Vampire Ship

 Here's another project that I've been working on gradually. Since I've made some docks for my fantasy town, I thought it would be cool to have a ship docked at them. It would look nice, and would provide a bit more space for characters to fight. I bought a "Strigoi Schooner" from TT Combat: a kit made from laser-cut MDF.

I always think that the TT Combat terrain kits are good for basic shapes, but aren't very detailed. The pieces of detailing that are provided in the kits tend not to be all that good. As a result, I decided to leave off or replace some of the fancy bits. I also decided not to use the coffins that the ship is meant to be pulling, which looked a bit crude.

Once I'd assembled the basic model, I felt that the hull wasn't very smooth. It was made out of progressively narrower pieces of MDF, and looked too basic. Therefore, I got out the DAS clay and smoothed it over the hull. I filed the hull down with a piece of sandpaper, then gave it a coat of watered-down PVA glue. I find that this helps seal the clay and provides a smooth surface to paint. At this point, it looked like this:

Because the meeting of the clay and the MDF was a bit rough, I added a strip of thin plasticard to mark them apart.

Then it was time to add some details. The rear of the raised deck of the ship was a flat bit of wood, so I added some plasticard details.

The lower deck got some details from the bits box. I replaced the basic MDF door with a resin one that I got at an event and stuck a head from a Frostgrave demon over it, to look sinister. An old lamp was mounted it on a bit of plasticard and stuck onto the wall. I found an old resin ladder and trimmed it down to make some stairs up.

I thought it would be cool to make a sinister figurehead for this ship. This came from a plastic ghost model that I'd had for ages. I think it's from the Coven Throne Warhammer kit. It reminds me of the spirit/angel type creatures from Raiders of the Lost Ark. A bit of sprue stuck to her back helped to attach her to the prow of the boat. I added some "wings" that I think were originally bits of tattered cloth. I'm not sure where they came from.

I thought it would be cool to have a lookout on top of the mast. I found a "Vykros blood-born" model from the Warhammer Quest game, which would work perfectly. It was clinging to a ruined pillar. With a bit of trimming, the pillar looked like the top of a mast. 

Time to paint the rest of it. I went for a gothic purple, red and black colour scheme. It looks like the sort of ship that might carry a vampire, or at least somewhere you might buy an Alchemy T-shirt. I named the ship "Demeter" in homage to the ship that carries Dracula to England in the old novel.

And here it is, sliding into port on a sinister mission!