Work In Progress Updates

I’ve been slowly working on a few different things over the past month, but my work has been pretty unfocused as I try to figure out which direction to go. In the past month I’ve worked on plans for Enfilade, Cruel Seas 1/300 ships, 1/600 ships, 15mm tanks (for What a Tanker), and 28mm Arabs. I’m getting close to finishing up the ships, but the other items are definitely fall into the “In Progress – Not Ready to Show” category.

In the “Complete and Ready to Show” category, my Cruel Seas bonus diving U-boat. Here a are couple photos.

Dive! Dive!

And from the port side

I tried to weather the model and add lots of whitecaps to the water. I like the model, although I feel bad for the two guys manning the 20mm. I did paint life-jackets on them, but I’m not those will really help. I’m also not sure where the diving sub would get used in a game, but I’m sure someone will come up with a scenario.

Next up, in the Not Complete – Okay to Show” group are five primed and ready to paint 1/600 scale merchants from Heroics & Ros. These ships are from the old Skytrex coastal force line.

The 4,000 ton cargo ship (left), the 5,500 ton cargo ship (center), the the 4,500 ton oil tanker (right)

A 3,000 ton tramp (left) and a 2,800 ton tramp (right)

The whole group

The models are nice and went together easily, with resin hulls and metal details. The resin hulls make sure the ships aren’t too heavy. I expect they will get the standard dark gray/black hulls with light/medium gray superstructures.
These ships will serve double-duty for me as targets for air attacks and targets for coastal forces games. Overall, these were good investments with a lot of potential for use.

Resetting my efforts 
One of the things I wanted to do this year was be more focused on projects. Instead, this year has been a lot of jumping around to a lot of projects.

I’m keeping the 1/300 air and 1/600 ships at the top of my projects list. All the must have items for the planned Enfilade games are done, but it will be nice to have some extra ships and planes that could be thrown in to mix things up a bit. This includes finishing up the H & R merchants and the aircraft that are halfway done.

My other projects will be pushed back for now and I’ll decide what to do after I finish up the ships and planes.

That said, I have a special mention for Cruel Seas. After being distracted by this shiny object and waffling around on what I would do with it, I decided I didn’t want to redo the same ships in the new scale and would concentrate my 1/300 scale efforts on an area where I don’t already have many 1/600 scale ships – the Black Sea (and Baltic Sea). With that in mind, I’m going to set aside the Cruel Seas ships until a few more Russian and German ships come out. I really need to read up on this front a little more before deciding what ships I’ll want to get. But I’ve seen German R-boats and MFPs are coming soon and I hope there will be some Russian MO patrol boats (although there is always the option of getting the H & R Soviet BMO patrol boats).