Some pun about Junk

The thing with warfare in China - well, China generally - is that it is really all about waterways. Control of water is vital in China. You need a lot to grow rice, for example. Also, China's really big, and to move large, bulky cargos like bags of rice from the areas where you grow lots (like the south) to where you want to eat it (like in the north) relying upon ox carts isn't going to cut it. The answer, of course, is river transport.

River transport is really important in the various campaigns of the Taiping Rebellion. And in Opium Wars too. You can shift so much stuff, and quickly too. 

I've always known I should have some naval units for both my Pings and my Imps, but could never get my head round how to build something that would work as a model and also as a piece of wargaming kit. There are a number of things I'm not good at. Cutting curved lines and making symmetrical 3D objects are two of them. Both these things are needed to model junks and sampans (and probably river steamers too). So sort of a dead end for me.

And then again, may be not. I've been lucky most of my wargaming life to know talented people on the creative modelling/painting side of the hobby. One of them is MNG's Chris K. Chris has been getting seriously into DBA since retiring. Particularly Oriental DBA. Chris, being Chris, is pushing the boundaries. He's running a sort of campaign. And he wants to do naval landings. So he's scratch built some junks. You can look at his versions here. 

Perfect. Chris is a very talented model maker. Well, he's an artist AND an engineer, and he has that sort of mind that just sees what stuff can be used for. And he can draw and cut curves perfectly. He brought over an unassembled version of his junk model, scaled for 15mm DBA. The bits look like this:

The hull/deck section is cut out of honeycomb card, which Chris had wisely not thrown away, on the grounds that it looked useful.

I haven't got any of that, so I drew up a net:

The stripy oblong/square bits are cut up to make planking. The other stripy bit is folded to make a sail. The box shapes are folded up and filled with foam core. It just so happens I have some off cuts lying around, left from when I built some board game box inserts:

The reason I did this was that I wanted something a bit more solid than Chris' honeycomb cardboard so I could drill into it and have a removable sail. 

I've built two so far:

This is the first attempt. It is slightly too wide and a little bit too short. It can take an artillery base sideways on, which isn't intentional. You can see the planking effect by gluing strips of card with spaces between them.

Junk Two takes 6 infantry bases (mine are 30mm x 15mm) and a jingal or two more infantry bases on the poop deck.

As you can see I've mixed the colours up for the highlighting. I think the yellow works better than the red, which is a bit imperial. The sail is paper, rather than card, as it is easier to fold.

All very positive so far.