Come Sail Away with Me: Mantic Games’ Armada Starter Set (Part I)

Beat to quarters! Run out the guns! Splice the main brace! And other clever sea-like sayings!

That’s right, you lubbers, Parzival is going to sea… at least, on the tabletop.

My latest long-procrastinated project has finally come to completion— the assembly, painting and playing of Mantic Games’ Armada.

Sail Around and Shoot Something!

Back in the early heyday of Games Workshop they produced and sold a number of excellent smaller tabletop miniatures games. One of these was Man-o’-War, a game of fantasy combat on the high seas. Though it was well received and highly praised by enthusiasts, the powers that be at GW decided to sink this one, apparently never to return. (A few years back, they did release a one-shot called Dreadfleet, which alas should have been sunk at the launch— pricey, hard-to-build models, and a game system that was… well, better off fed to the fishes than actually played.) I always wanted to play MoW, but it vanished in the ‘90s (and from what I have been able to ascertain, the original rules files were somehow lost. Or at least, that was the excuse).

So when Mantic announced the release of a very MoW-like game of their own, I was intrigued.

A few years back, I picked up a two-player starter set from a vendor at Nashcon, started putting it all together, even painted some of the elements, and then for whatever reason set it all aside. This month I decided to break it out again and finish up my efforts, sticking to my guns (hey, possible a nautical military term?) and get everything ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

The Armada starter set features two small fleets (four ships each) featuring sailing vessels of the Orcs and the “Basileans”— basically a Renaissance human analog culture with some religious fanaticism baked in (not that the Renaissance didn’t already have that). I don’t bother much with the fluff on these games. If you’re a Mantic fan, you’ll know these, if you’re a GW fan you can figure out any imitation, and if you’re just a sea dog who wants a silly game of fantasy combat (like me), you won’t really care. It was good enough to have some suitably orc-ish ships and some suitably human ships, and leave it at that.

The game elements of Armada (well, minus the ships).

Do Drydocks Come With Glue?

Let’s have a look at the ships.

My fleets face off… but forgot to add water…

Well, clearly this a fantasy game, the biggest fantasy being that any of these designs would even float, much less be viable sea-going vessels. If you’re hoping for any level of reality in this game, look elsewhere; Mantic snuck up behind reality, coshed it with a marlinspike, and tossed the unconscious victim overboard to the waiting Kraken. The orc ships look like a kid’s fort hammered together out of junkyard scrap and mom’s torn tablecloth. The Basilean ships look more ship-like, if ship-like means “I saw a picture of a sailing ship once, from a distance, for about six seconds.” But hey, like I said, it’s a silly fantasy game, and there’s a certain appeal to these things, and they certainly hit the sweet spot of “don’t worry about rigging and stuff; just paint me and get on with the cannon fire.” So if you accept them on those terms, you’ll be fine.

What scale are these things, you may ask? Well, you can keep on asking. The size of the ships, the size of the cannons and other, uh, “weapons”, and the sails are completely out of whack. Some of the ships are mounted with mortar-like cannon that nobody of a size small enough to actually stand on the deck could possibly lift the ammunition for, much less raise it to the height of the muzzle to load the thing. “Scale” it appears, is currently floating alongside “reality.”

But let’s make it easy: The ships are scaled to fit on a roughly three-and-a-half by one inch base, with a peak mast height of about four-and-a-quarter inches. Give or take a millimeter, just to mix up your measuring stick. And that’s all the “scale” you’re gonna get.

Fleets in progress— the orcs are completed (mostly), and are back near the box. The “Basilean” ships in this photo are currently in various stages of painting and assembly.

The ships are cast in resin. Alas. I really don’t like resin; it often has miss-castings resulting in poor details and open bubbles or holes in the figure, or missing sections. Fortunately, these were limited or unobtrusive for the Mantic ships, but other problems were not. Some of the orc vessels came with separate masts, which had curled up like macaroni. Mantic recommended the boiling water and cold shock treatment to correct these bends. I tried that—it didn’t work. Plus, the resin masts were very brittle, snapping easily during assembly. Also, one of my models came with the wrong sails for that model. I contacted Mantic about these issues and they kindly sent me replacement ships at no charge— big applause for their customer service team. 

Interestingly, the problems with the mast must have been noticed immediately, as the new models had masts integrated into the sails rather than as separate pieces— no bending, no risk of snapping. I don’t know if this was a change made across all models, but I suspect it was— it was absolutely necessary, too. Notably, the entire Basilean fleet uses this integrated mast design; only the orc ships did not.

I wound up abandoning the resin masts altogether for the orcs, replacing them with cheap bamboo skewers cut down to size. I figured the rougher look (if anyone notices) will be put down to typical orc workmanship. In any case, the skewers are stronger and unlikely to break with normal handling.

The other problematic ship was a Basilean vessel which lacked a bowsprit assembly. Again, Mantic sent a replacement ship, but I used a toothpick to replace the bowsprit on the original as well.

The Basilean fleet in dry dock, with the bases having their first coat of color. The rough outlines are where the ships will be glued to the bases, as I’d rather they be glued to the enamel primer than the acrylic paint; less likely to break off.

As a result of Mantic’s customer service and my own ingenuity, I thus wound up with two fleets of six ships each, instead of four! The Admiralty was very pleased, and medal was struck for such frugality. (Okay, no medal— just a happier customer.)

I think the set I purchased must have been an “early days” product, possibly from the initial crowd-funded release of the game. In addition to the faulty or missing ship parts, it was also missing a ship base (cut my own out of a flat wooden ruler) and a “ship card”— an essential element for game play (more about that in Part II).

Why We Buildin’ ‘Em This Way, Skipper?

An oddity of the model designs is that several elements need to be glued into place that looked to me like they could have been just molded directly to the ship hull. Not sure what the point of that was— there didn’t seem to be any functional reason to mold them individually. Maybe Mantic just wants to reach those customers who like the idea of having “built” something? I say leave that for Lego. I want to get to playing, not gluing on purposeless bits.

Another problem were the orc lateen rig sails— the glue points to the masts were very small, and the revised masts came in two pieces, again with a very small glue point. The result is  more fragile than it should have been. (I’ve already had to re-glue one of the masts, twice.)

Polish ‘Em Up, Lads. The Admiral’s Got a Spyglass.

The Basilean “Elohi” ship, painted and based, with the sails to be added next. Note the figurehead’s high bowsprit/torch thingy. This one broke, and was glued back in place (the wrong way. Oops). Ah, well. At least the two ships look different now.

Painting really wasn’t all that difficult. As I was going for a Good Enough To Game With, Arm’s Length View, I went with basic color schemes: dark brown and red for the orc hulls and sails, with bronze bits and cannon, plus a little “gunmetal” dark steel on some other metal parts for variety, and bronze on the sculpted “axe” symbols on the sails. I gave everything a black wash, and called ‘em done.

For the Basileans, I used a bright blue (“True Blue”) color for the sails, golden brown hulls and decks with blue cabin roofs or taff rails (the railings on the “poop” deck), bright yellow  for windows and lantern glow. I used a duller gold for cannon and the sail symbols (again, sculpted in place and very hard to paint because of this— gaps in the sculpting were as tiny as a half millimeter, nearly impossible to get a brush into). A bright “Radiant Gold” became the dominant color of the figureheads and filigree. I finished up with a little “Nickel” for the mast loops and a wash of burnt umber over everything but the sails and the filigree— the latter got a black wash to give depth to the gold.

The bases I simply hand painted— white primer, with a cerulean blue coating, followed by brush strokes of a dark “uniform blue” to create the look of waves and a little bit of ship wake. I should have looked more closely at the colors of the printed paper play mat that came with the set, which was lighter colored than I had thought it to be, but looking at it all at tabletop view, the exposed bases are small enough that it still works together fairly well.

And now for some beauty shots of my two fleets. Look closely and you can see the mast and toothpick replacements. For the record, the starter set does NOT come with all of these ships, though it does have at least one of each. They are currently sitting in the upside down lid of a shoebox, held in place by rubber cement so as to prevent shaking about. The box itself serves as their storage cover, until I can work up a better solution.

Rating the Ships:

Appearance: Definitely fantasy, over-the-top design, no appreciable scale. Forget realism.

Material: Resin. Brittle. Masts and other long, thin elements don’t hold shape. Minimal bubble/gap eras. Some detail lost. Glue points on orc sail/mast elements are too small, resulting in easy breakage.

Ease of painting: Except for some of the heavily sculpted areas (the Basilean sail emblems, deep-set windows), paints well with minimal effort, looks good when done.

3 pennants out of 5.

Stay tuned for Part II, in which your intrepid blogger plays the game.