Pirates on the Sea of Strangers (and homeless birds)

I believe I mentioned my cog finding in a Michael's, and I got around to putting it together last night. It took about two hours, some bad words, glue, and plastic clamps. I think it looks pretty good for the Splintered Lands setting (or at least my take on it):

I'm looking to get another one, but for now this one will be done up as the good guys' ship, with a darker brown base colour and light brown decks. I'll spray paint the base coat, so I'll lose the plank and cut-outs the puzzle comes drawn with, but there's no way I'm painting in between the lines for all of this! I thought of spraying a lighter coat to let the lines show through, but I don't think I can keep that consistently applied.

The ship comes with sails, but I'm not going to use the mainsail (but will attach the yardarm later). I'm going to print new banners doublesided on cardstock and then trace the outline of the original banners onto the cardstock, allowing me to customize this for the fleet of Riversend.

The bad guys' pirate version will be mainly black. Some MegaMini's rowboats will also come in handy, for in-harbour boarding actions.

I figure I'll base my Splintered Lands minis on pennies, so I tested out how much room the deck of the ship has - it held these 10 pretty easily, so I think a decent fight could be had.

On the pirate ship I'll probably cut down on some items - the spindle will go, for one thing.

I also tried the ship out with some 25mm figures sitting out for priming (testing Gesso) - they look ok too, so I figure up to 32mm will be ok, allowing me to use in other settings (e.g. I have Kull and Conan lookalikes from D&D's collectible miniatures games coming).

My default 40-42mm test, these guys are too big, they make it look like a racing sailboat.

Earlier this week I went looking for a rocket-shaped birdhouse I'd heard was at Michael's, and while I didn't find that, I did find this:

Only $8.50, and if I had the patience I could have held out for a 40-50% off coupon, but there were only 3 on the shelf and I didn't want to lose it. There was also a log cabin that might work too, but it was pricier and there was a perch or two that would need cutting off.

I figure this will be a bad guy's remote fort for the Splintered Lands setting. I'll add an upper story door (sort of like a Dutch door thing), and a door and iron bar gate for the lower entrance. I'll coat with textured stone spray paint, except the roof tops, which will be done as wood. Now I need to decide if I need the two I left behind in the store...