Progress on the Titanic

I've managed to get a few hours in for my 1/700 Titanic model. I've done most of the assembly work up to the point where I'll need to undercoat the thing and paint the interior decks visible through the model before proceeding with assembly. The model originally features the complete ship on top of a plastic display stand, like so:

I think it looks a bit cheap and makes the model quite knock-overable, so I decided to put her in the water and do a sea base. I cut the hull with a carpet knife to a depth I checked from this cross section:

I sawed a piece of floor laminate to a size of 50 centimeters by 15 centimeters and glued the hull on it using a hot glue gun. So here's where I'm at:

I managed to break a thin plastic flagpole from the aft while dry fitting the sections together. I think it'll be easy to replace with a pin or something. Luckily I didn't break the mast, It looks really brittle. Next I will undercoat the hull black and the other portions off-white and start painting. My nephew who I got the model from came by to check on my progress and wondered why the model didn't come ready painted. Kids today, huh? Well, I got the chance to tell him why the model doesn't come already built and painted in the first place.

Some Musket & Pike and a side project

I got a chance to play a game of the excellent Musket & Pike Battle Series again. This time it was the Battle of Nyborg, 1659. The Danes and the Swedes are at each others throats again. The Swedes were on defence with good morale troops, but the Danes had the numbers.

The opening setup. The Danes outnumber the Swedes but are restricted by some quarreling in the command chain. The Swedes have good ground and superior morale.

The Danes move closer but the hedges make retaining formations difficult. The cavalry wings on the left clash, leaving the usual chaos in their wake (Two equal cavalry wings tend to erase each other off the field in this game).

The Danes attack the Swedish line but are repulsed at every turn. The terrain makes it difficult to exploit numerical superiority, and the Swedish combination of superior morale and advantageous ground makes for a too hard a nut to crack this time.

I didn't remember to take more photos as the game ended up being rather quick. I played the Danes and was unable to find a weakness in the Swedish defense. Even though my troops were recovering their shaken formation in easy charge range of the Swedish cavalry, he would not be baited from his position. It really is a tough puzzle to solve for the Danes. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Next, here's a picture of the hill system I'm working on at the moment:

I've successfully used.. whatsitsname.. the mattress foam thing for hills before. Until now, I've had to cut each hill according to scenario design every time, but now I thought of a better idea. I've started to replace the pre-cut hills with foam hexes, 6 inces across. I lay them out to form a mass closely resembling the hill needed, tape them down using painters tape, and then just lay the gaming mat on top. It worked just fine, and I doubt you noticed any unsightly hex angles poking out of the terrain in the Antietam report!

Last, I've begun building a 1/700 scale Airfix Titanic. My sister usually gets me something rather uninspired like cologne or a pair of boxers as birthday or christmas gifts. This time she let my 7 year old nephew choose a gift for me for my birthday last summer, and I'm quite pleased. He understands!

Anyway, I better finish the model before my nephew forgets he ever got it for me. I haven't done models such as this in ages, and the smell of the poly cement gives me flashbacks to my teenage days and badly painted Spitfire kits.