"Cheap pirate ship for 18-20mm figures?" Topic

All,
Any leads on cheap pirate ships that will look good with my 18mm Blue Moon pirates? An assembled toy would be great, and under $20.00 USD.

Nick

Look for 3-D wooden puzzle ships from craft stores. The kits I have (ArtMinds Frigate & a pirate ship (can't find the brand name, but #1609)) are about @ 16"L x 5"W, lots of deck room. They ran about 5 bucks each. You'll have to add your own cannon, though… ;-)

Check Hobby Lobby under table decor. They have a thing that looks like a John boat that by adding a deck, cutting some gun ports and adding masts works. I did up four for my 25mm pirate 🏴‍☠️ crews. Caught them on sale for $10.00 USD each.

Hobby Lobby will never get money from me.

I am no huge fan of HLbut they had what I needed and it was cheap.

Have you looked at the Old Glory Shipyard? Decent prices, and 40% off with their Army card.

link

79th, that's exactly what I've just been thinking about. Even with the $50.00 USD membership fee it might pay off.

There are Pirate ship models that would likely work for 18mm. I have a bunch I am going to use for 1/72.

Thanks

John

John,
Do you mean plastic kits? They would have to be waterlines, right?

Here is something I ran across at a discount store:

PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN BUBBLE BATH,

link

The scale works out well for 15mm, the detail is, well, very low, but just 65 cents, hard to beat that for cheap.

I do not know this vendor, so Caveat emptor

Add a foremasts and a lateen mizzen sail and you'd have a very serviceable pirate brigantine!

To waterline the plastic kits just build some extra bracing inside when you build the kit (keeping in mind where you want the waterline. Then use an oscillating saw or dremel saw to cut off the lower part of the hull. To clean it up use a flat belt sander to get it level.

A little extra work but it does the trick.

The old Broadsides game had a nice 15mm ships

Yep, what leidang said. I have done it before with other ships. I think I picked up about 8 ship models around 1/72 scale. I wanted to do Pirate games and didn't want to buy expensive ships or 28mm figs to do it. I've also used wooden models cut down as well.

Thanks

John

I've gotten it sorted out, thanks for all the suggestions. Picked up three of the Pressman ships from Jim Pitts.

That bubble bath vessel looks like a simplified version of one of the Disney, Black Pearl toys from back in the day, that came with three masts with sails.

A shame the masts appear to be not included now.

It is a great little vessel for 15mm figs.