Take to the tabletop seas with this 12 gun armed merchant in 6MM scale, suited for Sailpower or other naval age of sail games. This listing covers both the Barque and Brig kits as they are extremely similar other then the mast configuration and a few deck details.
6MM scale Captain’s Edition : This is the latest 6MM version of this kit featuring MSLA resin 3D printed hull, masts, shrouds and sails. The kit features an improved resin that has high detail but maintains part flexibility. The goal of the Captain’s Edition is to get a model on the table for gameplay in a faster manner then previous versions. This kit comes un-painted, and un-assembled.
Historic ship type:
In times of war being armed was fairly essential, and many merchants offset the cost of buying improved arms for the ship by taking out a letter of marque which would allow the ship to capture other merchants they might encounter along the way flying the flag of enemy nations. An ideal armed merchant would have a full upper deck with cannons, and increased freeboard to allow for a large cargo hold. Unlike a warship of comparable size, the design would generally be a bit broader at the beam to allow this configuration to still be stable, as stability was preferable to speed. The navies of the world, often used vessels like this, either purpose built or purchased as armed transports.
This model represents a medium sized vessel of this sort - approximately 80 feet in length along the deck. We offer two kits which are mainly differentiated by rig. If the vessel has 2 square sail masts it would be a “brig”, and if three masts, we refer to that as “ship rigged” and ship rigged merchants are often refered to as a “bark” or “barque.”
Kit types:
12-Gun Armed Merchant Brig (2 masted version)
12-Gun Armed Merchant Barque (3 masted version)