I ♥ HPB

Yet another great score from Half-Price Books.  Thanks to a tip earlier today from Sovereigneternal, I went to an HPB store in San Antonio, where there were a couple dozen boxes of sci-fi miniatures on sale for (wait for it) half price.  There were a couple of boxes of Noble Armada ships, over a dozen boxes of Star Wars minis from West End Games and boxes of starter fleets for just about every faction in Firestorm Armada. 

Although I was tempted to abuse my credit card and get everything, fiscal self-disipline held out.  I limited to one box and picked up this Aquan Prime fleet.  I like the smooth lines of these ships; quite a contrast from the greebly-encrusted vessels of the Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights range.  Since they're compatible size-wise, I plan on using them in my games--probably as passengers ships.  You can see how they look compared to a SfW/GK Terran cruiser.

The Aquan battleship especially seems like it would work well as a massive superliner from the Whitestar line.  For paint scheme I'm gonna avoid my usual drybrush technique and go with a bright white base coat with maybe a few thin color stripes; I need to check out some photos of ocean liners for ideas.  I'll probably print up some decals instead of attempting to put those markings on with a paintbrush.

Even though I have plenty of bare metal in my game closet, I've been thinking about getting a Firestorm Armada fleet for some time, so I just couldn't resist picking these up.  Of course, no telling when I'll actually get them painted.