Back in 2019, Warlord Games released a new historical wargame called Black Seas. Set between 1770 and 1830 and accompanied by a brand new range of miniatures, the game would allow players to recreate the furious combat of ship-of-the-line fleets at the height of the Age of Sail.
At the time, I knew little about the era but found the miniatures and game intriguing, so I picked up a few ships and the rulebook but did little beyond building and painting them, which was a really interesting project at the time as the plastic kits are beautiful. At 1/700 scale they' packed with enough detail to be visually interesting, but take only minutes to assemble and as long as you'd like to paint them up. In fact, the part that takes the longest is adding the sails and rigging, though there are some very useful guides as to how to do this. As an added bonus, during the Carronade era, where the game is set, there wasn’t a clearly defined painting scheme consistently used by specific nations, but rather a fairly limited pallet of colours that could be used in various combinations by the Captain of each ship.
Captains of Unrated Vessels and most Frigates had their ships painted in a variety of colours like all white, all yellow ochre, all red, all black, or all dark blue-grey. But more commonly painted the hulls black and added a coloured stripe of varying thickness in yellow, red, pale orange, white, green, or occasionally light blue. Ships-of-the-line tended to have a more limited pallet, but overall there's no real risk of 'getting it wrong'. As I had chosen to paint mine as vessels of the Royal Navy, I went with a black, ochre and white scheme that I felt looked good and was inspired by some of the various pieces of artwork that were included in the rulebook. To add some variety to the ships, I changed up the placement of some of the colours on the yards and masts as well as adding a red stripe to the hull of one of the Brigs.
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| My 'completed' Royal Navy fleet as they were in 2019, comprised of a 3rd rate ship-of-the-line, a pair of 5th rate Frigates and a pair of unrated Brigs. |
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and a friend of mine was going to be in the area for an evening and asked if I fancied hanging out or possibly having a game. I remembered that we had both got some ships for Black Seas when it came out, so suggested that perhaps we could have a game of that as it would mean I could give it a go for the first time.
The game itself is designed to be less of a simulation and more of a game, so it does draw some abstracts in order to allow things to work, such as the direction that the wind is blowing from (which is vital for being able to maneuver when you're using sailpower!) as well as how the varied configurations of light guns, cannons and carronades of the ships work - though for me this was better than having an overly complex and unwieldy rules system that would make it arduous to play as I prefer games where I can focus more on playing and less on reading or checking the rules.
Based on the ships we had available, we opted to play a 'Chance Encounter' which saw us both in command of a Frigate and a pair of Brigs that had encountered one another on the open seas and set about attempting capture or sink each other's vessels. Although I ended up losing the game it was fast, fun and filled with some brilliant 'cinematic moments' - such as when an opening broadside from one of my Brigs set a Frigate ablaze; when we both managed to run ships aground because they maintain headway even when you reduce sails and my personal favourite, initiating a boarding action with one of my Brigs having forgotten that the crew had already taken casualties from cannonfire earlier in the game so in the end they sort of pulled alongside, killed a few of the opposing crew and then decided to gift their vessel to the remaining crew of my friend's ship!
As I find is so often the case, playing a game gets me inspired to do some hobbying, and in this case I decided that after two years in my display cabinet, it was high time that I added the colours to my fleet in the form of ensigns and flags as well as sprucing up the paintwork a little with some additional highlights to add some better definition to the models by increasing the contrast on the black and ochre of the hulls as well as the cannon muzzles and some of the details on the decks. Adding the highlights was fairly quick and easy, however the flags were an entirely different story; I had actually tried to add some shortly after I'd originally finished painting my fleet as the kits from Warlord Games come supplied with sheets of flags, but I had struggled to get them in place as the paper they were printed on seemed to repel pva glue and resolutely refused to stay in place, so I'd given up in frustration, resolving to try again sometime later.
Bearing the previous issues in mind, my first port of call was the Black Seas Facebook Group to see if anyone had any recommendations for flag sheets beyond the ones supplied in the kits. There were some great suggestions including the Oak and Iron range from The King's Shilling and Paul King Tiger. I decided to download a few sheets (including an East India Merchant Company one which I'll be using for a future project...) and get them printed at my local Mailboxes Etc. as well as having a couple of copies of the Warlord sheets made at the same time. The reason for getting the copies of the Warlord sheets done was because they include a selection of signal flags which can be used in combination with tokens included in the game to match each ship to it's ship card, which is in effect the 'dashboard' that shows the ships guns, speed, break point (the point at which it may 'strike the colours' and surrender) as well as tracking damage.
One final choice that needed to be made before I got stuck in though was which squadron of the Royal Navy I wanted to assign my ships to as between 1596 and 1864, the Royal Navy was comprised of three 'coloured squadrons': the blue 'wyng' or rear, the white 'van' or front and the red centre.
After a bit of thought, I opted to go with the Red, partly from an aesthetics point of view (red is one of my favourite colours to paint) but also because I like the idea of my ships being in the most senior squadron - so, armed with a scalpel, scissors, pva glue and as much patience as I could muster, I got to work.
Brigs
A two-masted square-rigged vessel, with between 10 and 18 cannons, Brigs were frequently used in combat actions by various navies. Under the British rating system, ships with less than 20 cannons were considered Unrated and were not really meant to participate in large battles as that was the domain of much larger the ships of the line. However, they were the vessels of choice for privateers and still played a valuable role during larger battles, relaying orders and messages in a similar fashion to 6th rates.
Frigates
Perhaps the hardest-worked of warship types during the Age of Sail, a frigate was a small warship with a perfect balance of speed, armament and resilience that made it one of the best vessels for single-ship action and privateering against merchant ships. They were usually built with one main gun deck as well as the guns positioned on the top decks. These were categorised as either 5th or 6th rate within the British Rating System, dependent on the number of guns they mounted.Frigates scouted for the fleet, went on commerce-raiding missions and patrols, and conveyed messages and dignitaries. Usually, frigates would fight in small numbers or singly against other frigates, avoiding contact with ships-of-the-line; Indeed, even in the midst of a fleet engagement, it was considered bad etiquette for a ship of the line to fire on an enemy frigate which had not fired first…
Third Rate
A '3rd rate' was a ship of the line which mounted between 64-80 guns. Usually, this would mean two gun decks. Despite their relative size and power compared to the larger 1st and 2nd rates, it was considered that 3rd rates maintained an effective, perhaps even superior balance between sailing ability, firepower and cost.3rd rates would thus become fairly common as the seventy-four gun ship folded neatly into this categorisation. It was the most popular size of ship for several navies of a number of nations; being cheaper to operate and easier to sail than 1st or 2nd rates, but still maintaining enough offensive capability to take on most single opponents, with the exception of three-decked ships.
I'm really happy with how the fleet is looking now, though I would still like to add some pennants to the mastheads when I've been able to find a way of doing them that looks good - the Warlord ones are so tiny that even using tweezers, I struggled to get them in place and looking good. I also realised that I hadn't finished rigging the Frigates and Brigs as the bowsprits have a couple of lines missing, so that's on the 'to do' list as well and I've also been inspired to have a go at kitbashing a Frigate into an armed Merchant Ship and have a Frigate sprue on the way from Warlord to get started on that over the summer and I plan on doing a full 'write up' of that project when it's done.
There's also a new supplement for Black Seas out next month called 'Hold Fast' which I'm looking forward to picking up as it includes rules for a 'narrative campaign' that allows you to create some captains and chart their careers as they pursue fortune and glory upon the high seas, which sounds pretty cool to me!
As always though, thanks for reading and see you next time.
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