Kiddo and I sat down to paint up the two ironclads I printed: the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. They’re from East Coast Ironclads and I can generally recommend the files. They don’t come pre-supported and I found you’ll want to take caution in how you align the supports. They’re 1/600th and can be reasonably scaled to 1/1200. The paint job itself was very quick: dry brush dark grey, dry brush dark metal, dry brush mid-tone metal, and then details.

The bases were simple as well: I used Liquitex Matte Gel over a base painted ocean blue, then dry brushed it white after it dried.

The Monitor warped a bit–going forward, I’m going to print off the ships independent of their bases. Printing them with their bases made it hard to properly clean them and prevent warping without noticeable damage from removing the supports.

I also printed a series of sailing vessels but I can’t say I have a strong desire to paint them, honestly. We may just use these ships to learn the game system and then move on immediately to other ships. I’ve settled on The Battle of Plum Point Bend, a relatively random choice, because it features almost entirely steam vessels and sees the Confederates using rams while the Union uses proper ironclads. It’s a fun idea and I can probably spin off a few smaller ‘What if’ engagements. By the time we’re done playing that out my son will probably want to return to his lizardmen–so this is probably just the right size to go with.

I doubt I’ll go much further but I will say that painting up a few of these ships was gratifying. It was fast and the end product looks good on table. As a small refreshment between projects, this has been great. Even the eight vessels I’m looking at painting this weekend looks relatively small in scope.

Huzzah, once more, for random small hobby projects. They’re the productivity boost we need in these dark, I-decided-to-get-a-masters-in-my-mid-30s filled days.