My Galleon has been staring down at me from the high shelf for 6 months now and it’s finally time to put it together. I planned to paint it sooner but painting an entire Native Force, Spanish cavalry and infantry, Dutch support units and Canoes, Piraguas, Fluyt, Frigate, and the Tartana has used up all my painting time since I got my kickstarter last September!

The Galleon is a beautiful ship and I’m sure it will provide some amazing games but it’s not nearly as versatile or generically useful as a Sloop or Light Frigate. It’s one those ultimate game pieces that doesn’t get used a lot, but is amazing when you get a chance. I’ve been playing a lot of campaign games lately and when playing the Spanish Militia and South American Tribes so the Galleon isn’t an urgent project.

My friend Guy is interested in trying a 600 point Army Scale navel game and that would be the perfect t place for the Galleon!

Prep Work

Any resin model this size is going to have some blemishes here and there. Overall the hull was great. Hardly any scraping or filing necessary at all!

The ship comes in 3 pieces and the prow and gallery needed some attention to get them to match up to the hull.

The prow had some large gaps I had to fill in with Green Stuff. The right side gap was pretty large.

I’m not great with Green Stuff but I made it work!

I filled a crack here as well.

Some of the swivel mounts were filled in so I drilled those out.

There are several customizable options for the stern. I chose the saints over the lions since I plan to use it primarily as a Spanish ship. The ship comes with two different coat of arms but I couldn’t get them to lay flat so I opted to leave the back clean and find some artwork to put in that blank space.

This side of the gallery matched up well but I had to use a little Green Stuff on the other side.

I scraped off a ridge of extra resin at the waterline, cleaned up the portholes I the forecastle then glued in the wooden rigging components. Total work time before priming took about 30 minutes.

I chose not to glue the gun port hatches on for now. I’ll glue them on after I’m nearly finished painting. If I glue them on now, they will get knocked off while I paint.

This ship takes up my entire desk!

Prime

After deciding on an approximate paint scheme from an image in the Osprey I primed the entire hull with Army Painter Leather Brown.

I realized I should have primed the Gallery before gluing it to the hull…

My patch job came out OK!

Base Colors

I got some colors blocked in on the starboard side. I’m leaving the top rail until last because I tend to pick up the ship by those rails and it rubs the paint off.

I used German Tank Crew for the dark rails, XV-88 for the decks and Cavalry Brown for the red panels.

These gratings are my least favorite part of painting ships! Make sure to use a dead brush because this will destroy a good brush!

One evening of work!