The Beta is out to get feedback. When the final version is ready, I will update the Beta with a discount code for anyone who buys it to get 75% off the final version. If you send me any changes, questions or things that just are plain wrong, I will send you the final product for free. Contact me through the contact form on this page and I will send it to you when it is ready.
You can find the beta at the link below:
https://payhip.com/b/Zy06
Thank you for your help and feedback.
The playtesting has been sporadic and I have lost one of the tables in my game room which has made things difficult. I am looking for solutions for that and have a few ideas.
What is left? Well, mostly the playtesting and getting pictures that are usable. I have a decent tripod now. What I really need is better light for my game room. It doesn't help that it is in my basement. I need to base my Scots. I had them painted rather than doing it myself and am well pleased with what I received back. I also need to work on sabot bases. I have enough they just need texturing and painting. In terms of terrain, I think I am in pretty good shape. I could use more trees. But I should have enough to get the photos that I need. I have plenty of buildings. I even have enough palasaide walls. I would like to make a model of a ditch to go around the palasaide. I can use this for just about any period. I know how I want to accomplish it, just lack the time.
Playtest version? Well yes, I am close to that. If anyone is interested, let me know. Let me know the types of scenarios you are interested in and I will get you a couple sample ones to work with.
What is coming up? Well, I am doing my annual birthday sale. If you have any interest in my older scenario books, they will be 50% off for the month of October. Use code QCZOYNB7PW in my Payhip store to get the deal. The store is found at: https://payhip.com/ChrisStoesen. (I'm to lazy to figure out how to make it work just for October so it will work now too.)
The final supplement will have some STL files for your 3d printers to make some of the more obscure ships listed in the book. The book will contain some instructions on completing the ships. At this point, the 3d files will be free for anyone purchasing the supplement.
If I can get the editing done, the plan will be to put a BETA version up on the Payhip store of the War of Jenkin's Ear book for the Month of October. I will include another coupon code within the book for you to get the final version. At least that will be the plan. So I better get back to work.
Below is one of the sample game maps that I have worked on for the book. It also contains snippets from period maps of key locations and plenty of additional information to create your own campaigns in the period.
Back in the day, I was involved in Radio Controlled model warships. I battled in a fast gun group. First the IRCWCC and then the MWC. Since I was out of the hobby, the MWC is gone and its members reabsorbed into the IRCWCC. In an effort to get some ships on the water, I purchased some used ships from an old friend and have begun to work on them.
My son will be battling the USS Cleveland. It is a WWII heavy cruiser. The superstructure is in great shape and the internals are largely working. Still need to test the guns. My ship will be the USS Mississippi, a pre-dreadnought class American vessel that predates WWI. Its superstructure is not in good shape. So combining hobbies, I looked to 3d print the superstructure. It is an interesting ship as it was built in time for the Great White Fleet. Served into WWI and then was sold to Greece where it served until sunk during WWII. As first created, it didn't have any cage masts. A few years into its service life, it received a cage main mast. Then before it was sold, it was given a cage fore mast. So there are plenty of options. I am going for its middle look: a cage main mast and original bridge super structure. Also the figurehead that were common on the bow of the ship seemed to remain in place past when they were pulled off others. The Mississippi's figurehead is still around.
The Mississippi that I am attempting to duplicate is this:
To make life more interesting, the plans that I have date to the sale to Greece with two cage masts. I am cobbling together the bridge superstructure from images as well as the pieces that remained between refits. The base of the superstructure that constitutes the forward deck wasn't built entirely correctly which is causing some small issues getting things to line up. So I am going to try and fake it.
I have printed the bottom section of the bridge. I have modeled the whole superstructure but something wonky happened with the models in TinkerCad that has left me scratching my head. I'm not entirely sure it will print. I will try it out tonight to see what happens. Here is what she looks like today. The air intake scoops need repair. Trying to find something to duplicate that. The smaller guns on the sides are pretty beaten up and need barrel replacements. I think that can be done with brass tubing. I need to work on the rudder control to get the rudder to align properly in the default position. The speed control works but I do have newer replacements for both ships.
Either the governor of Havana wanted to hold on to his better craft or they just didn't have anything better to spare. Given the shortage of men (only raised 1900 of the 3000 ordered by the crown for this operation), it is likely that these were all that were left.
Whatever the reason, I need several of each for the scenarios. My first stop was to look to see who made these already. I came up with a couple of options. The first was Old Glory Shipyards. They have a few galleys in their 1/300th ships. However, they only had galleys and those only had one mast. I wanted to differentiate in the sizes of the ships by the number of masts as well as the size. The ships are rather nice but thin looking (which honestly may be more to scale) for my liking. The next stop was Skull and Crown. They produce all three types in MDF. They did have a two masted Galley. Their ships don't look to bad. I am extremely tempted to buy some as they would be quick to paint up. The fusta is the only disappointment. It is for their rules and is to be used as a dice holder and not a combat vessel. So I have held off on these as well for the time being.
Next up was what was availible for 3d printing. I had a hard time finding anything that would work. I attempted to build my own model and i was very unhappy with my results at the end of the day. Then I found a model on Thingiverse. It was uploaded by one Tosostefanots. It is a beautiful hull of a Genoan Galley. It was perfect... almost. The hull he produced was a complete hull and not a waterline model. Also, his model is from the 1600s and unarmed.
Well, the basic shape was perfect. The model was in 1/250th scale which was easy enough to resize to 1/300th. Over the course of a few days, I messed with the files in Thingiverse and produced three different models out of it. First was a simple waterline version of the original. That was easy enough in TinkerCard. The hard part was shrinking the 22 oar pair Galley to become a Galliot of 18 oar pairs. Then converting the Galliot into a Fusta of 12 oar pairs. I think I have done an adequate job of it but not a great one.
With the three base models I then created two variants of each. One with a rear canopy and one without. The galleys would have cloth covered canopies on the bow and stern of the vessel. The original model came with the supports present for the forward canopy. The stern canopy was not present. I made the basic shape for it and added it to the hull. For the Fusta, I removed the supports for the bow canopy. The pictures that I saw on line did not show such a large area in the bow of the vessel. To this, I clipped off the corners of the bow area and lowered the overall superstructure there. To give some variation, I will print a couple of each (canopy/no canopy).
Next I added some guns to each of the vessels. The galley has four guns in the bow. The Galliot has two and the Fusta has a single bow gun. There are stylized representations of guns. I am not good enough yet with TinkerCad to do more than that. At 1/300 scale, the fusta comes in at 115mm in length. The guns are mighty small. For the Galley, the guns are just tubes poking through the superstructure at the bow. They will be covered by the canopy there and only the bit of the barrel will be visible.
This is getting me closer to having a complete and usable fleet for the scenarios. I have started to paint up one of the Piraguas for my Spanish fleet. I will be working on organizing what ships are needed for each scenario and posting that up next. I printed a review copy of the supplement and am starting the editing process now. I know one of the scenarios will be rewritten. It is too big to be practical.
I'll post more pictures when I have the newer galleys printed.
