Hi all it's Neil here with another post about Victory at Sea from Warlord Games. In this post I'll take a look at my first model for the game, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Warspite. I will take a look at the model pieces itself and then show how I've painted it up (plus there are even be some small bits about the real Warspite's history with the Royal Navy).
The Warspite is a Queen Elizabeth class battleship, that started being built before/at the start of WW1 and took part in the Battle of Jutland, the big battle between the Royal Navy and German Navy. In WW2 she served in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, as well providing support for the D-Day landings. The Warspite earned the nickname "Grand Old Lady" while serving as the flagship and has earned the most battle honours of any single ship in the Royal Navy.
That's enough history for now, onto the actual model. The kit is a resin part with the hull and majority of the superstructure on a sculpted base with some metal addons for masts, turrets and other small details, which makes it reasonably easy to assemble as the majority is a single piece. One problem I did have was making the metal gun barrels straight as they had gotten a bit bent in the box, and I kind of had to give up on it and go with "straight enough". The quality of the model is good with crisp details in the resin.
For painting the Warspite, there was a paint scheme in box box on the reverse of the building instructions which had a historical scheme for the ship plus which paints from the Vallejo range to use. I decided to take this as inspiration but used my existing citadel paints for the colours with some being replaced because I felt it looked better (in my eyes). Below are the steps I took;
- Primed with Halford Grey Primer
- Washed with Nuln Oil
- Layered the dark camoflague areas with Abaddon Black
- Drybrushed Dawnstone
- Drybrushed Administratum Grey
- Layered decks with Rhinox Hide
- Layered lifeboats with
- Washed lifeboats with Agrax Earthshade
For the sculpted ocean base I sent for a darker blue looking to evoke more of the north Atlantic and North Sea feel rather than a Pacific or Mediterranean look. To achieve this I did the following steps;
- Base Macragge Blue
- Wash Drakenhoff Nightshade
- Drybrush Altdorf Guard Blue
- Drybrush Fenrisian Grey
- Drybrush White Scar
The base has embossed lettering detailing the Warspite's name on one side and her class on the other. This lettering was picked out in White Scar.
The HMS Warspite is my first ship, and was bought to gauge the model quality for Victory at Sea before I invested further. I can say that I was impressed enough with the model that I have bought more ships for the game in the form of the Royal Navy Starter Fleet Box from Warlord to give me another 8 ships. This will give me a decent task force to start playing with once normality resumes again.
Join me again next time for some more ships in WW2! If you want to check out what Im currently painting head over to my Instagram.
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