All Aboard!

It's been two months since my last blog post, and in that time Summer, work and general distraction has kept me away from doing pretty much any painting. My orcs aren't basecoated, let alone fully built, and the Corsairs of Umbar still haven't made an appearance.

Still, this week, with a few days' holiday taken just 'cos, I revisited a project that had been on the back burner for a while – The Usurper, pride of the Umbar fleet.

Over a couple of days, I got the thing from basecoat to finished (feeling appropriately guilty for leaving it so long). Like all my painting, it's a really simple affair – dark brown all over, with the deck drybrushed in khaki and details picked out, and then a wash all over. A bit basic, but it does the job, and suits the feel of a hard-used pirate vessel. The poop deck rails did get a bit of colour – red – in order to visually tie in with my Umbar forces and just to give it a bit of a lift.

All told, not displeased at all, and a pretty successful first real modelling project. The sail came out a little more dark than I expected, but not enough that I want to go back and repaint it!

The 'planking' on the base Playmobil ship's hull is far too wide to really suit, and I thought that it would really annoy me once the ship was painted. Happily, however, it turns out that it looks alright (the minimal highlights actually work in its favour there).

Hands down my favourite element, though, is the scratch-built ladder. Given how vague I am with scaling for most of the vessel (the hold door being a prime example), I'm a little surprised I bothered to build it, but I do really enjoy the end result. The ship's wheel looks good, but I do wish that I'd stuck to my guns and built a rail around it – right now it looks very exposed, and I think that drawing some more attention to the quarterdeck wouldn't have been a bad idea.

Still, I could fuss over it ad nauseum, so will leave it as is for now. Pirates, be they historical or Tolkienesque now have a ship of their own. Of course, what they don't have is a home port, but that's a project for another day...

Laughing Boy

One of the things I like about Umbar is how its history and geography lend it of a kind of melting-pot position. With close ties to Gondor and Harad, not to mention a reputation founded upon sea-travel, it seems plausible to include a few elements from other regions of Middle Earth.

While the majority of my crew will be vaguely Arabic corsairs (clearly a strong Harad influence in their dress – only sensible, given the climate!), I do want to include a few distinct individuals as characters to flavour the pot.

For some reason, I find hyenas to be fascinating (if repulsive) creatures, and really liked the vaguely hyena-like treatment the Peter Jackon LOTR movies gave to the Wargs. That said, I'm not really a huge fan of GW's Warg models, so I looked for alternatives. These from North Star look like just the ticket – they’re pretty chunky, and will work well as smallish Wargs (at least, I hope they will – I have yet to see them in person).

 

So, combining my two aims, I put together this little chap (though he's a head taller than my Umbar Marines, which is unfortunate – not enough for me to re-do all the marines, however – they'll all be shorter than their fellows, but they'll all be short in the same unit!):

Bûltungin the Mûmakani

"All I know is that he's from far to the south and he turned up one day with a pack of those hideous savannah wargs in tow. I guess he's some kind of exile or outcast, but he doesn't talk much and seems to prefer the company of those filthy creatures. Still, when he comes along on a raid, those pets of his terrify the locals, so I can see why the captain keeps him around."

More of a fussy conversion than is my usual preference, this one – essentially, I wanted the clothing style of the Perry Sudanese figure that formed the base, but with arms of the Warlord Zulus. Unfortunately, the Warlord Zulu arms attach at the elbow, not at the shoulder (like nearly all other plastic box sets), so I had to build a new shoulder and bicep. Fortunately, the Wargames Factory Numidians were on hand, and even gave me a really useful left arm holding javelins as well as the upper part of the right. The head is simply a Perry Sudanese one, but was the only one I had left and had a skull cap on. As I wanted it bald, I had to shave off the whole hat. The head thus looks a little elongated, but I think it'll look OK when painted.

In game terms, for Lion Rampant, Bûltungin will be accompanied by five hyena-wargs, and will thus be a unit of 'Fierce Foot', which lends it exactly the kind of aggressive, agile melee role I envisaged.

For anyone wondering, the name 'Bûltungin' is a cosmetic Middle-Earthing of a Kanuri word for "I change myself into a hyena".

Umbar Rises

With the Usurper (freshly named for Castamir, father of the Corsairs of Umbar) en route to being seaworthy, I thought it was about time that it started to get a crew. With the Gripping Beast Arabs due out as Salute in a few weeks, my main force is still theoretical, but I have been mulling over a few options for more specialist units.

One of these is Umbar Marines.

And here is where I apologise to all fans of Tolkien's books, Peter Jackson's films (and even Ralph Bakshi's animation) – this is my interpretation of the Umbar forces, and is only very loosely grounded in any source other than what I want to build and field.

"The marines that are stationed aboard many Corsair vessels are some of the most seasoned soldiers the city can boast, and are typically recruited from amongst the many mercenaries and sell-swords that call it home. While not as effective at sea as the majority of Corsairs, the marines' discipline and experience are invaluable to a crew when raiding ashore, and their shield-wall can provide a well-armed and -armoured anchor for a Corsair battle line."

With most of the Corsairs looking set to be lightly armed and negligibly armoured mariners (as they should be!), I thought that the force would need something a little tougher – for tactical variety as well as for kitbashing entertainment. Marines were an obvious choice, and offered a bit of uniformity in what was looking set to be a pretty irregular crew. With it looking likely that the rules of choice for LOTR games will be Dan Mersey's forthcoming Lion Rampant, I'm grouping everything as per those rules... more or less. The game generally advocates units of 12 or 6, depending on how elite a unit is, but as I prefer the skirmish look, I'm going to be running everything at half-size (i.e. elites have 3 men, regular units 6). While units don't have a leader each, I just prefer to model things that way – the chap with the jaunty plume will count as just another foot soldier in the game.

So, yet again these models are a laundry list of different kits, most of which should not be overly surprising to anyone who has read a previous blog of mine! The legs and shields are Fireforge Steppe Warriors, the torsos are GW Dark Elf spearmen (not the most recent incarnation, mind you) with the ridiculously spiky shoulder pads filed down to something a little more manageable. The arms are Fireforge Foot Sergeants and the heads are all Perry Wars of the Roses 'European Mercenaries'.

The photos above unfortunately make the models look a lot more squat than they really are, but this obligatory group shot is a bit better:

Propulsion...ish

With everything built, and everything finally dry, the sail for the HMS Umbar (really need a better name for her...) is complete. I've gone much (much!) simpler than I originally intended, and it's a simple furled sail made of kitchen roll (soaked in PVA for strength) and dowel of various thicknesses.

It fits nicely into the existing slot in the deck, and can easily be removed as needed.

Construction is officially complete. Painting begins in earnest... soon. I'm going to take a short break from the ship to get some more Frostgrave painting done (and hopefully get it out of the way before the rest of the bits for my Orcs arrive).

One complete vessel!

A pirate's life for me...

A quick update on the HMS Umbar, my post-Playmobil generic pirate/LOTR corsair/dockside terrain project...

The door to the hold has been outfitted with (wonky) hinges and a door handle. These were all made from a ridiculously useful GW dwarf shield emblem (presumably from one of the previous editions of Warhammer). It started out as a hammer striking an anvil – the latter became the hinge, the former the handle. Yes, it's left-handed, but that was solely down to the left-hand edge of the door not sitting flush with the wall, so I figured I'd leave it a tad ajar...

Also new are the eagle-head emblems. Again, GW dwarf shield emblems, just added to give a little bit of razzmatazz to the vessel.

A trip to the local art store also furnished me with the materials needed for the mast. It's a simple dowel affair at present, and I will be keeping it removable.

The crossbeams and the furled sail (seen here drying in between the original Playmobil crossbeams!) are still works in progress, but as I'm going to be building and painting them separately anyway, I decided to push the button and get the rest of the ship base-coated. Brown paint, here I come...

A Good Weekend's Work...

So, with the sun shining, rugby on TV, and beer in the fridge, I finally set to on a project that has been sitting around for a couple of months now:

I've seen a variety of Playmobil ship conversions on various forums, chiefly Lead Adventure, and have always been tempted to try my hand at something similar. With the purchase of a discount ship, a pile of lolly sticks in different sizes (seriously, I have about 8 times as many as I need... may have overestimated a tad...), and a commercially available ship's wheel (well, two, as I tend to break things), I broke out the trusty hot glue gun and got cracking.

The I started the decking with the lowest of the four decks, on the basis that I was inevitably going to mess up, and better to do so in the least noticeable place. True to form, I managed to mess up with pretty much the first section of decking. In hindsight, I should have cut off the plugs in the middle of the deck (and did so for one of the other decks), but instead attempted to lay the planks around it. The steps were scratchbuilt using more lolly sticks around a core of plastic taken from a clipped-off part of the ship. It's probably a little under-sized, but I'm happy enough with it.

(That grey blob at right is a polystyrene block included with the Playmobil kit to allow it to float. I'd have got rid of it, but the bulk of the rear deck sits on it, and without it has a tendency to tip backwards.)

Close-up of the steps, with an (inevitably) unfinished Pied Piper for scale.

The rear decks, being larger, were much easier to plank, even with the steps. As the ship isn't large enough to really merit a cabin, I added a small door leading down into the hold. It'll get a handle and hinges in due course. It was at this point that I burnt my thumb for the first time.

The ship's wheel hasn't been attached yet, but I've dropped it on to see how well it fits. Happily, I didn't break it. Yet.

That's all the planking done. It's a little wonky in places, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out, all in all. It's been given a wash of watered-down PVA, but that's it until the painting.

As you might be able to tell from the cover of the Playmobil box, the ship is intended to have a piece that fits on the front much like the blue section at the rear. Unfortunately, it really raises the height of the hull so much that a 28mm figure can't see over it. What's more, I really didn't like the lines it gave to the ship – the base hull with the attachment at the back seems better-suited for the kind of small, raiding vessel I wanted.

Not for the first time, I started with a project (i.e. 'build a ship') than with an idea ('build a ship for...'), so this will probably end up as a relatively generic craft, suitable for smugglers, Corsairs of Umbar (more on that project later) and, perhaps most likely, as terrain for port-set games. You can get about 15–20 figures on deck, which is about the size of the biggest army I'm ever likely to field!

Next up will be a mast and sails. I'm not quite sure how to do that – the Playmobil mast is ok, but would need to be filled in with green stuff or something, as it's U-shaped, rather than solid. I'll probably go with dowel, but I'll have to have a think about how to handle the sail. Having it furled is less attractive, but more use for actual play.