Re: Heroscape Navy - Updated Jun 2013 -Figurehead
This weekend I could not do very much as I was stuck at work and I could not spray paint anything because it was pouring rain all weekend.
A few days ago I received in the mail a Mega Bloks Pirates of the Caribbean Empress ship. I think it cost me about $46 with the shipping. It's from 2006 and it can still be found often in ebay but for around that price or closer to $60 at times.
I ran out of things I could do with the pieces I brought to work from the Black fleet ( Crows nest, mast and sails) so I decided to give this ship a quick shot.
I like her colors and I plan on using her for Heroscape so I wanted to leave her as simple and fast as possible. Minimal painting if any and keep the decks clean.
She is a beautiful ship with really fancy sails, and is very small compared to the other ships like the Flying Dutchman or the Dread Eye's Phantom.
The Empress has 4 decks, with the first one not really having very much room. She has some minor decorations that I may skip all together. I like the little red railings and I will see if I can put those back in once the deck is done.
I did trim the bases of the mast a little bit. You see the part that touches the floor with 4 pegs on the bottom, I sawed that off to make more room on the deck. its a very thin piece of plastic and I could have just snipped it off with the clippers.
The middle deck has more room with a center mast smack in the middle. There is a neat golden grate that can hide things but I will cover that up and remove all the cannons and decorations and all the rats my wife added to the ship.
The stern part of the ship has 3 ladders leading up to the two higher decks. I want to see if I can fit heroscape ladders there or if it will be too snug or maybe not high enough to merit a ladder. The over sized ship wheel base will have to go but I might keep the large wheel itself but change the base it's attached too. Not very much room here on these decks for hexes.
From the top I remove the mast and decorations and try to figure out how I am going to lay out the deck, this one will be simple, there will be 4 segments and I will keep any modding the a minimum.
This overlay I made a while back helps me figure out how much room there is and if I had to move stuff around. Here I will just make the templates and try and lay out the hexes so the most will fit on this tiny ship.
First thing I do to start working on the ship is to cut off all the pegs, from the top view I can see what needs to stay ( The pegs that hold the 3 mast, connect decks together and railings) Since the ship is put together anything that is not for the mast can be cut off. I removed 264 pegs with my nearly dull games workshop clippers. I need a new pair. Took me about 20 minutes to do while I watched YouTube Videos. I did this outside as the pegs shoot all over the place.
There is one tiny part I had to cut off with a mini hacksaw but I could have done with my clippers. In between the golden grate and the forward deck there is a tiny 2 peg block that sticks out. I trimmed that down to keep the middle deck simple.
This next step took me about an hour and a half, I first made the templates with paper, trying to get them as snug as possible, then I transferred them to thick plastic card ( I used a large outside FOR SALE sign). I made 2 copies, one that I will glue my deck too and a second I keep as a template. You will be able to skip this step as I will upload the templates I made and all you have to do is print cut out and trim as needed.
Here is a test fit of all 4 decks with the space for the mast cut out too.
There is two ways to make the decks, my way way which takes time , makes a mess, and you need a lot of supplies for ( cutting out a plastic template, gluing coffee stirrers and trimming it, then wood staining it) ooooorrrr just take Filthy the Clowns advice, go to deviant art find a great wood template and print it out.
I found one from a link Filthy gave me and I will upload it with the templates as it was perfect size. I know there where better ones out there but I just wanted to give this a test run. From tabletop height it works great and is easy to do. Print out a sheet, glue to your template ( plastic card is best). and your done with your deck. I used my hex template to outline with pencil the hexes but you can do the exact same thing by using a glyph and tracing it in a straight line on your deck. Do this before your glue it into your ship.
Here is a low quality printed deck, took about 10 minutes to do. I will be making a wooden deck for this ship later on but for a quick 2 hour project this is super easy.
I did a sloppy job here because I was in a hurry but I traced out the hexes to see how they fit. Seems I can fit 20 hexes, and I will make some planks ( bridges ) later for fighting across ships. All those hexes that are partial along the railing will be used as anchor points for the bridges ( planks !)
If you take out the time I took to make the templates, and if I was to do it again with the templates ready it would take me about an hour and a half to get to this point. And that's taking my time and going very slowly. So far this is more than halfway done for this ship.
I test fitted everything and except for tiny bits and pieces, if I kept the printed deck I could glue these on and have a finished ship in under 2 hours tops. I will be making a wooden deck for her and I will only modify the ships wheel. Not sure if she should have an anchor too. Very easy mod to do. I will post pictures of her soon when she is completed. I want her to be an Einar ship so not sure where I will paint the logo.
Very easy and fast ship to customize. Pretty too.