Taking the (Garibaldi) Biscuit....

A Garibaldi class biscuit....

....and a Garibaldi class armoured cruiser in her WW1 finish - they are both tasty but in different ways....(Note the single 10" gun forward and the twin 8" turret aft in the bottom picture, and the currants in the top....)

The Italian designed and built Garibaldi class of armoured cruisers is a study all of its own in terms of what guns went where. As designed she had a single 10" and a twin 8" for the main armament but this varied depending on whoever purchased them. For the navies of Fezia and Rusland I am using four Viking Forge 1:2400th scale models - two of the Japanese Nisshin, Guiseppe Garibaldi herself and the Spanish Cristibal Colon. With the exception of the latter, each model comes with two twin turrets (these are separate from the hull by the way); the Cristobal has a pair of single mount 10" weapons. For each model the hull is identical.

I happily assembled these (at least the first three) but hit a snag with the Cristobal. The hull features two large holes for the turrets to be dropped in - and these are far too large for the single 10" guns provided. I gave this some thought and decided on the following solution. I took the sole Rusland Wien class coastal defence battleship (armed with two twin 9.4" gun turrets) and replaced the turrets with the single 10" guns. So the Wien now looks different from those purchased by Fezia and the Rusland navy now has a poweful cruiser squadron of four Garibaldi class - each with two twin turrets carrying 8" guns except for the ex Cristobal mounting 9.4" weapons.

This should give Fezia something to think about - despite the fact that she is getting some powerful cruisers of her own.