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Greetings All,
Recently a long time friend of mine decided to take his small business to the next level and is working on trying to purchase a spin caster so as to be able to cast cannon and crew for his Laser Cut ships. Now for those of you into model boats and such this is a great small company that produces some quality products at very inexpensive prices. So I am posting here for him to help promote his kickstarter and I hope you all head over and check out his stuff.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002529637/run-out-the-guns-0

Very interesting and nice, if a bit pricey to get a lot of actual ships...

Bonus for me is that I think a lot of the 1812 stuff involved my hometown too, which also just celebrated its Bicentennial - Fairhaven Massachusetts!

Fairhaven wanted to go to war against the Evil British while those yahoos on the other side of the harbor in New Bedford favored a different course...

Go Fairhaven!

Alpharius wrote:Very interesting and nice, if a bit pricey to get a lot of actual ships...

Bonus for me is that I think a lot of the 1812 stuff involved my hometown too, which also just celebrated its Bicentennial - Fairhaven Massachusetts!

Fairhaven wanted to go to war against the Evil British while those yahoos on the other side of the harbor in New Bedford favored a different course...

Go Fairhaven!

I live in Marlborough so...... ya. I am glad to see your a Warhawk Alph. In all seriousness though this is a great product and it appeals to both just the model ship collector, or the high seas gamer.

They missed their mark.....people would love to have pirate ships of that quality. The War of 1812 ships could be used for some types of pirates from the high days of the piracy era, but none of them are truly accurate....

KGatch113 wrote:

They missed their mark.....people would love to have pirate ships of that quality. The War of 1812 ships could be used for some types of pirates from the high days of the piracy era, but none of them are truly accurate....

I will gladly pass that along to him as I would tend to agree with that statement.

Sounds like the perfect opportunity for cool stretch goals and/or "pay $(x) and get (y)" type of deals too!

Alpharius wrote:Very interesting and nice, if a bit pricey to get a lot of actual ships...

Bonus for me is that I think a lot of the 1812 stuff involved my hometown too, which also just celebrated its Bicentennial - Fairhaven Massachusetts!

Fairhaven wanted to go to war against the Evil British while those yahoos on the other side of the harbor in New Bedford favored a different course...

Go Fairhaven!

I was born and raised in CT, so I know all about New Englands rich history from that period.

Though these arent something Id get into, I find them very cool. OP, best of luck, hope you hit your goal and beyond.

You know alph thats not a bad ideai will oass that along and mad i actually have no.financial ties to this. I am posting as the person doing the kickstarter has been a friend going on ten years now. Thoae who hit the GT circuit back in the day should recognize him.

Greetings Everyone,

First, thanks to EMPCHILD for posting here and prompting the discussion. I really appreciate the feedback.

When I started experimenting with ship building last year, it was my inner pirate and a whole bunch of unpainted pirate figures that drove me. I had purchased a few other ships in foam and resin and was generally unhappy with what I got for the price. In most cases the ship's scales did not work well with the figures, and the decks were very crowded with little room for figures to actually skirmish. Many of the nicer ones were multi-deck ships, with no real ability to replicate anything happening below decks. Most of them ignored the rigging other than to put a dowel rod into a hole for a mast.

So I started doing some research. What quickly became apparent was that if you want to do pirates you are going to have to go one of two directions. You can pick the earlier pirates from the 1600s and early to mid 1700s. These tend to be your fancy shirted, movie inspired, Disney pirates, with hooks and parrots and galleons with multiple decks and with very tall fore and aft castles. The imagination can run wild with all this - unfortunately, for the toy maker, it poses several problems. First, figures do not stand up well on sloped surfaces. Second, figure bases take up a lot of deck space. Third, the laser cutting technology I am using only really allows me to cut curves in one axis. What I quickly realized was that to make a gaming ship as opposed to a fine scale model, I was going to have to look for ships that did not have decks with pronounced curves and slopes.

Which led me to the tail end of the 1700s and early 1800s. For a variety of reasons, shipbuilders began flattening and widening the ships during this time frame - especially the warships. They also started dispensing with some of the intricate carving and details we tend to think of on ships of say the Spanish Armada. From a model maker’s perspective, that simplifies things quite a bit. From a gamers perspective that brings the cost and complexity of the model way down. But more importantly the ships of the early 1800s have much more actual usable deck space for the miniatures to fight on.

Fortunately, there are no shortage of Pirates in and around 1812. The American Navy fought two wars against the Barbary pirates in 1805 and 1815. The British fought the famous Jean Laffite and the pirates of Barataria in the Gulf of Mexico - famously ending with the pirates fighting alongside Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Piracy continued in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and South America for many decades after. I have not studied the Pacific at all but am sure that offers plenty of options as well. And let’s not forget all the great navy on navy action of the era. Games like Legends of the High Seas have plenty of options for organized navies to fight each other.

So, with all that said, I have decided to start with ships that I knew I could do well - and that would let me game the era I am most interested in. The 1812 era ships will definitely miss the mark with gamers looking for ships designs of the early 1600s. As I get more experienced at ship making I hope to devise solutions for challenges of recreating those early ships. Being able to cast intricate metal or plastic parts to augment the wooden ones will DEFINATELY help! I have included several levels of ship design options as potential rewards for Kickstarter backers who really want something like a galleon or a Xebec. They are a bit pricery but include multiple ships in the reward - so grouping a few backers is an option. And we do have one ship in our range that has a merchant look to it – check out our Pirate Brigantine which is one of the mid-sized ship rewards.

http://www.laserdreamworks.com/Pirate_Brigantine.html

I have gotten a lot of feedback over the last few days. If consensus builds around any particular kind of ship or option, I will definatley look for ways to include them as stretch options.

As one of your tag lines says: “so many games – so little time.”
Regards,
Matt

I threw a few bones your way. I have found me some good ships for Cutlass!

Amazing work there, and I would like a few more of those ships, in time. I'll get through one, and see how we look.

Great job there, worthy goal!


Wish you luck there!

Any chance we can have a 'kickstarter sub forum'? - it seems every man & his dog is doing one & i'm really not in the least bit interested considering in the current economic climate.
I would say 'my 2 cents' but I only have 1 now.

So don't click on threads with "Kickstarter" in the title. Problem solved. Please remember that we have a rule here about staying on topic. Thanks ~ Manchu

I've went for a small ship, but potentially could upgrade. First, it'll be a great piece to build and paint, and will also look great in the habour I plan on building

@Grot 6: You know it's funny you bring up cutlass as when I saw these I instantly thought "Those would be perfect for my Black Scorpion models!".

Overall the kickstarters looking pretty good it seems as only 3 days in and almost $1k raised out of the $7k needed. I would like to also thank Matt for going over how he came about with this great idea and his willingness to add in some pirate stuff in the coming months.

Update: Only 4 days in and over $1200 of the $7000 has been raised, which is exciting to see. I love seeing new hobby companys start to rise up and take shape and it's because of gamers like you all here on dakka and around the globe that they can do this so cheers. As he gets further along expect to see the first of what will hopefully be many stretch goals be posted.

Greetings All,
Quick update on the kickstarter as they have 21 days left and have so far funded 34% so lets help this great miniatures company reach it's goal and keep the support coming. All in all I know Matt has been very pleased by the support and responses to his kickstarter and I for one love seeing smaller companys rise from the ground up so cheers to LDW and hopefully with the help of gamers like you they will be able to fund this project and expand further upon the range.

Well first off I wanted to say thank you to all of my fellow Dakkites who supported Laser Dream Works and I am very happy to announce with 4 hours left that my good friend and owner of the company has a successful kickstarter. If you haven't seen his products or the kickstarter then head on over as it's some great ships and I look forward to seeing their future releases.