Acceptable Radiation: The Fleet of Zhufbar

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

The Fleet of Zhufbar

"Load the torpedoes!" Thorin shouted. The Skaven fleet was approaching fast, as those chaos scum always did--on both land and sea. Most of the crew around him grumbled. Dwarfs were not usually fond of water, and these dwarfs were in a cramped tube below the waster's surface--further heightening their agitation. But the skaven had been attacking Zhufbar far more frequently of late, and their defense necessitated the fleet to out patrolling the waters around the city. Once they sank a few of the ratmen to the briny deep, he was sure his crew's mood would improve...

This post has been a long time coming. I finished these back in December, in time for NOVAOSGROT in January 2019. I bought these about four years and just never got around to painting them. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that at least half of them are recast; I'd bought them in a lot off eBay, but never inspected them closely when they arrived. The gyrocopters have their blades cast in place, and the official pictures have those blades in a completely different potion. The other big indicator was the perpendicular mold lines indicating that the mold had been made in a different position from the "master" casts.

Even though I didn't paint these right away, I had been considering the color scheme. I had immediately discounted the garish studio paint jobs. Initially, I had considered painting them in pure metallics, as that seemed the dwarfen way. But after some research on real-world ironclads, I read that ironclads were often painted in "camouflage" to mask their appearance on the seas. In the end, I went with sea green for the bases and sky blue for the bridges. The lone exception was the nautiluses (nautilii?), which I had too much of a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to not paint in brass tones.

A dreadnought flanked by two ironclads

Specifically the greens were VMC Blue Green, which were highlighted by mixing in VMC Light See Grey and the blue-white was VMC Sky Blue and highlighted by adding in white. Each of teh brass components was painted with Scale 75 Decayed Metal, followed by Scale 75 Old Copper and then Scale 75 Victorian Brass. Finally, the entire model was washed with Citadel Coelia Greenshade and final highlights were reapplied.

A fleet of monitors, mostly out of focus

After the models dried, I attached them to some custom clear bases from Litko. When the ships were painted, I did the flyers in much the same way, the only real difference was adding some bone white to parts of the balloons themselves. And for anyone wondering, they lost their only battle at NOVAOSGROT, which was against the skaven. Although they destroyed most of the skaven force, skaven ships, except for the flagship, are worth almost no victory points, and my fleet suffering just a few casualties was enough to give the skaven a victory.