Ark Royal Miniatures by Warfare Miniatures - World War One 1/4800th scale ships review Warfare Miniatures go big on going small with the substantial release of their Ark Royal 1/4800 scale World War One naval range. Above: Minotaur and Devonshire. Above: Derfflinger, Seydlitz, and Pillau. With an initial glut of over 60 packs, Warfare Miniatures are providing gamers with the entire WWI Grand Fleet and High Seas Fleet. The Royal Navy in Home Waters, Colonial Service, and the Mediterranean are also covered. Below: Blucher, vdTann, Moltke, and Wiesbaden. Below: Gorgon and Marshal Ney. While 1/4800 scale naval gamers have been well served with WWI models by Navwar for many years, there has certainly been a space in the market for a new producer on the block; one able to design and cast superior quality tiny vessels with the scope required to make WWI gaming interesting. Warfare Miniatures have done just that, and more. As well as the vessels, there is also a set of PDF rules and a free Painting Guide to support the range. Dread Nought! Essentials is a ruleset for playing large fleet actions using 1/2400 to 1/6000 scale ships. In its full-colour 56 pages, the reader will find rules that focus on tactical decision-making. The particulars of speed, gun calibres, and armour thicknesses are managed by grouping ships into common types, which move and fight together. The combined strength of divisions, or groups of ships, makes for easy management of a large fleet on a home table and offers games lasting about two hours which produce clear results. The rules are based on Rolling Thunder! (fleet actions 1630 - 1720), which come from the same publisher. The Painting Guide for Ark Royal Miniatures 1/4800 Scale Metal Ships does exactly what it says in the title - provides a very clear, very easy-to-follow guide to getting your models ‘ship shape’ and ready for tabletop action. It’s available via the Dread Nought! Facebook group and on request by email. A triumvirate of titles Ark Royal Miniatures are produced by Warfare Miniatures, and sold via the League of Augsburg website, all of which are managed by UK wargaming polymath Barry Hilton. Oh, and the rules are published by WorldTwister Publications – that’s Barry ‘quadrophenia’ Hilton as well. “What’s next?” we hear you cry - Japanese, US, Turkish, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Italian, and French fleets for WWI are all on the way. After that, and moving forward in history, the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine for the period 1939-1941 is already designed and will be released soon. That will be followed by all the other fleets and RN/KM through to 1945. The designer is on turbo, apparently!
