Age of Sail, Black Seas - Plastic Frigates - Primed

I needed a little break so I grabbed all the plastic frigates from Black Seas, set the airbrush pressure to about 8 psi and hit them with the black primer. I know I have popsicle sticks around here some place but I couldn't find them while I was thinking about doing this, hence the lower PSI level. I thinned the Stynylrez primer down to handle the low pressure and did a couple of coats to get everything covered. So these represent the three smaller US frigates from the original six and six more brigs of one kind or another.

Primed and ready for some detail. Looks like they will need some pretty precise painting.

Age of Sail, Black Seas - USS (USF) United States

The USS United States is one of the two "Super" frigates included with the US Navy starter pack. The hull is a very nicely cast piece of resin. Sharp details and almost no clean up required. Everything else is cast in pewter and to be be honest the castings are a bit rough. At this point all I have done is getting everything ready for assembling. I wish these extras had been cast from plastic, I think the metal masks are going to be more fragile than I would like.

My parts were packed by Omar (unlikely that is was Omar Bradley though). Everything is there and there is definitely some clean up required.

Mostly ready for assembly, although I notice that at least one yardarm on the main mast is still not straight.

Age of Sail, Black Seas - Plastic Frigates

The three smaller frigates are the Constellation, the Congress and the Chesapeake, these are the other three frigates that make up the original six (as a side note the Constellation in Boston harbor is not the original Constellation as originally thought). These have the first metal bits and I can say I'm not impressed with the metal bits. You have unique sterns for each of these frigates and quite frankly they are way over sized. I suspect the black hull paint will help but on the models before priming and painting they look huge. They also don't fit well at all. They each have their own bow carving as well, these are much better. They fit decently and seem to be in scale with the rest of the ship.

The instructions for the Frigates on the back side of the Brig instructions. Again pretty basic and it leaves off any mention of small details like anchors and ship's boats and the mast sequence is out of order again (at least in my opinion).

The hull is a bit trickier. I found it was easier to assemble the sides and while the glue was still wet drop in the deck and kind of slide things around till they are in place.

A basically completed ship, following the instructions. A word of warning here; do not attach the bowsprit until you have glued the bow carving in place as it can affect the fit of both parts. So bow carving first and then the bowsprit.

Oh yea, small details like the boats and anchors got added here. Would be easier to attach these before you glue the masts in place.

More like this! Note that there is an extra boat per sprue, I would definitely save those extras! There are lots of extra anchors too. I basically saved everything.

I should be gluing these metal bits on at this point, but my super glue failed me completely.

At this point, I only managed to glue on one of the sterns and none of the bow carvings (note that two of the frigates don't have their bowsprits glued on at this point). The super glue failure has me waiting for a package so I can finish these up.

Age of Sail, Black Seas - The Brigs

Another acquisition earlier in the year was the starter US Navy fleet from Warlord Games for Black Seas. I have always had an interest in the period but this was the first time I saw something that grabbed my interest enough to get into it. The starter box for the US Navy gets you almost the whole damn Navy that served in the Atlantic. I think a campaign on the Great Lakes would be fun but the ships there tend to be quite a bit smaller. In the box are two of the big frigates; the President and the United States, three smaller frigates; the Constellation, the Congress and the Chesapeake. That gives you five of the original six frigates. The only one missing is the Constitution which was included in the bundle that I bought (which also included terrain!). 

I opted to start with the brigs of which there are six.

Two brigs per sprue, three sprues in the starter box

Instructions, not bad but they could be better. They left off talking about the anchors as an example or that the assembly sequence on the masts is really reversed

Three part hulls, pretty easy, no problems

Masts in place

Bow sprits added

And those odd, rear yardarms. Really those should have been added to the mast before it was attached to the hull. Not that it added any difficulty to the build but the instruction sequence is a little whacked.

After I worked my way through the first two the rest went together really fast. I think the hardest part was scrapping the mold lines off the masts.

Acquisition - Black Seas US Navy Starter Set

I have always loved the thought of naval games but had never really jumped into, just played a fair amount of WWII games with other peoples' miniatures. There has always been an attraction to the Wooden Ships and Iron Men concept though and when Warlord Games offered a pre-release bundle I decided to jump in. I'm sure this will be yet another project that will sit on the shelf a while.

I decided that the best option for me was the US Navy bundle, principally because you get near the whole damn US fleet in the box. The starter box comes with the President and the United States, along with three smaller frigates; the Constellation, the Congress and the Chesapeake, six brigs and a gunboat squadron. Picking up the bundle added a terrain pack and the Constitution, so you have all the main elements of the US Navy right off the bat. I probably don't need to add anything beyond this.

The resin components include all the terrain plus the hulls for all three of the US super frigates. They are well detailed and I don't see any air bubble issues at first glance. That will probably show up when I start to paint them. The three smaller frigates and the six brigs are all in plastic and those components look very nice as well. There are three different stern sections for the three smaller frigates so they can be customized to represent the appropriate frigate.

Also included in all of this are the necessary game components for the US Navy. I don't have the rules or even know of anyone that has jumped into the game in my area but who knows that may never be an issue!