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I'm planning on running this AP after we finish playing our Second Darkness game. I was wondering if anyone found good miniature ships to use during the ship to ship combat, or if people just used the pawns from the players guide.
Hmm, well Eagle Games used to sell ship miniatures. I'm not certain if they are still available though.
There were also ships in various boardgames, if you can spend the money to get the games.
If you're a bit of a crafter, you can convert Mega Bloks ships. They did some neat vessels in the past in their Pyrates line and they produced several boats from Pirates of the Carribean. They look pretty great, but like Lego they have these 'nubs', which are in the way of miniature gaming, so converting the ships is recommended. Of course, you could always use them as they are, they'd still be nice, I guess.
You can pick up the ships on the second-hand market on the internet. Be careful where you buy, because some sites offer these boats terribly overpriced. Still, I was able to pick up all the vessels I wanted at reasonable prices. It just takes some searching and patience. There are also several sites which offer tips and pictures on how to convert the pieces.
This is a link to my Deviantart page, where I've put up several photos of my conversions, like the Stormstalker with some pirates miniatures for scale. If you look through my gallery, you'll find other ships as well. I even have modular pieces (similar to Dwarven Forge) to construct the inside of a boat. They are a mixture of Psomminiature pieces (the barn set) and homebrew parts.
I happen to have a copy of an old 'board' game called Dread Pirate that comes with an actual chest, metal doubloons and miniature ships. It has come in very handy for this AP.
Here are some close-up images of the ships.
http://www.joshbrewsterphotography.com/365/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pirat e-booty.jpg
http://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/73492/04144b.jpg
There was actually a recall on the original ships for having lead in them so I have 8 of the miniatures, 4 of which may be hazardous to your health.
For scale ships, I used the megablock (as mentioned by MrVergee) and lego pirate ship builds.
-SK
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There was a miniatures game called Sails of Glory released a couple of years ago that has some nice pre-painted ship minis. There's a gallery on its BoardgameGeek page. The game's pretty fun, too! They're easy to find and buy online.
There was a miniatures game called Sails of Glory released a couple of years ago that has some nice pre-painted ship minis. There's a gallery on its BoardgameGeek page. The game's pretty fun, too! They're easy to find and buy online.
True, but these ship are mini-boats, so you can use them for chases, but not with miniatures on top of them, because they are way too small for that. The company also has nice battle mats which you can use for a sea terrain (the mats I use in my pictures are from Sails of Glory).
I have found Paizo's flip mats and the cutouts from the Player's Guide to be completely adequate in all ways for this AP.
First, they are to the correct scale of 1 square = 30 feet. Some of the models pictured don't look like they'd hold to that.
Secondly, and more importantly, when players dislike an aspect of this AP, it tends to be ship-to-ship combat. I'd advise against making a large purchase of minis when your group may in fact decide they don't like that part of the game and you end up discarding it for the benefit of the campaign. I'd personally start with the free cutouts and if your group really ends up enjoying ship-to-ship, invest in new toys at that point.
A while ago, Games Workshop published a game called Dreadfleet. it contained several miniature ships on a roughly equivalent scale to the ship-to-ship rules. A friend and I snapped it up because we planned to do S&S "some day" (and we expect to finish the AP before the end of summer!)
I have to actually UN recommend putting in any effort to locate this set. As seems to be the case with a lot of GW stuff, the miniatures are just too tied into the Warhammer universe to bypass my eye for detail. There's a pretty decent sailing ship, for instance, but it has a 5 story castle on the stern. I did get use out of the ghost ship, but it was the only one that I really liked.
That said, there are some pretty cool rocky islands and the like in there. If you want to add some extra tactical fun to ship-to-ship, drop a couple of those on the seascape.
And the mechanical squid ship may see some use in my upcoming Iron Gods campaign...
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Pirate's of the Spanish main build able ships some still around on ebay work well on a 1" battle map.
I have not done this, but I have heard of some folks using Playmobil pirate ships. Similar to the PotC ships MrVergee mentioned, Mega Blocks Assassin's Creed ships are on clearance at Targets right now, too (Assuming you're in the States). Oh! And I know I've seem Playmobil pirates product at places like Tuesday Morning, as well.