"Waves on Naval Bases" Topic

Do you paint or represent waves on your naval bases?

These waves?

Ocean waves

No bases at all except on some gunboats too small to stand on their own.

Yes, both wake & waves. In 1/3000th they aren't very high though.

This is how I based my 1:2400 Russo-Japanese War ships.

First, the "ocean effect was created using the procedure here: link . I copied the Step 9 image and imported it into a Word Table scheme with 60x30mm and 40x15mm (or as close as I could get using inches) cells. I cut the cells apart and glued them to the plastic bases.

After glueing the ships to the plastic bases and adding the identification label they looked like this …

I then added a wake using "antique white" mixed with a texture base to give the wake some added dimension …

The smaller ships (destroyers, etc.) were glued to bigger "flotilla" bases …

The Russian ships were done in a similar manner …

You can see all my RJW Pre-dreadnought endeavors on my Col Campbell's Shipyard blog: link .

Hope this helps, Bill.

Jim

My general theory is that I want to see the models, not the bases.

But I find transparent bases impractical.

So, in theory, I prefer the bases to look as much like the tabletop as possible, so they 'blend in'.

So that means "no waves" since my tabletop doesn't have waves.

But I did put ripples into the gloss cote on a recent base. LOL

Took a great class in Hobby U- Holy Ship by Mark Franke @ Historicon 2023

Showed you how to create the waves with model putty and how to paint and dry bush.

My 28mm Age of Sail ships don't have bases. Nor do my smaller ones. No waves.

And I have several different colours and timbres of water. I'm looking for a (n afoordable) flexible OLED screen so I can change sea state during the game.

But, yes, I painted my WAVES.

This is how the bases look on my ocean battle mat from Cigar Box Battle:

Jim

Yup. I use Golden Fiber Paste in a thin coat over my thin Litko bases before painting the base and I use a bit of white paint in Golden Regular Gel Gloss for the wake. Since I don't do anything bigger than 1/2400 and most are 1/4800 and 1/6000, a little bit serves just fine since I drybrush four colors over the base navy blue. The texture is just enough to simulate waves.

I just don't base my ships.

To be fair, I do have some naval collections on bases:

My 1/6000 ships were based whether I wanted it or not (the DDs and smaller are molded onto the base). I enlarged the bases so I could write on them, and then textured the added area with waves using acrylic modeling paste.

I have also started adding bases to my 1/1200 galleys. For that project, I'm using clear acrylic in custom sizes ordered from Litko, and I texture the top with waves by stippling on a layer of Mod Podge. It dries clear, so you can see the color of the sea mat right through it, but also adds a wave texture so I can show the oar and hull wakes.

My 1/2400 Figurehead Napoleonic ships came with wave-textured bases, which I just painted and used as-is. I have mused about replacing them with steel (to provide a magnetic surface to stick on damage markers); I would probably also give those a wave texture, maybe using the same Mod Podge technique.

- Ix

The few based naval I have have paper with a printed wave pattern on their bases.

If/when I base more naval, I'll probably try and sculpt waves.

I have wakes on all my ships. it looks good to me and gives my navaly challenged gaming buddies a way to know which end is the front!

I use Woodland Scenic's flexible paste to add texture to my naval bases then paint and drybrush from there. No big whitecaps though.

I began using acrylic bases for my ships a few years ago. I wanted my ships to blend in with the felt, the mats or whatever we were using as a table covering.

These are some of my 1/1200 Spanish American War ships we used for INWGD a couple of weeks ago.

link