Fleet Review - January 2017

After a fair bunch of work, this weekend I managed to get all of the warship models I reasonably plan on using painted.

Therefore, I decided that it was time to place all of these minis together and see how they looked.
I do own a handful of random additional Axis & Allies sculpts and a couple of spare Asashio-class destroyers, but I'm not really counting those.

What am I counting then, you ask?
Well, pretty much this:

Let's take a bit of a closer look at those things.

Kriegsmarine:


Only two vessels for my small German force: Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, both from matt_atknsn on Shapeways.
Some of the most recently painted and only fielded once so far. And that was against me.

Royal Netherlands Navy:


Another rather small force, but that's historically correct for my home country.
The Dutch navy was in a rather bad state in WW2, as can be seen with this pair of subpar light cruisers which met their ends in the Java Sea.

From left to right, we have light cruisers Java and De Ruyter and a pair of Admiralen-class destroyers.

The Java model is another Shapeways purchase, the other three are Axis & Allies minis.

US Navy:


A bit more of a force available here, though it's still rather small considering the large role the US Navy played in WW2. This US force is the most likely candidate for major expansion.

Going from left to right the top row contains fleet carrier USS Wasp, heavy cruiser USS Houston, a pair of Cleveland-class light cruisers and a Brooklyn-class light cruiser, USS Phoenix. Closing out the row is the landing ship dock USS Gunston Hall.
On the bottom row, we have the old submarine S-37 with its submerged marker, a trio of Fletcher-class destroyers (including the least fortunate vessel in the US Navy) and a quartet of Clemson-class destroyers.



In terms of sculpts, we have another mix of Axis&Allies and Shapeways sculpts here, with many of the A&A ones being kind of poor.
And yes, I know USS Houston historically never had this colour scheme. I decided to accept some historical inaccuracy for the sake of looks.

Royal Navy:


We increase the scale a bit further as we reach the Royal Navy, including other commonwealth vessels.
My second-biggest force and a classic one with the King George V battleship and the pair of battlecruisers.

From left to right on the top row we have the battleship Prince of Wales, the battlecruisers Hood and Repulse, the heavy cruiser Exeter and the light cruisers Achilles and Perth.
On the bottom row we have three E-class, two J-class, one Tribal-class, one S-class and one V-class destroyer. Closing things out we have a cute little Flower-class corvette.



We have another mix of Shapeways and A&A stuff here, with HMS Exeter actually being a converted York model since I was having trouble getting my hands on a purpose-sculpted Exeter one.



I decided to stick to a handful of colour schemes which work decently well together, even if that means that some ships aren't entirely historically correct when put next to each other.
I mostly stuck to the simple gray North Atlantic colours and the dark and light gray used at various points in the Pacific.

Imperial Japanese Navy


Finally, we reach by far the biggest force in my collection.
Most of this one is Shapeways stuff, but with some exceptions.



We start with the big ships: aircraft carrier Shoukaku, followed by the battleship Nagato and her sister ship Mutsu. Finally, we have the Kongou-class "fast battleship" Kirishima.
All of these models are from Shapeways, except for the turrets on Mutsu.



Next we have the cruisers, starting with the Myoko-class heavy cruisers Haguro and Nachi.
They're followed by the light cruisers Agano, Ooi (she with 20 torpedoes per side) and Sendai's sisters Naka and Jintsu.
The last two are Shapeways here, the others A&A.



Subs. I-19 and I-25, with another submerged marker for the latter. Both are A&A, from the second starter set like both Myokos.



Destroyers. Not even all of them since they won't fit properly into a single picture.
We start with three Fubukis and six Shiratsuyus, recognizable by their fairly bright lifeboat covers.



In the second half, we get a trio of Kagerous, a pair of Asashios, a pair of A&A Akizukis, another Shiratsuyu (this one, Shigure, an A&A sculpt), an A&A Matsu and finally an A&A T1 landing ship.

Quite a few minis that I've collected over the last year or 2. Not the greatest quality level of painting, but I feel it's decent enough to put on the table.
I might still go back and touch up a bunch of these, though. That would probably be quick and worthwhile.

Now to decide what I'll allow myself to grab next.
One important consideration in that is that the local store might be able to get 1/3000 scale stuff in stock. That might cause me to shift some of my focus to that instead, especially if that allows us to get a bunch of additional locals interested.

Quite a fleet you've got there! I wish the pictures were a little bit better, because I can tell that they're not doing your ships justice. I really like those submerged sub counters you made, mind sharing how you did them?

Yeah, my photography skills are rather lacking.
It might also help if I were to use something better than my mobile for them.

The submerged sub counters are really straightforward:
>Make a base the size of your sub's base.
>Use some thin plastic rod (I cut off part of a spare spear) to make a "periscope".
>Basecoat, then paint the base your default colour for basing (I use a medium blue) and the periscope an appropriate shade of gray.
>Paint the vessel's hull shape in dark gray (or black, if your basing colour is fairly dark) onto the base.
>Apply water effects over the base, making sure not to make the layer too thick. I use Vallejo Atlantic Blue paste.
Once it dries, the shadow should be visible through the water effects.

Seems simple to do, but it's really effective. Seeing your stuff makes me think it's time to get back to painting, I took a long hiatus over the holidays.

I actually kinda restarted painting naval stuff during the holidays, since I felt like getting the Denmark Strait scenario onto the tabletop.

And from there, it was only a handful of ships further to getting it all done.

Then again, I've just ordered some more stuff...