Wednesday, July 27, 2011

French Battleship Strasbourg in 1/3000

I've come upon multiple scales being used with regards to WWII naval wargaming, popular ones are:
- 1/2400 (GHQ, regarded to be the Roll's Royce of this genre's scale)
- 1/3000 (Navwar, no pics on their website unfortunately)
- 1/4800 (CinC, but limited to the european theatre; also Mick Yarrow's Miniatures, with wide and increasing selection)
- 1/6000 (Hallmark Minis, distributed in the UK by Magister Militum)

Having looked into what's available regarding naval miniatures (models?), I've decided to go 1/3000; Not too 'big' for fleet action/games (table space is a premium here), not too small that I might mistake it for a smudge on the table cloth (and not squint while painting it). So, 1/3000 it is...

I'll start with the French Battleship Strasbourg, after looking around for some blueprints, I've made up a 1/750 paper model of the ship, basically a 4-up model of the final figure which will be 7.15cm long by 1.04cm wide...



Building the 4up would give me an idea how to attack the final mini and started with the general shape of the hull.


Top-view: upper deck profile


Bottom-view: waterline profile; magnets used to hold the template while the glue dries


Also did the 2x 13" quad turrets and the waist deck. Note that I haven't done both the fore and aft's sheer yet...

For further reading, you could read up the Wikipedia's entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Strasbourg