Merchants and Marauders ready to Sail

Avast! So many little ships to paint!
Merchants and Marauders is great fun, and what better than to play it with painted up ships and gold doubloons! I've had the doubloons for a few years now, and they have become universal gold for many other games.


At some point I finally got the gumption to start going through all the ships and painting them up. Using brown primer did not speed up the paint jobs as I originally hoped. I ended up using foundation paints (super opaque vallejo versions) to get the main color on the sails, and even then it took a few coats. I think it would have been easier to have started from white, and wash or ink in the brown for the wooden parts.


Each player has 4 ships available to them, so I went for the most detail on these. I tried to layer and shadow them to keep them interesting without adding emblems or texturing. They came out well, but I think some are higher quality than others. Green in particular could use some highlighting..


The NPC ships saw considerably less time. I decided to keep them all white sailed for easy differentiation, and use the main sail as a flag identifier. They could definitely use another coat on the sails, and I haven't yet made any tiny fleur-de-lise for the French ships, but I don't anticipate that being much of a problem to complete when I have a night free. These flaws are not really noticeable during the game so I am not too concerned.


The Pirates were comparably easier, thanks to quick coverage of black sails. The skull and crossbones was nothing special to recreate, as freehand on a black surface is very easy compared to over a gradient color.
Here are some shots of the game in action!