Hello All,

I'm not sure if this is the right place for such a thing. I took a bunch of pictures of a ship that a local guy converted from some MegaBlock "Pirates of the Caribbean" toys. I saw them once before and remember how incredible they were. I even purchased some for myself, but I never got around to converting them. I kept wanting to see this guy's ships again before I touched them. Well, I got the chance last night and I made sure to take a bunch of pictures.

I will do a full battle report and post it in the other forum. Once again, I wasn't sure if this was the best spot for it or to put it in the main Hobby/Painting section.

So, I know that he clipped off all the Leggo knobs from the top of it. Next, he got some coffee stirrers really cheap and glued them down on top of the deck. He painted the whole thing to get a better wood color and to match the wood of the deck that he installed. I don't know if he primed it first or what paints he used. I'd like to ask, so if you are curious, I can find out. He also got various small, wooden bits from Michael's (hobby store) and glued them on at various points. He made some rigging from twine and put that on. overall, I think it's an amazing ship. I am going to convert one just like it. I know he glued the masts down and he regrets it. It's harder to transport that way, he says.

Here is his conversions:




Here you can see the knobs he glued on to that little ledge that sticks out. It's the part right below the rigging. I really like it.


He was able to build in a little spot in the deck with a ladder to get to below deck.


Notice the barrels scattered around the deck. I'm not sure where he got these.


I think he took out a lady figurehead and added some twine roping on the front.


He added some planks to the top of the crow's nest to make it consistent.






OK....he also purchased a different MegaBlok PotC ship. It's the oriental junk. I don't recall it's name. I almost got one for myself when a local toy store went out of business. Personally, I think it would make a great Orc and Goblin ship. There was a VC player who was using it last night and I clicked a few pics of it.



The rear of the ship.


The front of the ship.




Enjoy!

good idea thanks for sharing the pics

Very nice! These are well done, considering they were originally megablock ships. What kind of material was used for the sails? I am currently hung up on sails for my fleet as I have been...........


painting! :lol:


I am ready to add sails and launch some of the fleet! Oh, the ratlines are nice, and the decks are big enough not to impede games. On smaller ships, the ratlines and rigging would probably get in the way.

One comment: looks like the mast on the poopdeck of the first ship is pointed in the wrong direction! Oh well, it is a small detail easily overlooked. :ph43r:

Goomb

The Megablocks ships all convert up nicely. These are very well done, although I would hate to carry a Pearl with its masts glued on around.

Thanks so much for sharing these Groznit!

Goomb--the sails are the cloth ones that Megablocks supplies with a Pearl.

I'm also not used to seeing a Pearl with its decks so empty. I like lots of models when I'm fighting.

:yarr!:

Correct Arrgberg, the sails are the cloth ones that come with it. ^_^

Most of the crew was below deck, until later. I thought there might be some boarding action, but turned out not any. One of the things that was cool was that they guy had some little, wooden trays that we could put what minis were below deck. That was cool as they were designated somewhere.

One other cool thing that this fellow did was get little hand held white boards and markers. This way, we were able to write down how many structure points we had, what our speed was last turn, and which guns couldn't fire due to misfire. It was really cool. They were magnetic, too, so he had cut out little diagrams for how far we could go depending on the wind and used the magnets to hold that chart down (like on a fridge). It was very clever. B)

The last really cool thing he did was for fires. Instead of making little flames, he bought these cool little electronic candles. I've seen these before. They are little round plastic bases with a little plastic flame at the top. You turn them on and they light up like a real candle. They are quite cheap and meant to be used like on a table in a resturaunt (in a little glass candle jars). I'm not sure if I am making myself clear. I think some of the photos I have for tomorrow will show them. Anyways, they were really cool, cheap, and a neat way to designate flame. The only thing was they were kind of tall (an inch high). :o

These look fantastic!

I'd recommend painting the sails with PVA glue and shaping them so they look "full of wind" :yarr!:
then undercoating and painting them in suitable colours.

I love the Chinese pirate ships sails though - I may have a go at that style of sail someday.

Hi, everyone. I’m the seahammer guy that recently ran the game with the modified Warhammer Ahoy rules. Initially I got introduced to naval with a game we ran a year ago using the Generals Comp rules. It was okay but we found it led to a bunch of ships sailing towards each other firing a small number of cannon bow to bow and then ramming each other and having a large scale skirmish battle between 4 or so ships. Of course each ship had 400+ points of crew so the battle was just a regular fight between decks. To be honest, it was boring and predetermined.

When I was introduced to Ahoy, I saw so many advantages to bring a tactical challenge to naval warhammer that I was immediately taken into the fold. The Ahoy rules offered clear, concise, simple rules that covered most situations and allowed you opportunities to avoid the central melee that we had with the GenCom rules. With a simple leadership test, the chance of avoiding a ram and boarding could be realized. This opened up a new view of naval as a player would have to depend on cannons, crew armed with missile weapons and careful sailing to gain an advantage and do the naval combat thing.

Let’s look at the rules:
1. LIMITED CREW – With a limited number of crew, a player needs to man his guns, control the ship to effectively steer and modify speed, and, in the event of fire damage, allocate men to fight fires. With the GenCom rules, this is no problem as there are so many crew that there is no decisions to be made while with Ahoy, it’s a lot more challenging. You have a certain number of actual ships crew that are in charge of doing one of three things: man the guns, control the ship or fight fires. When you are in the midst of a fight, do you man the cannons? How many can you man now that you have lost 25% of your crew to casualties? What about the 3 fires raging on the deck? How many of your men do you assign to that task? What about the steering of the ship? How will you avoid that sand bar ahead if you are busy fighting the fires and firing the guns? In our game this week, my ironclad was in close action with the large sailing ship of the orcs, we were at close range and seriously hammering each other – each ship ablaze with multiple fires. I had lost a number of crew and had to decide what actions to take with the remaining crew. I opted to let the ship go out of control, man my heavy naval cannon and send the rest to fight the 5 or so fires on deck. My ship drifted with the wind keeping me in close proximity to the sailing ship (but also keeping me in range of his broadside!!) while I fired into his hull at point blank range and sent the rest of the crew and marines to fight the fires (which were causing me more damage every turn they were not put out). Sure glad the enemy was not in a position to board me or ram me because I did not have enough crew to fight off a boarding action and handle my other concerns. If I was to be rammed, I could not avoid it either as my ship was moving out of control. There were tough decisions to be made….

So glad you could make it on here to join in the discussion! I have to thank you again for efforts to get the game going and to have done so much so that we could all play. I hope that I can get my ships up and floating sometime soon.

I am going to cut and paste your discussion here into the thread about the Warhammer Ahoy rules. This thread is about the ship conversions.

Speaking of conversions, do you have any good pictures of your ironclads? I was going to tell these guys how you did it. They look superb! He took some foam about an inch high and then covered it with cardboard. After that, he found some metallic spray paint at a local craft store and sprayed the cardboard. I had thought that they were really metal! It looks amazing.

I think this is the best picture of an iron clad that I have:

That's a great looking ironclad! Like the models to go with it, too.

Here are a few of mine:

2 medium ships built from the Weapons & Warriors set:



2 large ogre ships from Playmobil models:



A huge sailing ship from a resin model:

Is the last ship pictured an Old Glory model?

Nice work on all the ships. And welcome to Da 'path!
Have one on my tab!

:lol:

Wlecome to Da Warpath, Sharkbelly! I have seen you circling these threads, so I am really pleased you posted. What a start to your stay here at Da Warpath! By the way, I am Goomb, one of the admins here. On behalf of the staff and other gits here, welcome. If you have any questions, please PM me. Enjoy your stay and get involved!

It looks like an Old Glory. That is an impressive set of ships, sir! I tip my hat to you. Care to give us a run down on the dimensions of the large ship? It certainly is a beauty.

What cannons are you using? They look like repainted Weapon and Warriors guns. I certainly have a bunch of those....but I have built my ships to take the Minimi cannons shown on this web page.

http://minimi.co.uk/pirates/index.htm

Great stuff!

Goomb

Heh, welcome aboard from a fellow new-comer to this site. Really nice ships, especially the ironclad. I like the use of the steamtank as a turret. The sail ships also look solid. I am currently working on a ship for my ogres using a megabloks Black Pearl ship with a degree of modification to be somewhat different from the one pictured above. That one there is very generic and is ment to be crewed by just about anyone. The Ogre version only has 1 mast topped with a crow's nest, a large skull mounted to the front atop a ram that I modelled from styrene and cardboard. It looks fine, atleast to this point. I have a crew of 5 ogres and a number of gnoblars. It is very much designed to operate with the Ahoy rules as those are what we use around here at the moment. Where did you get the cannon models? Are they in 28mm as well? They look to be....

Welcome aboard, Sharkbelly!

Very nice ships! I'm very curious about the Weapons & Warriors ones. Do you have a direct link to what product it is? I'd love to try to find some cheap. I've got a number of large ships and am interested in some medium to smaller ones. I'll have to look up those Playmobile ships, too. Very nice. Did you modify them much? If so, what? Closer pictures would always be appreciated.

I'd also like to know what cannons you used. Thanks, Goomb! I didn't know about that link and was wondering what I would use for cannons on my future ships. $1.60 or so a cannon is a good price. Maybe I can go in on some with SkavenWarlord and share the shipping.

I still hope to build some orcish ships from various sized popsicle sticks I have around here.

EDIT: WOW! Just do a search on ebay for Playmobil Ship and you get a lot of good hits! Here is a lot for 3 nice sized ships. Zero bids starting at $9.99 and US $13.80 in shipping. Not bad at all!

Has anyone figured out how to make oars? What do people use for the wooden shafts? That's the problem that I am having. The only wooden sticks that I am familiar with are for shish-ka-bobs and they are too thick (more for a mast of a small ship).

I've got an idea in my head for a lot of little orc ships that use rowing to be a good orcish fleet. We are usually a horde army, so why not a horde fleet? It would also be cool to have mixed naval/land games that have orcs invading somewhere with landing craft.

I'm all up for a mixed land/naval battle as I already constructed 3 landing craft that were steam-powered (to aid in the space savings and the movement). Each craft can fold 2 units of 20-25 miniatures, 3 ogres abreast, or 10 cavalry in 5x2. They were made to be generic and have a gate that drops down onto the beach or whatever shore there is (inspired, no doubt, by the old landing crafts of WW2). I have them constructed and I began to paint them but got side tracked by another project. I'll post a picture and bring one in on Saturday for you to see.

I've been thinking of something very similar, excpet orky. I was going to go for the WWII landing craft that was made in someone's back yard with spare lumber and powered by oars. I want it to be able to fit in 25 orcs on movement tray and still be considered a medium ship.

It would also be cool to have one of these ships try to board another boat! Hopefully, they would swarm the crew. :yarr!:

That would be a cool idea, as long as the part your boarding the other ship is above the water line :(

Medium and small sized ships.....ah yes. I have been working on a small fleet over here at the Goomb dockyards!

Here are some examples of recent projects:

Dhow (8" long x 3" wide) - Small Class


Jolly Boats (5" long x 2" wide) - Boat/Small Class


Each ship/boat is made with foamboard, cardboard (cereal boxes), some balsa, brass rod (swivel guns, rudder), some florist wire (rudder), some dowels (mast), and some free paint stirring sticks from Home Depot (rudder).

I have been thinking about oars for the jolly boats as well since the middle sets of grots on the jollies should have sweeps somewhere near them. I am stuck on that too, although one could use brass rod and some thin balsa or cardboard.

Goomb

looks great !! but you look a little light on the rum barrow!!!
thanks to you guys i thinking on starting to do a couple of boats my self
maybe i finsh one !! :yarr!:

Goomb, I might have found something. I've been looking at some of the medical supplies I had from breaking my leg and all the complications of a year ago. I found some cotton swaps on long, thin, wooden sticks. They would be perfect for oars! With all my Dr. visits that I am going to soon, I am hoping I can snag a number of them. I don't have any idea where else you can get them, but let me see how many I can get and if they work.

Hey, I'm all about looking at the silver lining of everything....including my surgery! :D

Mickey Ds coffee stirrers?

Or Wolfgang's way--

http://gidian-gelaende.de/Material_HP/Wolf...lbum/index.html

well here mine i been working on for a while

Nice work Kera!

Zelophahad used Cocktail sticks and cereal packet card! :yarr!:

@Kera--That hull is carved! Nice work!

WBK--The problem I see with oars is that they make the model's footprint bigger. It would be nice to make them detachable like the sails to make working out boarding easier...

:(

Zelophahad's aren't joined on they are just resting on the gunwales - they spend most games lying inside the dinghies, but they look pretty good.

:yarr!:

Good idea. I'm thinking about galleys for my Savage Orcs, so I'm trying to envision removable banks of oars. I do a lot of "envisioning."
:o

@ Arrgberg
ITS a pieace of western ceader!! and yes i did it !! with a wood plain
need to finish it but got side tracked on a new ship
a steamer

Good grief, Kera, that is amazing work! My patience might wear a bit thin with the carving....I would probably break out the power tools! hurr hurr hurr

Nice work on the oars and snall boats! You could make them removable: the swivel guns on the jollies are actually two dowels with a hole drilled about 1/3 of the length of the dowel (drilled through - vertically). I threaded a piece of wire through the dowel, that that wire sits in a brass rod to keep the gun in place. Now, you could add brass rod along the gunwhales where the oars would go, and the oars could have wires in them like a swivel gun. The oars would be removable then....

I do need to add some greenstuff to the brass rod to keep it in place. It is drilled and glued into the floor of the jolly, but it needs some extra reinforcement!

Sheesh, Groznit, that would be a nifty ship. Historically, how would the Royal Navy land large groups of marines and army troops on the shore? Big jolly boats? I doubt they had landing craft like WW2.... I did see something on the Military channel from WW1 that showed smaller steam powered boats (like the African Queen), but how did they do it back in the day? I imagine the landing operations would have taken all...day...long!

Goomb

Yup - rowing boats were the only way to get ashore if there wasn't a harbour. It didn't tend to be in the face of enemy guns though - they would try to sneak ashore at night, a fair way from an intended target and march to battle overland!

Patrick O'Brian covers a few troop landings, but I can't remember in which books!


:yarr!:

it wasn't that hard !! but it gave me something to do 2 winter a go
but i hopfully will get back to it
i have a lot of problen finshing projects
but with more pirate here and privteers i should be fine

Let's see....

Master and Commander - Aubrey led a group ashore to cut out a merchant snow and destroy a tower with some 36 pound guns on it. Burned his face in the process. I have been dreaming up this scenario for a LONG time for Seahammer, and I will try to come up with it for this campaign.

The Mauritus Command - As commadore, Aubrey leds mounts an expedition against the French-held islands of Mauritius and La Réunion.

The Letter of Marque - As a privateer, Aubrey leads another mission to cut out a relatively new frigate called the Diane. Royal Navy ships and the Surprise (Babbington and Pullings) fire cannons on the island fort while Aubrey and privateers steal the ship.

Here is a linkee to the Patrick O'Brian Website. I love those books, and I would highly recommend reading them. You will begin to say wonderful things like "capital" and "damn your eyes, you swabs!" Of course, you will also see how much they actually drank alcohol back then too....WOW!

@Kera - Yep, I know what you mean. Well, you get your ships done, and I need to paint mine! That is one of the beauties of a campaign, actually. IT forces you to get things done!

Goomb

I have to second Adm'rul Goomb on recommending the Patrick O'Brian books! They are brilliantly written in wonderful language, full of all sorts of exciting daring-do and always inventive and fresh.

They are set in a later period than any Warhammer equivalent but that really doesn't matter - there is lots that can be lifted wholesale into scenario ideas. The only bad thing about them is that the great man died before he concluded them - the 21st book is available in it's "first draught" form and it stops after just a couple of chapters.

If you like naval warfare in any age-of-sail period read these books - you won't regret it! :yarr!:

As posted in my blog, I am making progress...

Go, Groznit! Go!

You're way ahead of me now!
:yarr!:

More planking next?

Great start, Groznit! I would say that more planking is coming, Arrg.

Groznit, make sure your planking is running lengthwise, not across the ship like my brigs. That is one mistake (of a few) that I made with my brig project, and after studying how ships were constructed in a the Age of Sail, it makes sense to me now.

Glad to see that you are moving along, mate. So, how long did it take to remove the "nubbins"? Did you lose any fingers?

Goomb

Haha! I did not lose any fingers. It's not as cool to have a little hook on your finger nub as it is your whole hand, but I still would have tried.

To get the little plastic bits off, I just used the GW yellow clippers. It took maybe 20 min.

Thanks for the info on the planks! It makes sense to go with the water. I was just going to follow Skaven Warlord's example as much as possible. This will be another way I will be able to tell our ships apart when done, though. I am leaving the figurehead on the front on. I want to try to paint it up and make it look good. I also left the captain's quarters out of the ship. I just didn't want to bother with it. so, we should be able to tell each other's ships apart.

I did get a lot of coffee stirrers for planks. I hope to find the time this weekend to glue them down....or at least start to.

Great stuff! Not to be a copycat, but I just picked up an Empress and a Flying Dutchman on Ebay. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Well, I completely stole the idea from Skaven Warlord. I saw what he did with the ships and found it brilliant. I got my two ships (Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman) last year, but am only getting around to doing something with them now. I hope to keep the momentum up. I have done a little bit more work on the poop deck, but need to get back to it again.

I think the Empress would be a fantastic orc vessel. I don't know why, but I think it would be great. I'm holding off on my other ships until I get at least the Black Pearl done.

Well, mate, copying something is the best form of flattery. Yes, those were some great ships that Skaven Warlord created. Can't wait to see your update, Groznit!

Keep on going....crack that whip on the press gang!

Goomb

that a great start G. i can't wait to see more !!
glade you did not cut your self