On a whim, I figured I needed a new hobby. Model ships? Why the heck not.
Many hundred small, fiddly and fragile pieces, which with some glue, love and paint can turn into one great big fiddly and fragile piece. What's there not to like?
Okay, let's be realistic - quite a lot is not to like. I'm decidedly not looking forward to the rigging, I've given up on the model being even close to true to the original and I'm starting to realize just how much of a time sink this'll be. This, however, is really part of the fun. I don't like it, but I quite enjoy it.
But let's start from the beginning before I get ahead of myself in a tirade against them German peddlers of plastic.
A fine example of Swedish engineering
As you might have guessed from the thread subject, this is about a model of Vasa, from the Revell 1:150 kit. Vasa has a few things going for it - one, the damn thing actually still exists, so the amount of guesswork involved in measurements and minutiae decreases quite a bit.
Two, there's plenty of discussion about it online, so I usually just have to ask Google about a given piece of it, and someone has already gone OCD proper, saving me the trouble - not to mention time. I can go plenty OCD too. Wikipedia should come with a warning sticker.
Three, it's a plastic kit. While the wooden kits look very sexy, they're godawfully expensive (keeping in mind this is my first model - don't get a Ferrari if you're still on training wheels) and the fiddly part count and DIY factor seem to skyrocket.
Besides, as an avid wargamer, I have a pretty decent feel for plastic as a material, having scratch built plenty of crap for Warhammer throughout the years.
Four, I always wanted a Vasa model kit as a kid, but my mother - wisely, I'll admit - didn't let me get one. I'm sure there's a psychologist that'd have a thing or two to say here.
Fast forward until last week or so when I get the kit delivered. Five minutes in, I regretted every bad word I ever uttered against Games Workshop. Holy hell, the ship kit building schtick is so far behind in quality it's not even funny. I did expect some quality difference - GW is mass market and expensive as all heck, Revell, not so much - but not this much.
That might be lions, or it might be the Queen of England.
I also didn't expect the kit to be so far off the original, seeing they supposedly worked with the Vasa museum to make it fairly accurate. The real hull is asymmetric - the model hull isn't. The real armament is fairly diverse (seven different types) - the model armament isn't (three different types).
Additionally, I think the German words for "ratline" and "rebar" must be fairly similar, because someone clearly made the latter rather than the former a part of the model. I'll write that down as an administrative cockup somewhere in Bünde.
Nein, nein, nein, nein...
But hey, it set me back €20 and I got plenty of time. Despite my moaning and groaning, there is a kit to work off in the first place, for which I'm grateful.
