Santissima Trinidad: Tumbling Dice 1:2400

Here's a small post about a small subject - Tumbling Dice's 1:2400 model of the Santissima Trinidad, a massive warship rendered in exceedingly tiny form.

1:2400 scale doesn't produce models with the same visual appeal as, say, 1:1200, but what it's great for is gaming the larger fleet actions without purchasing extra dining room tables - a great benefit when you live in the city and don't have anything like a dining room. I've done a relatively quick and simple treatment on the hull, in the interest of time. If I'm going to build up fleets of these things I don't want to take forever on each individual model. I'll indulge my passion for detail on the larger models.

Rigging this model was actually not too tricky. Yes, the spaces involved were very small, but the miniature is made of strong metal and the shrouds/ratlines are cast on, so the masts are very resistant to bending. That helped a lot. I didn't bother to add the majority of the standing rigging, concentrating instead on running rigging just to give a basic impression.

Imperial Roman Legionaries

This unit was a long time in the making as my painting time has been very limited in recent months, but I finally finished them and sent them off to their owner.

Here are 24 Imperial Roman legionaries from Warlord games, based, formed up and ready to go. These are plastic figures. Sorry the pictures are not quite as well focused as they should be, I didn't inspect picture quality closely enough before mailing these out, so this is the best I've got!

22 Gun Xebec - GHQ 1:1200

Here we have GHQ's model of a 22 gun xebec in 1:1200. Xebecs are, in my opinion, a really neat looking type of vessel, and in the Napoleonic era and earlier they were very common throughout the Mediterranean region. They were especially favored by the Barbary Coast pirates, as they were extremely fast, maneuverable craft. The young American navy, seeing it's first wartime deployment as a truly national navy, would have seen a lot of these vessels during the Barbary Coast War. They were lightly built and sat low in the water, so they were not line of battle ships, and they were not suited to the rougher seas of the open ocean, but they could easily run down slow merchantmen or escape from more heavily built warships.

There were several different types of rigs a xebec might employ, and this model displays a complete lateen rig - all of the sails are triangular and attach to a yard that crosses the mast at an acute angle. Another type of rig was the polacre, which combined lateen and square sails.

This model has been raised up very slightly on plastic sheeting, had it's bowsprit and stern boom replaced with brass rod, and is rigged with monofilament nylon thread. It sits on a Langton Miniatures sea base, below which is a layer of plastic and a magnetic sheet (for ease of transport).

From this view you can see an interesting aspect of the rig, which is that the fore and mizzen mast are raked forward and backward respectively. Only the main mast is perpendicular to the deck.

Here is a size comparison shot showing the xebec next to GHQ's 32 gun frigate HMS Cleopatra.