This post is dedicated to my Viking Longship. It started out as the plastic Revell 1/50 kit (about £15 from ebay as I recall) and has been built and modified to suit the gaming table. As it stands now I can place it on any table edge and it serves as an objective, a camp or just a nice piece of scenery!
The solitary crewman (Olaf the Old) is a gripping beast figure. They make a pack of Viking crewmen, but the rest are somewhere in my lead stockpile.
I cut the ship down to waterline using a dremel, and configured the yard as if she was under repair, perhaps following a storm. The sail is just a bit of rolled kitchen roll soaked in PVA. The ship is slightly small for 28mm scale, but works well on the table.
The oars are stacked in lee of the gunwhales and I left the rowers benches out so I could fit plenty of based warriors inside. At that point in the build the deck looked quite bare, until the current wife suggested I add some barrels. Genius! (That's why I keep her on of course - these occasional flashes of brilliance!).
The traditional shields along the gunwhales are obviously removed as they are being toted by the crew, who are presumably pillaging a nearby monastery, or possibly setting up a new Ikea. I could never work out how such shields were supposed to be attached, and in hindsight there should be some arrangement of iron fittings (possibly) to support them, or at the very least signs of obvious wear to the ship's planking, given that they would be attached and removed regularly.
The rigging is purely hypothetical, but looks OK without being too fussy. The whole thing is mounted on a piece of art board, and takes up surprisingly little space in my display cabinet.
The overall colours came out well - subdued, but with noticeable weathering on the planking. More by accident than design I hasten to add!
Until next time.............
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