Topside Minis Arrive in Port!

On Saturday night, I placed an order with Topside Minis for their WWI Falklands set of 16 British and German ships. This afternoon, the package arrived in perfect shape. As I opened the box, my college-senior son got excited seeing the peel-and-stick counters for ships. He loves all aspects of WWI, so this made his day. (He dislikes WWII, but ironically he likes WWII planes but not WWI biplanes. Go figure!)

Great Quality
Again, the printing on the peel-and-stick paper is excellent, the designs are crisp and highly detailed, and the layout is spot-on. I like the little touches that make each ship counter unique, such as the smoke from the smoke stacks. The bases are laser cut plywood, one for each ship. You can see this in the photos below

Excellent Value
For only $5.60 this set is a great bargain, allowing us to get into naval gaming quickly while looking attractive on the table. The shipping cost as much as the set, but I was not upset. Since it was flat rate shipping, it would have evened out if I had bought more ships or the WWII sets.

Gaming Plans
Rules are still under consideration. Neither of us wants to play anything like Star Fleet Battles on the High Seas! I'd like to tote these miniatures along to Dice Tower Con this summer, and get the attention of some of those board gamers. So rules should be quick-play and easy.

I'm going to use the blue cloth you see in the photos. I got the cloth several years ago at Wal-Mart for only a few dollars. Looks enough like oceans to me.

I would like to paint the sides of the minis because I'm not fond of exposed wood. I have to rummage through my paints to see what would look good. I'm wondering if I should paint the edges and then apply the stickers to the base, or apply the stickers and then paint the sides. Doing the latter would mask the white edges of the paper. We'll see. I'll experiment on my free WWII sample ship, so I don't accidentally ruin the WWI set. This has top priority as I scrounge up some free time.

Topside Minis' Future Plans
After I placed the order, I dropped a quick note to the fellows at Topside Minis, mentioning the blog and how I liked the sample miniature. I also asked them what their future plans were for the WWI line, which is just starting out. Plus, this is the big anniversary year for WWI. John from Topside got back to me right away: "To answer your question, yes we will be expanding this era greatly to the point of the entire Jutland battle. We will build to this slowly by first introducing a few more smaller battles like the Falklands." Looks like good news to me!

The box after opening. The bases are in the paper.

The British ships in the set. The largest ships are 4" long.

The Germans. Largest is 4" long. See how the effects on each are different?

This is how my sample arrived from USPS. The ship remained untouched. Yep, they care alright. :-/