About a year ago or so, GW came out with a sea elf army (Deepkin) for their Age of Sigmar game system. I liked a number of the kits and picked them up for my some do to be painted sea elf army. The model that stood out the most though was their recked ship kit. I really liked the look of it and picked it up when I saw it marked down at my FLGS. I had no intent to use it with the elves and did not like the underwater aquarium effects, but thought it would make a fantastic sun bleached beach wreck for pulp gaming!
The kit comes in the normal GW hard grey plastic and includes assembly instructions. These are easy to follow and the kit goes together flawlessly (like all the GW modern offerings). Before assembling mine, I went over every piece with an X-Acto to remove all the fish and eels from the timbers (and there were a lot!). I did not worry about the sea life on the base, as I planned to cover that up with basing material. I did not worry too much about how I removed the different fish, as this was a wreck after all, so a rough effect made sense. After operation fish removal was done, I assembled the kit, following the instructions, using plastic glue.
I planned on a sun bleached look, so went with a light grey spray primer to cover the kit. I then hit everything with a dark brown wash, so it still had some semblance of oiled wood in its past. A little dry brushing of some grey and tans and the wood was done. Another layer of white on all the barnacles and it was coming together. The kit includes various debris, so I painted them either brown or tan (depending on what they were). This was followed up by the appropriate wash and dry brush.
I decided to go with an aged bronze effect on various metal areas to give a little character to the model. This started with the bell and then moved to the for and aft relief. Technically, that latter would be paint, but I decided that cladding would be OK to add character. I hit these with bronze and then the GW patina technical paint. I added a brown wash on top to tone the color down a bit.
Last was the basing. I just covered all the basing with Vallejo tan pumice. Where the detail was nice, I applied in thinly. Where I needed to cover stuff up (like a ray or octopus), I applied it heavily. Once that dried, some brown wash and a few shads of tan and ivory dry brushing, followed by some Dull Coat and I was all set. With that, I now have a nice wreck for any beach or harbor terrain board I want to set up!
As with all GW kits, this one is easy to assemble and the detail is fantastic. Whether it is straight out of the box or with some modifications, you will not be disappointed!
- Manteuffel