"Thoroughbred still cranking out the 1/1200 ACW vessels" Topic

Toby is slacking on his self-promotion, so I'll share my accidental discovery of his progress in the smaller scales. It looks like sometime in October Thoroughbred released 6 more 1/1200 ACW models in the Odds N Ends range:

CSS Fredericksburg, CSS Charleston, and CSS Columbia Class:

USS New Ironsides, USS Benton, USS Dictator:

My wish list got longer.

- Ix

They do make some fine product.

Thank you. I'd also like to point out all these and others are available for sale off the web site now and are not pre-order subscriptions. We do all major charge cards and PayPal.
I always take into consideration ideas and suggestions from customers for future projects in this scale.
Will try to post photos this week of two new 1/600 scale releases as well.
Toby Barrett

I do have a few general suggestions:

1/1200 scale ACW vessels are pretty small, which makes 1/1200 a good scale for the larger battles of the period, especially the ones with big ships (frigates, corvettes, sloops). Check the OOBs for the various big naval battles (Charleston, Mobile Bay, New Orleans, Vicksburg, etc.) and make sure the collection has everything for those. I'm pretty sure you have the First Battle of Charleston covered now that New Ironsides is out.

1/1200 is also a good scale for high seas scenarios, because oceanic ships tended to be larger and need more sea room. You could make merchants, transports and blockade runners to shoot at, chase down or protect, high seas cruisers like Kearsarge and Alabama, and other generic oceanic warships. I'm always looking for generic sidewheel frigates to stand in as cruisers of any nation (Britain, France, South American countries, Mexican War US, etc.), because they remained in service from 1840 to nearly 1900.

Consider selling packs of "dress up" parts for 1/1200 scale steam (or even sail) era vessels. The Thoroughbred masts, guns and stacks are awesome, and I would buy packs of those separately if I could. Add-on items like deckhouses, pilot houses, awnings, hatches, boats, boats on davits, etc. also make nice accessories to customize models, and your castings of such things are gorgeous.

Naval gamers are big on hypotheticals and weird periods, and I keep seeing TMP postings about Britain or France interfering in the ACW, so maybe 1/1200 Euroclads are in order – Warrior, Gloire, Scorpion, CSS Stonewall, USS Dunderberg, etc. This is also a good scale for the large "sea going" monitors; you just released the Dictator (which will be in my next order), but you haven't made the Miantonomohs, and the Kalamazoos and USS Puritan are as yet unproduced by anybody (and I want both classes).

- Ix

Where can I find OOBs for the battles? We played in a ACW ironclad game at Fall In! 2016 and really enjoyed it. I've toyed with picking up a few models to play some actions, but wanted some historical matchups beyond the Virginia and Monitor.

Beautiful sculpts! I need to get back and start checking out steamship models, as in what was used later on in the 19th Century. Say in time for my invasion of Cuba!

I was very tempted by the 1/600 models, but dang those 1200's look FINE!!!

Bastards!
My lead pile has just become sentient.
They're Gorgeous!

Things of beauty, Toby. Things of beauty.

Ironclads fight well at all sorts of scales. A big argument for 600 scale is the quality of the Thoroughbred models.

The great thing about 1200 scale, tho, is that it allows you to refight Civil War battles on an ordinary table at true scale: ie 100 foot to an inch. We get used to fudging ground and model scales. You can't fight 20th century battles at anything like true scale unless you limit yourself to night actions or own a ballroom. Land wargamers have got so used to their figures being over-scale they barely notice.

Ironclads are a happy exception. At 1200 scale rivers can be the right width, forts and trees the right size, the distance between vessels is right and the relationship between ship length, turning circles and ramming is simplified.

With a big table you can fight 1:600 Civil War battles, esp river actions at true scale too. But after a bit you might want to see what could have happened had, say, France intervened in the Civil War – and build French ironclads. And if you get a taste for the period you might want to try the Battle of Lissa, between Austria and Italy. But it's a struggle to do that at anything larger than 1200 scale. So you end-up with different fleets in different scales. An advantage of 1200 / 1250 scale is that you can move seamlessly from the Civil War out to European hypotheticals and out into the Pacific for South American battles.