DANG 2017 - Ships

I’ve had a busy time at work lately, but I’m finally getting some photos of the ships for this year’s DANG up.

Example task force

and a similar force for the other side

As I mentioned in my previous post, the timeframe for the Seastrike game is the 1980s/90s and I picked ships from Western powers. The opposing navies are basically a mirror image, with each having the same class of ships, except for their missile boats. All the ship models are 1/1800 scale from Shapeways using the Frosted Ultra Detail material. I used a medium gray for the base hull color for one side and a light gray for the other side. For size comparison, the squares on the mat in the photos are 2 inches.

I figured each side would need a fleet flagship and since carriers or battleships wouldn’t be available, I went with the Tiger class helicopter cruiser. This is reminiscent of older gun-armed cruisers that were sold to South American navies.

Tiger class helicopter cruiser

I also thought each side should have some older ships that waiting for retirement, but can still have some use. For this I picked some Gearing FRAM class destroyers. These destroyers don’t carry missiles, but they are still useful because of the helicopter they carry.

The older Gearing FRAM destroyers

I also wanted to give each side a newer British ship, so I went will a Type 42 (AKA Sheffield) class guided missile destroyer.

Type 42 class DDGs

The main fighting force for each navy is provided by a group of six modern guided missile frigates. Two each of the U.S. Oliver Hazard Perry class (the model is really the Taiwanese Cheng Kung class), the Dutch Jacob van Heemskerck class and Kortenaer class.

Cheng Kung/O. H. Perry class FFG

Jacob van Heemskerck class (back) and Kortenaer class (front with the helicopter deck)

I also included some smaller corvettes/frigates in the Vosper Type 5 (sold to Iran as the Alvand class) and the Belgian Wielingen class.

Wielingen class (back) and Alvand class (front)

Rounding out the surface forces are the missile boats for each side, which is the one place where the two navies are different. One side uses German Type 143 and 143A class missile boats.

Type 143 and 143A missile boats

While the other has a pair of La Combattante III missile boats and six Chinese Type 037 II missile boats. The Type 037II boats are really out of place here, since the first one was built in 1991 and it is Chinese. But I wanted to have something a little different for the game and this class meets that goal.

La Combattante III (back) and Type 037 II (front) missile boats

Finally, each side gets four German Type 206 submarines.

Type 206 submarines

I need to do a few touch-ups on the ships and mount them on bases. Then I’ll work on painting up the aircraft for the game.

It will be interesting to see how the players organize their equal forces to give themselves an advantage during the game.