Lockdown Post 19 - Cruel Seas Scratch Build Merchant Ship

Its really hard to sink a ship with torpedoes in Cruel Seas when almost all the boats we play with are unaffected by torpedoes.  This is one of the very quick realisations you come to when playing the game,  in fact it's quite terrifying if you just happen to be playing the side that has a single large ship! 

Also the game gets a little tiresome if you don't play some different scenarios every now and then,  so to keep things interesting I thought I'd have a crack at scratch building myself a freighter! So, where to start? Well what better place than the hull, and in the interests of not making something that looks like utter crap I copied the hull from the Kreigsmarine Flakboot. To start with I cut a base from foam board by simply drawing round the flakboot as a template and cutting at a slight angle with a sharp craft knife. Then I placed some plain paper over the hull of the Flakboot and with a pencil did a rubbing to get the right outline.  You see I'm a major cheap skate and was planning to build the entire thing from scrap materials,  the hull would be card!

Once done I then went and laid the rubbing outline onto a piece of card and drew round it heavily with a hard pencil to press the shape into the card,  then using a sharp craft knife I cut out the hull and compared to the flakboot floor accuracy.  As it looked fine I flipped it,  as a template for the other side of the hull and hey presto,  I had the makings of a ship!

The superstructure I simply constructed out of foamboard rectangles stacked on each other  there was very little planning, I simply messed with random bits until I got something that looked right.

The canvas cargo cover is a plastic Warlord Games Hanomag crew cover,  there's an mg at the bow from an old 1/72 kit I had lying around the windows are simply cut out card. I should really try and build another one so we can have some convoy battles!