About 20-25 years ago, my late friend, Colin, and I put on a demo game at the Shrewsbury Wargames club show. Whilst we were there, we were fascinated by a new manufacturer who was selling his 15mm Pirate figures range.
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| The last batch on the bench - painted exclusively with Contrast Paints |
Not only did he have 15mm pirates he also had resin pirate ships to match (I later discovered these were made for them by another manufacturer. Originally "SDD Models" and then latterly, "Stronghold Miniatures" neither of whom I believe are still trading?). These were lovely models with customisable white metal parts (ship's wheel, cannons, balustrades etc) and had soldered steel masts with optional vacuum formed sails.
As a show special, they were offering a small pirate force, matching ship & a set of the first issue of "Pieces of Eight" rules for £10 (I think).
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| 3D printed base designed to protect the oars |
We were smitten and bought a set each together with an additional rowing boat + crew and some spare cannons!
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| The bases were then textured with artists acrylic paste before painting |
Roll on a couple of decades - My figures were painted (badly) and in a box. We never got around to playing the game with them for all the usual reasons and when Colin passed away, I inherited his equally badly painted figures and ship!
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| Finished figures in their magnetised RUBs |
Then along came the IPMS show at Thornbury and what did I see on the B&B stall? A box with two Peter Pig pirate galleons & 10 packs of figures for £25.
Needless to say I had no cash and they didn't take cards😏 So a quick bit of wheeler dealing with the guys on the door (repaying my wife and I's entry with a card in return for some cash) and I was back to the stall. It was meant to be, it was still there and off I went into the sunset with a very nostalgic package!
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| Some experimental 3D printed furled sails in the box as there were no vacuum formed ones with these |
Over the last few weeks I've been painting these up (together with repainting our original figures) and basing them on 15mm diameter bases. Some were on MDF, others on 3D printed ones that would accommodate a self-adhesive 12.5mm magnet so I could store them in magnetised Really Useful Boxes.
I'm not sure exactly, but I think there are around 150 figures + 30 or so cannon. I now have 4 galleons in total and will paint these up next. What rules to use I'm not sure....maybe home-written? We'll see.
Gosh that takes me back!
ReplyDeleteI bought a load of the first generation pirates, probably a boxed set and some extras.
Painted them up. Couldn't afford the resin ships or they were not readily available.
I ended up making some ships out of wood with the odd bit of ship fittings, cast cannon and Miliput for figureheads and stern decoration.
They turned out nice and me and a friend put on a huge game down in Cornwall. I contributed four ships, including two big Spanish ships. Someone else brought about five resin (supposedly 25mm) ships, so we had about seven pirate ships v two very large Spanish, plus a town and mule train with gold.
It was absolute chaos! Pirate fought pirate, the Spanish persuaded the mayor to load the gold on his ship and convinced a pirate to protect him while doing so!
Me and my friend found out halfway through the game we were each using a different version of the Peter Pig pirate rules.....☺
Neil
Brilliant story Neil, thanks for sharing
ReplyDeleteExcellent win there Tim!
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