A few more sources:
Langton also makes very nice 1/300 scale galleys.
Skytrex makes a range of 1/600 ancient ships including lots of galleys. These are much cruder than Xyston, but cheaper too.
Warrior Miniatures in the UK makes a nice, though limited, range of 1/650 galleys.
Outpost Miniatures in the UK makes a very cheap and tiny range of 1/3600 scale galleys.
C-in-C in the US used to make a range of 1/1200 galleys; you can't buy them from C-in-C anymore, but sometimes you can find them in used lots because somebody like me bought too many and is selling them off. They had narrower oar banks than other manufacturers and were a bit low on detail, but they were nicely cast, had crisp lines, and they can mix into a big fleet of 1/1200 galleys as lighter galleys. I think they would look great as line galleys in a fleet with Langton flagships.
In general, 1/1200 line galleys are bit over an inch long, 1/600 line galleys around two inches long. Heavy galleys (polyremes bigger than quinqueremes) tend to be a bit longer and a bit wider. Line galley models tend to be roughly 75% as wide as they are long, light galleys (and C-in-Cs) narrower, heavy galleys wider. In the 90s I launched a project to make fleet actions with 40mm square bases containing multiple models, and discovered I could fit 2x Navwar 1/1200 line galleys (triremes, quinqueremes) on a base, 3x C-in-C galleys, or one Navwar polyreme with room for a tiny little dispatch boat or two. The Langton 1/1200 galleys have about the same footprint as the Navwar galleys, just a shade smaller.
If you're only going to game with a few dozen, the big Langtons, Xystons or Warrior Miniatures will fit on the table and look nice doing it; if you want several dozen, get 1/900 or 1/1200 galleys; and if you want truly huge battles of hundreds, you will need a big table for 1/1200 galleys, or the really small (1/2400 or 1/3600) galleys.
- Ix
returns from Mexico with a new vision for making palm trees from scratch.
