Hutchinson’s Almanac of Constellational Oddities

I love Man O’ War.  Released in 1993, I think it’s one of the best games that GW ever wrote, and - like Necromunda, my other 90’s love - it still holds up today as a slick and fun game.  But, for someone interested in getting back into it after all these years, the eBay prices for the ships can be a little daunting, even if the rulebook can be had reasonable cheap.  What alternative miniatures are there for Man O War?

Dreadfleet

Having acquired the original boxed MoW game from a chap who posted it on warhammer.org, I found myself in the market for affordable proxies.  My first thought was to blow the dust off my never-played copy of Dreadfleet, purchased in 2011 because a little piece of me knew I was going to want these models in the future.  The obvious is question is can you play Man O’ War with Dreadfleet ships?

Man O War is roughly 1/600 scale, which I understand is one of a couple of standard naval military wargame scales, the other being 1/1200, used for the larger ships present in more modern period game (and maybe 1/2400 too, not really my area!).  In reality, Man O’ War ships are all over the place, scale-wise.  Particularly the smaller ships.  Dreadfleet ships are roughly 1/300 scale, about twice as large, but are all impressive looking and unique ships.  As a fantasy hobbiest, and not a military gamer, I was immediately excited by the idea that my capital ships might be slightly over-sized and “zoomed in” looking.  I love a good centre piece, and thematically and aesthetically the Dreadfleet models fit in really well with the Man O’ War models.

The Dreadfleet ships come mounted on rectangular bases, which turns out to be a real boon in-game. I have since based my other ships on similar sized rectangular bases, as it actually makes the MoW movement phase - which used a cardboard turning template - much clearer and easier.

Enchanted Seas

Although I didn’t give it much thought at the time, Enchanted Seas from Spartan Games was probably marketed directly at me: a 30-something gamer that remembers Man O War fondly, but either didn’t have the pocket-money to buy the ships in the 90’s or has since got rid of them and regrets it.  I read the rules, but didn’t care for them, and so I pushed the temptation to invest in the attractive miniatures aside in order to spend my hobby pennies elsewhere.

Now embroiled in a full-scale Man O War necromancy project, I took a second look, asking can you use Enchanted Seas ships in Man O War?  As it turns out, Enchanted Seas ships are roughly 1/300 scale as well, same as Dreadfleet.  This is exciting!  Perhaps the “ships of the line” from Enchanted Seas might sit attractively alongside their Dreadfleet equivalents.  I tentatively ordered a couple of blister packs at incredibly reasonable prices from eBay.

Success! They look absolutely great together.  Now, some of the Enchanted Seas models aren’t the greatest or most detailed sculpts in the world, and proximity to the absolutely top-notch Dreadfleet models only throws that into starker relief, but for ships of the line, they look spot on.  Plus, you would want your man o wars to be overshadowed by the little guys.

I started digging, and found that Wayland Games had a bunch of discount stock they were trying to shift.  I took a fair amount of it.

You will quickly see how the various ships might fit into the Man O’ War fleets lists, and with minor conversion work might well represent some of the more exotic ships, such as the Chaos or Undead ones.  For me, I choose to use the industrial looking Shroud Mages in both my Dwarf and Empire fleets, the Imperial ships as Empire, and the Bone Somethings as in both Vampire Counts and Tomb King themed Undead fleets.  In addition, I grabbed some of the Far Eastern-looking ships in order to use as either Chaos or perhaps a counts-as-Bretonnian Nippon fleet.  There is a elven-looking fleet, and a sleek looking Dragon Ships fleet, which would definately work for Elf or Dark Elf fleets, but I wasn’t as taken with the aesthetics, so I passed.  This is likely as I rarely play Elves in any of the GW games, and am much more of a “bad guys” player.

Other Manufactures

Whilst researching, I turned up a couple of other options, but nothing I was prepared to part cash for.  Green Forest Trading produce a set of quite amatuer-looking sculpts, clearly aimed at the cash-strapped Man O’ War player.  Functional, but I’ll pass.  They are plenty of interesting looking history naval miniatures too, in a variety of scales.  I briefly considered both Langton and Tumbling Dice, but neither had the fantasy aesthetic of Dreadfleet or Enchanted Seas.

Pirates: Constructible Card Game

I have a guilty secret: I own a LOT of the little slot-together constructible plasticard pirate ships from the Pirates Of The Spanish Main (PotSM) game and it’s numerous expansions. They are glorious and addictive and I adore them.  I don’t much care for the rules of the game, so I wrote a PotMS varient that draws heavily on the classic board game Buccanneer, which features a multi-player race to and from a central treasure island, which you can download from Board Game Geek.

I digress. Can you use ships from the Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible card game in Man O’ War?

This is a matter of taste.  It is certainly true that you can find PotSM ships that are very natural (and cheap!) proxies for Empire and Brettonian fleets, and with some imagination and some of the more oriental or exotic looking ships or submarines you might proxy Norse, Elfs or possible even Dwarfs, the fact remains that these are pirate-fantasy, not high-fantasy models, and you aren’t going to be able to capture everything that makes Man O War so steeped in the Old World.  They do have some sea monsters in some of the packs, but you’ll have to strike lucky, given the collectible aspect of the game.

If you just want to PLAY the game, and enjoy the game for it’s fantastic and fast-playing mechanics, then I think you could do a lot worse that checking eBay for some packs or boxes of the Pirates Constructible Card Game, as they can be had quite inexpensively.  One issue is their “collectable” format, so you never know quite what you’ll get, but they have about 10 basic ship designs, so you will quickly have enough for a small game.  The little ships are a joy to assemble and I highly recommend them.  I have had one on my desk at work for a long time.  However, for me, after consideration, I discarded this option for the more thematic Dreadfleet and Enchanted Seas options.

Bits Box

Some years ago, whilst rooting through a tinker’s wares in the Canterbury market, I stumbled across a little trove of Man O’ War bits.  There were a number of complete ships, but not enough for a squadron in any case, and plenty of recognisable bits and pieces from other ships.  As I begun to assemble my rag-tag Man O War fleets, I tried to make what I could of these bits, bashing (maybe “repairing” is a better way to phrase it) them with stuff from my bits box, such that I had ships that where somewhat recognisable to a gamer familiar with the original miniatures.

Scratch Build

The final frontier, which I have yet to cross, is to scratch-build some models for Man O War.  I believe that this might not be so hard, and might even be a good way in to basic sculpting.  As the ships can sort of be made in blocks or simply layers, it might be fairly simply to build them up in stages.  I haven’t the confidence, but you might.

Summary

In conclusion, I had a blast putting these fleets together, and am looking forward to painting more of these lovely little models.  I have had several great games with them, and it has really re-kindled my love for the this brilliant game.