(Mis)Adventures in Plastic

                                     

                                                Oh dear, what have I gone and done....

Well here is something I never expected to be doing. SWMBO, my daughter Holly (back for the weekend from Uni) and I went to Basildon this morning for some odd bits of shopping and aside from a disappointing visit to the Works - no luck with the vehicles everyone has been raving about - we also popped into Home Bargains. I like to think of this cahin of shops as being the Waitrose of pound shops  and we never seem to come out of there without having spent upwards of £50 - trust me this takes some doing! 

I should perhaps mention that my plastic storage boxes used for the block armies are from here - the size I use costs £2.49 which is pretty good when you consider that Hobbycraft, a couple of doors along, sells the same thing for nearly £8. It is a good shop for browsing in and with all kinds of odds and ends. 

Whilst in my customary automatic pilot mode wandering down the aisles pushing a rapidly filling trolley I spotted the above kit priced at £3.99. Now this is where the 'Ooh shiny' gene kicked in and so I snapped one up (not literally - that would make a mess of the kit for sure....). The story of the Mary Rose is well known and so I will not repeat it here. I have had a hankering for some months now to tackle a sailing ship kit of a modest size but was not keen on H.M.S. Victory or the Cutty Sark. The Mary Rose would tick the boxes quite nicely and, from the gaming point of point of view, could possibly see some use with a version of any of the appropriate sets of rules by Dave Manley. His Medieval rules would be a good starting point but suspect that any good renaissance set would suffice. It is a delightful kit and the potential for conversion is certainly there. I may attempt rigging it - for which I will need to consult Messrs Fox and Hardman - but at this stage it is merely just to get ma doing something constructive. I MAY cut it down to the waterline but if I am honest am rather nervous about doing this - I was never part of the gang that regularly chopped up the kit of H.M.S. Victory to turn out 74s and all manner of other ships, not to mention the kit of H.M.S. Shannon....

So I have landed myself with a kit to build and some research to be done - possibly a couple of books may need to be acquired as well.

One thing that I was impressed with was the name of the near sister ship - originally, according to the blurb in the box, called the Peter Pomegranate....

That is the stuff that wargames armies and navies are built of!