The Fleet's in.

My experiment with silicone mold making didn't turn out too bad in the end. I managed to create a potent Royal Navy force of eight Majestic class battleships, five Apollo class light cruisers and a half dozen destroyers without too much effort or expense. The less said of the attempt to mold a Cressy class armoured cruiser the better, although the resulting hideously deformed first (and only) casting will make a nice battered and sinking wreck... Since I intend to field only four armoured cruisers I think it'll come down to scratch-building them.

I'm not 100% happy with the destroyers, which are fiddly buggers to build in this scale, but they'll serve for now. I might replace them with commercially made models by the by.

I also experimented with making shell splashes, which turned out quite nice I think. It's a simple process. Take a blob of plastic wood, stick it to an offcut of clear plastic packing material, shape the blob into a rough cone then score the sides in uneven vertical grooves. Once the blob is hard cover it and the immediate area of base in hot glue, paint white, give it a wash of light blue-grey, touch up with white highlights then finish with a coat of gloss varnish.
 

HMS Magnificent avoids a straddle of large calibre shellfire. The crew of the destroyer sailing out of shot can count themselves supremely lucky!

The next step will be to create a German fleet to oppose them. I'll scratch-build the battleships since the German navy tended to build these in classes of four or five. First up will be the Brandenburg class, the Kaiserliche Marine's first ocean going battleships and the first to be equipped with wireless telegraph.

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I also hope to get the Dux B cards printed up this week sometime and play an actual game in between getting ready to head to England.