vessels so well. Those things are SMALL!

Well done

Nice ship as usual! I repeat that your sails are very pleasing to the eye.

How do you like Post Captain as opposed to KMH James?

Thanks guys. Vol, I enjoyed Post Captain a lot, and will definitely be looking to play it more. There is a tremendous amount of detail to it, and I am impressed by how extensive the rules are. So many different developments are provided for, and the situations can get very interesting as weather and damage combine to put ships in difficult circumstances.

The scenario I was running last weekend had 8 ships total, with most players controlling 2 ships each – which I regret. It was a bad idea to load people up with that much, especially for a learning game. They had more fun as they lost their first ship and could concentrate on the intricacies of working a single vessel.

Compared to KMH, there is indeed more detail, and more bookkeeping to go along with it. For example, in Post Captain a vessel might suffer enough rigging damage in a movement phase to force a rigging check at the end of the turn to see if a mast falls or is sprung. She might then lose her mizzen topgallant mast, which will then fall over the side, blocking some of the guns and acting as a sea anchor until crew factors can be assigned to work the task of clearing away the wreckage, allowing her to resume a normal course. But perhaps she has lost a number of crew factors all ready, and has to prioritize loading the guns over clearing the wreckage…

It makes things slower, but I enjoy the detail a lot. (I should note that things were inevitably a lot slower for this game, as I was teaching it to new players).

Beautiful work on that one! I just love how the smaller ships come out when done right.

The scenario I was running last weekend had 8 ships total, with most players controlling 2 ships each – which I regret. It was a bad idea to load people up with that much, especially for a learning game. They had more fun as they lost their first ship and could concentrate on the intricacies of working a single vessel.

Wow! That was gutsy for a learning game! Hope they got through it. I normally start people off with 1 fairly simple ship each and a pretty straight forward scenario. Once they get the basics down, then they start clamoring for meaty stuff.

We've had a lot of fun with battles between the smaller ships (sloops, brigs and below). Some can be pretty wild. The last one was a top-sail schooner vs privateer brig (its one of the download scenarios on ODGW's site). Whole of lot fun; 2 equally armed ships but with very different sailing qualities. Hint: trying to pin down a schooner rigged ship is a royal pain (guess which side I was on…).

whitejamest- Quick question: How did your newbies take to the movement system? My experience has been pretty good there; even novices seem to get the gist of it pretty quick.

Charlie, you are definitely wiser than me to start people off more slowly. I guess I got carried away with the scenario writing! I think the players still enjoyed it, but it did make things more overwhelming for them than it needed to be.

The players seemed to learn the movement system pretty quickly. I think if there was any lingering confusion for any of them, it was with the template that divides the wind in to slow, medium or fast points of sailing. Several players had a hard time wrapping their heads around how to properly orient that template against ship bases. But in my experience teaching other sailing rule sets, the reading of that type of template is always the one that takes the longest to develop an intuitive sense of.

Within a short time of playing the group had executed a decent range of maneuvers – most successful, but some, like a spectacularly poorly timed and executed tack, not so much.

Several players had a hard time wrapping their heads around how to properly orient that template against ship bases. But in my experience teaching other sailing rule sets, the reading of that type of template is always the one that takes the longest to develop an intuitive sense of.

That's been my experience. Getting the template right is probably the one recurring problem. But it gets easier with time. Although much less so with gamers who are also wind sailors (got a few in my group); they seem to pick the concepts quickest.

As an interesting offshoot, some of my group have been using the sailing rules for straight up boat racing, taking fore-aft rigs and running through a course. I don't even want to think of what the stats for the last America's Cup catamarans would look like!

It speaks well of the rules that those guys enjoy it just as a straight up sailing game too. For my part, I don't think I could resist the urge to have the ships shooting at each other…

I think the speed record for a racing catamaran was just north of 50 miles per hour – so those would be some crazy stats indeed!

But then the America's Cup would look very different with chain shot.