DANG 2015 - Manning the Ships (Part 1)

I've been continuing my work for the Shores of Tripoli game. The work on painting and fitting out the ships is ongoing, but this week I wanted to post a few photos of the figures for the ships.

My figures for the game are a mix of Minifigs, Thoroughbred Miniatures, and Capitan Miniatures. The Minifigs figures were acquired through an eBay purchase, I got some Thoroughbred Miniatures from eBay but most were directly purchased, and the Capitan Miniatures were purchased from Scale Creep Miniatures.

I've mentioned before that I generally have a rough time painting figures (even 15mm). Mainly because I want them to look really good, but my painting skills aren't quite up to that level. My friend Kevin always tells me that painting 15mm figures well doesn't matter, because they are just too hard to see very well (especially during a game). I tried to keep that in mind as I worked on the figures.

I'll start out with the American figures from Minifigs and Thoroughbred (The Capitan Miniatures figures, both American and Tripoli, were not quite done when I started taking pictures, so they will be covered in another post.). The Minifigs sailors look to be from the old Limeys and Slimeys collection and I'm not even sure if they are still available. The figures currently shown on the UK Miniature Figures website are similar to the ones I have, but different. Here are a few shots of the figures mixed together.

A mix of Thoroughbred and Minifigs sailors

Still a mix, but with more Thoroughbred figures in the front

The officer figures all turned out pretty good, but really represent a mix of British, American, and French (how did he get in there?) officers. That said, in 15mm scale they are probably generic enough to pass for any nationality.

Naval Officers

I did pick up some Thoroughbred U.S. Marines for the game. They are in the 1812 uniform and not the one worn in 1804, but sometimes you have to make due (especially since I don't think I've seen any 15mm figures of 1804 U.S. Marines). The Thoroughbred Marines come with 3 different poses, along with a drummer (suspiciously missing from the photo) and officer.

Thoroughbred 1812 U.S. Marines

Overall, the old Minifigs are less detailed than the ones from Thoroughbred, but still useful and all painted up well. The mix of figures will help the ships look pretty nice.

The Tripoli pirate figures from Thoroughbred are pretty nice. They are sold in packs of 20 with about 12 different poses (which includes 2 officers types). The figures in the front of the below photo show the different poses.

Thoroughbred Tripoli Pirates

And here are the two officer/leader figure poses.

Tripoli leaders

While one pose is a good fighting pose, the other looks more like the leader is considering his options.

The Captain in a thoughtful pose, maybe he is wondering if being a pirate is really a good professional choice or maybe he is just wondering what's for dinner

I like how the Tripoli Pirate figures turned out. They have enough detail to keep them interesting, but it was a bit of a pain having to figure out good colors for them.

I'll get more updates on this DANG project, with photos of the other figures and ships, up soon.