The 'Admiral Battenberg', A 'Moot' class Halfling Land Ship

Well, the day has finally come where I can showcase this, but it's taken far, far longer than I ever anticipated. About six years longer, in fact, but now I can present to you the most powerful fighting machine ever to emerge from the Moot's secret engineering works.

I give to you, the 'Admiral Battenberg'!

Lots more photos after the break...



So, I was given this as a gift for my fortieth birthday, a Forge World 'Marienberg' Class Land Ship. It's a beautiful model as standard, but even so, I had my warped ideas of how I could shoehorn it into my Halfling army, and a plan was developed. I dug out a bunch of Halfling models and set about converting them so they'd work with it,  also modifying the ship itself by providing platforms so the crew could operate the controls and see over the parapets.

Then it sat there, staring at me for about five years, until guilt got the better of me and it finally reached the top of the painting pile again. It's been helped by the fact I've recently taken delivery (and painted a fair few!) of a whole load of new Halflings from the wonderful Westfalia Miniatures. As much as I wanted to crew it with some of those models, I've kept it entirely Games Workshop so that if I ever get my Halfling army finished I can upset and confuse people in Warhammer World...

Apart from the crew and some flooring modifications, the model is fairly stock. I cut down the height on the crow's nest to make the railings more suitable for a Halfling's height, and added the rigging/bunting. The only other slight modification was moving the anchor to allow placement of the nameplate.

The main addition to the model (apart from a bunch of Halflings!) has been the absolutely wonderful 'Admiral Battenberg' nameplates that were 3d printed for me by Keith at Versatile Terrain. Keith was a great help when I was ordering them, as, having not worked with 3d printed material before, I was concerned as to whether I'd be able to bend the flat plates around the hull. He even sent me a thinner pair free of charge just in case! In the end the material worked very much like standard resin, being fairly flexible to start with, and when warmed in hot water, it bent quite easily to the shape of the hull. I even managed to bend the thinner ones to use as a pennant on the flagpole!

Anyway, on to some more pictures:

I tried to make the model full of life and detail, there are all sorts of crewmwn doing things, so here's some detail shots of various parts:

 General view

 A lookout in the crow's nest, and an unfortunate crewman dangling from the rigging...

 Halfling Boarding party, ready to engage.

 Another view of the boarding party, 

 The Admiral himself, in his traditional Blue & Yellow colours, encouraging his men.

 A rather overexcited musketeer.

 One of the ship's guards.

 One of the engine operators, snacking on a chicken leg...

A good shot of the name plate.

The unfortunate remains of a chicken coop, and a very startled chicken. 

and an even more unfortunate goblin...

So, that's another model finished. I'm really pleased with how it came out. I'm actually tempted to make a perspex case that fits over the base so I can put it on display somewhere in the house, rather than boxed up in safety somewhere!

Thanks for reading!