Saxon force & Majestics finished

My wife and I had a great time at Archon this past weekend, although we were both pretty exhausted by doing back-to-back panels and suffered from 'con crud' for the rest of this week. Anyway, I managed to finish the Saxon force for Dux Britanniarum, along with the Majestic class battleships for pre-Dreadnought naval games.

First up, the mighty Saxon horde of raiders, fresh off the boat and looking for spoils. 

I aim to make the movement bases for these over the weekend. Once done I need to get the event cards printed up and hopefully get a game in before I head across the Pond to England.

Next, an octet of Majestic-class battleships.

Now, these aren't the greatest scale models in the world, but they look fine from a distance and they'll do fine for my gaming. I mounted them on rectangles of clear plastic taken from pastry packaging (which also gives me a reason to buy pastries...).

First off I scratched the surface of the plastic where the models would go to provide a key for the glue to grip to. I then glued the models using E6000 adhesive, allowing it to set before getting to work with the hot glue gun. I found that pushing the glue ahead of the nozzle along the side of the ships made a nice tight seal and replicated the appearance of water flowing along the side. Smearing the hot glue on the plastic made a decent looking wake. If trying this method be careful not to let the nozzle linger too long on any part of the plastic or it will melt. Once the glue had set I painted the water with white craft paint thickened with PVA, followed in turn by a thin overall wash of light blue-grey which flowed into the dips and hollows to give a nice 3D appearance.

I've yet to work out how to designate the ships for record keeping, but will probably plump for a slip of paper at the rear end of the base, like I've seen other modellers do. 

The Apollo-class cruisers are molded, and will be next on the slipway. I've taken a good hard look at the German battleships of the period and they're a bit more complicated than their Royal Navy counterparts when it comes to condensing detail into a 1/2400 scale model. At the moment I'm unsure whether I want to mold them using silicone or just go the scratchbuilt route with all of them. We'll see.