A couple more Thoroughbred ships and some updates

In a previous post I gave a review of a couple Thoroughbred kits I had gotten through e-bay. This time I'll cover a couple ships I ordered directly from Thoroughbred.

First up is the One Gun Schooner kit (EN03). I really liked the look of this ship on the Thoroughbred website and it fits in with the smaller battles that I'm planning.
Out of the box, I was a little surprised at how small the kit really was (the box is even small). The ship size isn't really an issue for play, I was just wondering how many figures I would be able to fit safely on the deck.

Thoroughbred One-Gun Schooner kit

This kit is a two-masted schooner and comes with all the fittings for the masts and a central pivot gun. The gun can be a 24 pound long gun or a 32 pound carronade. There aren't too many parts for this one, so assembly should be easy. I was sort of hoping that I would be able to swap the guns so that I could have a little flexibility when playing with the ship, but I don't think the guns/slide mount will be stable enough for that.

Overall, I like the kit, although the schooner will be dwarfed by most of my other ships.

The other kit I bought was the Mediterranean Felucca (EN12). The Felucca is a medium sized ship (although it is one of the larger ones in my little fleet), but similar to types used all over the Mediterranean. This is another ship that I really like the look of. The raised stern really provides a distinctive look and I think this ship will be great for some one-on-one battles with the Americans or supporting some gunboats at Tripoli.

Thoroughbred Felucca

The kit comes with eight long guns and four swivel guns. There aren't a lot of parts, but assembling the masts looks like it may be a little more work than the other kits. Again, it is another nice kit from Thoroughbred.

Finally, I'll finish this post with an update on the Thoroughbred kits I previously reviewed. I finally assembled the cutter and gunboat and I took a couple pictures of them to post here before I primed them for final painting.

The cutter assembly went pretty well. I added all the fittings without too much trouble, but I decided to leave the gun ports off the finished kit. Mainly because they just seem like they would be too easy to knock off during game play. I may try to put them on later, but I think the completed version will look just fine without them.

Cutter stern view

I haven't added the carronades yet (I want to get the deck painted first) and masts will come after mounting the guns. I did test fit the mast and found that I needed to drill out the mast mounting hole a bit so that the mast would slide in properly.

Assembled Cutter

After looking at the assembled hull, I thought that I may have put the catheads a little to far back on the hull. But no one will probably notice during a game.

Here are a couple shots of the assembled gunboat. It was really easy to put together, with only the rudder, guns and grates to add to the hull.

Assembled Galley Gunboat

I was originally going to not glue the guns on the slide, just to leave them free to slide back and forth, but they really weren't stable and needed to be glued down to stay on the slide. I did leave the slide pivots free though, so the guns can be aimed all around.

Gunboat profile

After taking these pictures I primed both ships and they are now ready for painting.

I'm going to be playing a test game with both the Away, Boarders! and Prevailing Winds rules soon. I will post my impressions after playing in my next blog post.