"Old Glory 1/2400 Trafalgar ships" Topic

A friend dug out old copy of classic board game "wooden ships and iron men", which I personally have not seen played in 20-30 years. He asked easy way it would be to make it 3-D with miniatures.

The only quick possibility I have found is the Old Glory 1/2400 ships. The pics at website are not bad, but make some of the ships look crooked.

Does anyone know these ships or have tried working with them, maybe better pics? I would like to get better opinion before I recommend.

Much Thanks!

Here's a link to an old discussion here with some pics:

TMP link

And yes, some of the mast structures are bent forward. I don't understand why, it's not something that could happen accidentally in shipment. They can be bent back with a bit of force- though it's harder than you'd think.

They are very reasonably priced and easy to turn out. My only real issue is that the hulls are rather narrow. If you want something nicer without a ton of effort, look to Tumbling Dice. Their masts & ratlines are cast onto the hull, with the (one-piece) sails/yards need to be glued on.

link

We use these ships from Forged in Battle with our Wooden Ships and Iron Men Games.

At the LWA we been using Wooden ships and iron men for meny years for our tablet top games, they have morphed now beoned recondition.
The crew have different ability in sailing, gunnery, boarding and moral.
No flat bonus for crack and elite, now there are 11 inpules in a turn the better your gunnery have the faster you reload,
This all so applies to sailing and boarding.
At the start of the game you dies for the crew quality,on a table that has national caratstics built in.
We also had a look gun boxes at the guns and the poundage they through across a British pound is light than a French or Spanish pound so this was worked in to the gun boxes,
We then looked at the ships sizes and how they sailed and altered their caratstices.
So no longer the original game, we fell it give the players (us) a better game and with players playing to national straights.
We now call it "wooden legs and iron lungs".

Tumbling Dice has a nice line of 1/2400 ships link

More on the OG ships from here (and from Virtual Scratch Builder):

TMP link

The Old Glory ships were designed for gaming, not modeling.
They are made to be robust, little if any assembly, cost effective, easy to paint, and to look good in mass.
If you want to spend $400.00 USD on a 400 part model to do Trafalgar-- then KNOCK yourself out.

Regards
Russ Dunaway

I have pretty large 1/2400 AoS fleets, composed of the older Figurehead line of ships. These are still available in the US at The Last Square and in the UK at Magister Militum.
There may still be other vendors selling this line, but I'm not aware of them. I've always found these ship models to be the crispest and most attractive castings of all the 1/2400 options, but they are a bit fragile. The single-piece models with cast-in stays (like Old Glory and Tumbling Dice) are decidedly more robust.

Something to think about: WS&IM wants ships to occupy two hexes. Hopefully the 1/2400 ships might actually fit on the actual hex maps of the board game, but if not, you're probably going to need an odd hex size. I can say from experience that individual 1/2400 men-o-war fit comfortably within a 2" hex without overflowing the hex sides (I used to run fleet battles on a 2" hex mat, one ship per hex), but I think 1" hexes would be too big to make ships occupy two hexes. Not sure, you'll have to experiment.

- Ix

Looking at the options:

West Wind – doesn't seem to have any ships at present.

Old Glory
Spanish fleet, 15 ships @$41 = $2.73 USD/ship ($1.64/ship OG Army)
French fleet, 25 ships @$61 = $2.44 USD/ship ($1.46/ship OG Army)
English fleet, 31 ships @$76 = $2.45 USD/ship ($1.47/ship OG Army)

Tumbling Dice:
1st and 2nd Rate @ L3.60 ea, about $5 USD U.S.
2rd – 6th Rate @ $2.40 USD ea, about $3.50 USD U.S.
IF 1/4800 then 80 Trafalgar ships are $L65, or $100 USD

Forged In Battle 1/3000 [so smaller I think…]
French / Spanish Fleet = 33 Ships, L33, about $1.40 USD U.S./ship
British Fleet, same

Figurehead 1/2400
All ships of battle line size are $5 USD U.S. 1-2 Rate $7 USD each.

So it seems of the options that the main competition around 1/2400 – 1/3000 is Old Glory and Forged in Battle which are all about $1.40 USD a ship.

Anyone have pics of these to compare. I'm assume the FiB are smaller, but what is the quality of the two since they are the same price?

West Wind and Forged in Battle are the same company. I can't compare Old Gliry to Forged in Battle but I am very satisfied with Forged in Battle. They won't win awards as individuall pieces but they look amazing on mass.

it is hard to make comparison – I have only found one pic of a FiB 1/3000 ship that is raw metal. The proportions look good, however.

If you want to spend $400.00 USD USD on a 400 part model to do Trafalgar-- then KNOCK yourself out.

I don't feel I was overly disparaging of the models themselves, only commented that the some of the masts leaned forward a bit much (as the OP noted).

And yes, the OG ships are a great option for building a large fleet quickly and relatively frugally. I have two fleet packs myself.

Nothing I said was in direct response to anything you said Mr. The Beast -- I do apologize if you took it that way,

Regards
Russ Dunaway

Much thanks for all replies.

My friend will try the smaller 1/3000 ships due to space limts – he almost went with 1/4800, but didn't like the big molded on bases.

well, my friend got quick service and already has his 1/3000 ships from Forged in Battle / West Wind! He was uncertain so only bought the English Trafalgar fleet.

We think they are wonderful – compact, nice proportionately, reasonably clean, solid, etc. and nicely priced. Best of all, they are small enough to fit in as substitutes on his Wooden Ships and Iron Men game [altho I think they look little crowded].

I like them enough that I think to get the French / Spanish fleets. Quick question – does anyone know if the sculpts are different from these, or the same? In other words, are the ships in that pack different from the ones in teh English pack?

I am tempted by the Copenhagen box for variety sake, instead.

Thanks for all helping!

Valiant Fighting Sails in 1/2000 were made with WSIM in mind. I beleive they are still available.

The Valiants are still available from Valiant: veltd.net

But it sounds like Alessandro and his friend are now beyond asking "what should I buy"….

I've never seen the FIB 1/3000 ships in person, but in the photos, it looks like the Trafalgar English have studding sails set and the Franco-Spanish ships are riding under battle sails (main sails furled). Studding sails are unrealistic in combat, but should make the vessels much easier to distinguish from a distance.

The Copenhagen British appear to have battle sails set, which would prevent people like me from reflexively clutching at the pearl necklace, but they will be harder to tell apart from their enemies.

I would avoid the Copenhagen Danish unless you're actually doing Copenhagen or something similar, because a fleet of dismasted ships is not very useful for AoS gaming, except to note occasional casualties of catastrophic damage. I actually built a few of my 1/2400 Figurehead models as dismasted wrecks for this purpose, but I've never needed more than a handful (certainly not a whole dozen!).

- Ix

I am actually thinking about getting the Copenhagen fleets both for British and Danish, as they will provide plenty of opportunities for raiding ports.

I have received copy of Lighting Admiral today, and it seems many of the attacks are upon ports, and I think I am more interested in these fights. And they are so cheap, anyway…

The British one has more than enough ships to fight any number of squadron actions at sea with 8-12 ships a side. If all the ships are as nice as teh British Trafalgar set, we will be very happy! The only thing that would be better is if you could buy the ships inidividually or in small packs, but it doesn't really matter.