Blood & Plunder - Tartana

I'm still alive, even in these times. I have mostly painted smaller things (finishing off various units and forces, a few stand-alones), not things worthy of a full blog post by themselves lately. With one major exception: yet another ship have been painted. This time, a Tartana (as usual, for Blood & Plunder). 

I modified it a bit, usually, the Tartana does not have a flag on the bowsprit. But ships looks so boring without flags, and the Bark didn't really need two, now did it? So a swift exchange of parts, and one more ship can show her allegiance. I got a bit of plastic tubing as well, to hold the flag, since the bowsprit does not have the usual rigging components I use to hold flags.

She looks slightly strange, with two quite large sails forward, and very little sternward. But it's not a unattractive strange, I'll give her that. Oddly pretty in fact, probably due to the sleekness.

She's also able to hold a decent amount of sailors (try to avoid the dirty joke...), with fairly open decks. The all forward arrangement of her masts means that the stern deck (nominally the quarterdeck, I think, although that might only be applicable for larger ships) is especially easy to get access to.

The ease of access is especially welcome, since the back deck is where most of the heavy ordnance will be, since there might be need to remove both crew and guns, depending on which kind of enemy fire comes pouring in.

As is usual for me, the masts can be taken down (thank you, elastic string), so that she is compact and easy to transport. additionally, the bowsprit can be demounted, with some more plastic tubing for a socket to hold it in place while "working", since she'd otherwise be too long for my usual cases (seriously, she might not look it, but she's a looong ship, especially with the bowsprit. The viking in me can't not like it). Thankfully, the elastic string is more than enough to keep the bowsprit in its socket, so no need for some kind of smart magnetization.

And all ship mounted guns are of course magnetized for storage, exchanging, destruction and whatever else may befall them, but that goes without saying for my ships.

All in all, she seems like a slightly smaller Sloop. Fast, maneuverable and with a decent but not too intensive battery of guns, while still having at least some fortitude against cannons. But we'll see how that actually works on the blue sea (well, blue table cloth, but you get the point).

The fact that the heavy artillery is sternwards, while the gaggle of swivel guns are forwards, opens up for a potential tactic of firing a salvo with the cannons at an opportune moment, and then charging in, firing the swivel guns to clear way, and then board the enemy ship. Perhaps something for Spanish Corsairs (who may or may not be led by Blas Miguel, in another attempt to achieve a melee skill of 3).

Now she just need a crew (well, not really, but I have a few more spaniards on the table, because somehow, the spanish are no longer my largest force in Blood & Plunder, and that needs to be rectified). And then I really need a game or five, once this crisis is over. At least I have enough of a fleet to lend most things smaller than a ship of the line. Although step one would probably to see how well she fares against a Bark, if the extra points are worth it (and then, against the only marginally more expensive Sloop).

Do tell me if you've got experience with this ship. Is she as nippy as I think? Is she worth it (from a pure gameplay perspective, she's cute enough to be worth it from a modelling perspective).

/Fool Out