Rigged Sloop and more French for B&P

More painting has been done. This time, I've finally managed to rig and set sail to Jeanne de Flandre, my (nominally French) sloop for Blood & Plunder, as well as paint some more frenchmen (also for B&P).

First up, sails on the horizon!

 She's surprisingly tall, which means that my usual photographing table needs some more work before I get a nice even background...

If my sources are correct, that is (going from back to front) a gaff sail, a staysail and a jib. All I know is that they look sleek and pretty.

Surprisingly simple and goodlooking rigging to her. Some time in the future, I might go over and do a more advanced rigging, but for now, simplicity, speed and easy access to the decks are my prime motivations.

All the swivel guns on the ship are attached with magnets, making them easy to remove when you do not want them all mounted and, once removed, with no obvious stuff missing.

The cannons are also held in place with magnets, both to keep them in place and allow for easy removal when they're not wanted (and/or has been destroyed).

The magnets sit (more or less) flush with the deck, and are surprisingly well camouflaged when not under a cannon.

The magnets also allow for silly stuff like this. Yes, the ship is laying on her side, and the cannons still stay in place (reducing damages to both the resin ship and metal cannon carriages in case of light jostling)

The only problem with the magnets, is that I mounted them a bit too far back, making the light cannons most often mounted being situated a bit far back. Oh, well, learn and adapt, the next ship will have them mounted closer to the edge even if it makes it a bit trickier to figure out exactly where to mount them. There is a some margin of error anyway.

The ship has a tiller to steer by, the wheel not having been invented in the 17th century. This could be situated either on top, on the open deck, or down below (trading vision for a bit of protection from the elements).

It has, of course, been secured by a magnet, allowing it to turn and, more importantly, be removed if necessary...

Such as when a large unit of Flibustiers are occupying the deck and space is at a premium.

The flag (and flagpole) is only attached by gravity and friction, and can easily be removed for storage, transporting and to replace the flag in case she's been "borrowed" by Spanish, English or pirates. Additional flagpoles are on the workbench.

For ease of transport, the mast as well as the bowsprit can be removed. However, they're still attached by the rigging, which provides some limits, as do the huge gaff sail it has. But at least the ship is much shorter now, and will hopefully be easier to transport without damages (no, I haven't actually figured out how to transport her).

Some more frenchmen has also been painted.

First out, the French Legendary Commander, Jean-David Nau, better known as Francois L'Olonnais. Equal parts Inspiring (for his friends and subordinates), terrifying (for his enemies) and badass (in general), but above all and by all appearances a functioning psychopath. I like this model much more than the standard French fopcommander, and will most likely use it as a generic commander as well.

Then, there's been some more Flibustiers, bringing the first unit up to 8 strong. The sharp eyed will notice that a few of the models doesn't look like standard Flibustiers. They would be correct, but I had 4 Flibustiers less than I needed, and 4 English Freebooters more than I needed. And the main difference is the number of pistols they carry. Done and done, painted as frenchmen and nobody the wiser (except everyone, since I told it on my blog...)

The second unit of Flibustiers also got reinforced to 8 total (with english replacements as above).

Finally, an additional 8 Boucaniers, all of them in dirty, bloodstained clothes. Must say, I'm impressed by how fun these were to paint, as well as by the bloodstains. Simple stippling of a reddish brown, add some brown wash (which has been used in abundance anyway), and done.

Luckily for me, some more frenchmen has now arrived, sailors and militia both, so there's no need to worry about running out of stuff to paint in the near future

/Fool out, time to paint more bluecoats (except very few if any of their coats will actually be blue)

Blood & Plunder - Differentiating Units

Several people have asked, both in general and me personally, how to differentiate all their different units in Blood & Plunder. Well, ask no more, here is how Fool does it. In a way that is, while not discreet, both unifying and easy to read once you know the trick.

So, we have a major scrum of different units, from all kinds of nations, and want to differentiate them. How to do it? Could you perhaps just remember what unit each sculpt is? They are surprisingly distinctive, after all?

Sorry, no luck. In the image above, there are two English Sea Dogs (to the left), two French Marins (in the middle) and two Spanish Marineros (to the right).

English Sea Dog and French Marin.
Note: same sculpt.

French marin and Spanish Marinero.
Note: same sculpt.

Spanish Marinero and English Sea Dog.
Note: once again, same sculpt.

Instead, note how the color of the base rims correspond to which nationalities are present? Congratulations, you've found step one. The color of the base tells you which nation the unit is from.

Yellow for Spanish units, red for English units, and blue for French units. So, if one were looking for Spanish units, look for the yellow base rims.

Now, once we have all the Spanish, how do we differentiate them? Look at the tiny markings on the (yellow) base rims. Specifically, notice how they're different colors? Red, blue and green (although the green is surprisingly similar to the blue at more normal light levels). That tells you what kind of unit it is.

All Lanceros (all one, in this image) have green markings, all Milicianos have red, and all Marineros are blue. The commander have the same markings as the nationality color (so, solid yellow for the Spanish).Once I get Milicianos Indios, they will get brown markings.

But what if you have several units of the same? That is where the markings themselves come in. The first unit will have a single slash on each quarter of the base (each quarter, so that at least one marking is guaranteed to be visible, no matter where you're looking from), the second unit will have two markings, and so on.

 Once sorted out, this is quite obvious. Thus, even if the two units happen to get close to each other, a quick glance will still tell them apart

Same with the Marineros, one, two or three slashes depedning on whether it's unit 1, 2 or 3.

Even units 2 and 3 are surprisingly easy to tell apart.

Same thing with the English, this time with dark red bases.

Light blue for the Sea Dogs, one or two slashes for the different units.

Dark yellow for the Freebooters.

And no markings/dark red slashes for the commander.

English Militia will most likely get white slashes, assuming this doesn't make them hard to differentiate from the Freebooters or Sea Dogs.

French get blue bases.

Boucaniers have green slashes (bordered with white, since the contrast between blue and green was not sufficient under nomal light conditions).

Flibustiers get yellow slashes (unit 2 and unit 1, as you should be able to tell by now)

And Marins are light blue over the normal blue, in an attempt to have some comonality between similar units between different nations.

French Militia will get either white or light grey slashes, whichever makes them less likely to be confused with other units.

Finally, something a bit more special: the Storming Party.

These very models can be fielded as either English Forlorn Hope or French Les Enfants Perdue. Due to this crisis of personality, and by dint of being an elite unit, they get special bases, striped between (roughly) equal parts French blue and English red. I don't think I will ever want more than one unit, they're too expensive and it's better to have one unit of 8 than two units of 4, thus differentiating between different units of these will not be a problem.

/Fool out, back to paint some more.

English Buccaneers for B&P

New week, and more little dudes have been painted (no dudettes, sadly). This time, it's still Blood & Plunder, but a new nation, the English. Specifically English Buccaneers (sailors, basically). It's not a large force, but still a significant milestone for me. More about that after the pretty pictures.

First of, the commander. He's been around for some time, he was infact among the 3 first models I painted for Blood & Plunder, as a test. I like how it turned out, so these models have stuck around.

I now realise that I need to touch up his base. Or I'll just paint a new commander, since I have a slightly different sculpt (from the kickstarter) that will be painted up sooner or later.

The first English unit, the ubiquitous Freebooters (so far, they're Core Units in all English forces).

 They're generalists in a true sense of the word. They're capable sailors, good shooters at both short and long range with a long barreled buccaneer gun, and a pistol, not completely useless in melee combat, and, as all english units, surprisingly tough both on a model and unit basis.

The other new unit, English Sea Dogs.

Sailors, artillerymen and brawlers. They can be useful either manning the sails on your ships (well, being on the ship and free to man the sails when necessary, the way the rules work), man any artillery that's around and keep up a lethal rate of fire, or they can just get stuck in in melee and cut down their enemies that way. They're cheap, equiped with only a pistol and sword/axe/knive/random melee weapon, not quite as lethal as other nations sailors, but the comparison to Bulldogs are apt, they're resilient like few others (as all englishmen are).

As with the french sailors from last week, I was a bit limited in models, and these will be the core of two units of Sea Dogs, not all in the same unit (unless I need to).

Add in the Les Enfants Perdue from last week, (they work just as well as English Forlorn Hope, the models are exactly the same), and one gets a nice little force (potentially Barnard Speidryke and his 18 seamen against de Pardal?)

Now, how is these few models a milestone for me? Because I now have the models to field at least 100 points worth of models for all Sailing factions, which means I can run demo games and let people choose their force reasonably freely (they're still limited to sailors, but can at least try out whichever nation they think they'll like). This is a very good thing, since it seems that this game is about to take off around here.

The "standard" lists I can now provide:

Spanish Guarda Costa:
Experienced Guarda Costa Commander
8 Milicianos
5 Marineros
5 Marineros
4 Lanceros

English Buccaneers:
Untested Buccaneer Commander
8 Freebooters
4 Forlorn Hope
6 Sea Dogs

French Buccaneers:
Untested Buccaneer Commander
8 Flibustier
5 Boucanier
4 Marins

Brethren of the Coast (unaligned):
Untested Buccaneer Commander
4 Flibustiers
5 Freebooters
4 Les Enfants Perdus
5 [Marins/Marineros/Sea Dogs] (Since all sailors cost the same, and I've gleefully mixed models, the choice is up to whomever plays them)

Logwood Cutters (also Unaligned, nominally "militia")
Untested Commander
4 Flibustiers
4 Flibustiers
6 Freebooters
4 [Marins/Marineros/Sea Dogs] (once more, choice is up to the player)

I would have to butcher the French and English Forces to provide models for the Unaligned, so I can't (yet) provide any and all matchups. But as long as I'm the other player, one side will be the Spanish, reducing that problem (I really like how the Spanish work, and will try to work out their itty bitty details before going on to the next force).

/Fool out, time to up the frenchmen