The Flying Dutchman – Finn van de Ven’s Impressive Fleet

A little while ago, we noticed something of an anomaly in our warehouse, a vast number of Victory at Sea miniature vessels had departed the port of Warlord Games en route to a singular destination. One Mr Van de Ven had been ordering frankly enormous quantities of Victory at Sea ships, submarines, and aircraft, in a very short space of time. Initially, we thought that he might be a hobby shop ordering through the wrong website channel, so we reached out to see what was going on. Turns out, he’s just totally, wonderfully mad!

Mr Van de Ven (also known as Finn!) is not a hobby shop – in fact, he’s a lovely bloke from the Netherlands, with a big dream and a lot of ships! He happily provided us with plenty of pictures, which are included throughout, but I really wanted to sit down with him and pick his brains about the hows, whats and most importantly the whys of this project, and he graciously accepted. Take it away, Finn!

Marcus Vine – To start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself – who you are, where you come from, what you do, all that sort of thing?

Finn van de Ven – Hello! I’m Finn Van de Ven, from the Netherlands, I’m 20 years old and studying to become a historian!

MV – What is your background in wargaming? How did you get started, and how did you come to historical gaming?

FvdV – When I was very young my uncle got me some Lord of the Rings miniatures, which would have been my first models, but I’ve always been obsessed with history. About two or three years ago, I got started with Bolt Action and the Band of Brothers starter set. I painted some more Americans and Germans, and then I decided I wanted to do something a bit different – Victory at Sea caught my eye!

MV – What, very briefly, are the overall goals of this project?

FvdV – Firstly, I want to be able to recreate famous naval battles such as the Philippine Sea and Midway with all of the ships present on the tabletop! Secondly (as you might have guessed!), I’m also a completionist – when I saw the big list of ships in the Victory at Sea rulebook, I immediately wanted to have them all!

MV – What was the catalyst that made you decide to embark on a project of this scale, and
specifically with Victory at Sea ships?

FvdV – It was actually a bit of an accident! I started by painting six Fletcher-class destroyers, and then went on to do six of every other destroyer class. Then I came to a scenario that needed nine Fletchers, so I did those… and then there was one that needed 17! At that point, I figured that if I was going to paint 20-odd, I may as well do the whole lot, and it just snowballed from there. 175 Fletchers later…

MV – How on earth do you stay motivated and focussed on your goal when you have so many models to complete?

FvdV – Sometimes I don’t paint for a few weeks, then I’ll paint 30 ships in a week! I mostly paint while watching documentaries on naval history to keep me occupied, but really I paint as and when I feel like it! When I get started I can paint very quickly due to an ‘assembly line’ process, which I’ve optimised for pure speed. As an example, here’s how I do my Fletchers:

Working in batches of 10, I spray prime grey, then paint the hulls with Vallejo 816. Then I do the small details such as lifeboats, funnel tops, and the like, then paint the sea base blue. While they dry, I go back to step 1 with another 10, and so on and so forth. If I’m really motivated, I can do 20 an hour!

MV – Following on from that, what are your top tips and tricks for painting Victory at Sea ships?

FvdV – My top tip is very simple – paint things that use the same paint colours, so for example do a batch of Fletchers all at once, then Fubukis, etc. This means you can keep a tidy workspace and just have the four or five paints you’ll need for a session immediately to hand, rather than having paints scattered everywhere!

MV – Have you found yourself learning more about naval history over the course of this project, or was it always a passion of yours?

FvdV – When I started out, I knew some of the ‘big’ historical facts, things like the first (and last) sortie of Bismarck and the broad outline of the Pacific War. When I started this project I must say I became obsessed with learning more about the history of these ships, with learning being really connected to the project, even down to trying to use ‘real-world’ naval tactics in my games. Simply put, the more I learn, the more I learn I want to learn more!

MV – How long do you think (in rough hours) this project has taken so far? How long do you think it will be until you’re finished?

FvdV – Thus far it’s at least 2-300 hours of work! While there is a definite ‘finish’ (when all the ships that existed are done!), that’s a very long way off and may well never happen. I might evolve the project into ‘ships through the ages’, or do something completely different – who knows?

MV – Do you have a single ship or class that is your ‘favourite’ in your vast collection?

FvdV – I’m mostly a Japanese player when I game, but I’d have to say HMS Nelson and Rodney are my absolute favourites, both on the tabletop, and to paint. They had some really interesting camouflage schemes, as well as a unique silhouette, and are just cool-looking ships!

MV – How much do you play – do you do ‘megagames’?

FvdV – At the moment I’m working on modifying the rules of Victory at Sea a little bit to make it quicker to play with really huge forces, so mostly I play smaller games with my friends. It’s really easy for me to find opponents because I can just say “I’ll bring all the models, you don’t need to paint anything”!

MV – Go on then… the number everyone wants to know: how many ships have you painted in total so far?

FvdV – So, since I began this project in the first week of January 2023… I have 612 ships painted, and I’ve honestly lost count of how many flights of aircraft I’ve done! By my rough maths that works out at about 60 ships a month on average!

MV – How on earth do you store them all?

FvdV – Lots and lots of trays!

MV – What’s next up on the painting desk?

FvdV – To be honest, I’m not sure yet. I’ve just finished painting 70 Fletchers in about 4 weeks, so I definitely need a break from destroyers! I think I’m going to take a break for a few weeks and use that time to plan out the next stages of this project more clearly.

MV – Lastly – has anyone ever told you you’re a bit mad?

FvdV – Just my mother, and my brother, and all my friends, oh, and you at the start of this article!

MV – I want to thank Finn for his dedication to this monster project, and for sharing his time and photos with us – you can be certain that we’ll be revisiting Finn’s work next year, when presumably he’ll be listed as among the world’s most powerful navies all by himself! You can see a gallery of Finn’s work throughout the article to get a sense of scale for yourself – it really is an awesome sight!

While we stumbled upon Finn’s work entirely by chance, if you’ve got a similarly vast project that you’d like to show off, let us know in the comments section, and you too could find yourself the subject of an article just like this!