Capellans converge

GNN--The Capellan Raiders have assembled a raiding fleet that is terrorizing the Fourth Ring.  The capital ships are custom hulls from the shipyards of the Brazos Evil Empire.  The escorts include a starbomber and star armored pursuit ship acquired from the Terran Transsolar Federation, a Star Raider from the Garrison system, and a Sathar destroyer.

No word yet on which system this force is headed toward, but Lloyd's has ceased to issue insurance on all unescorted merchant vessels in the sector.  A consortium of shippers is looking to hire at least one Free Company task force to protect its transports.  More on this story as it develops.

Back to basics

Because it's been way too long since I've posted about something related to this blog's original focus, here are some spaceship pictures.

These pics come from my 5150: Star Navy demo I ran at last fall's MillenniumCon.

In addition to my usual Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights minis, this game included ships from the Star Frontiers and Stardate: 3000 miniatures lines.

Look carefully, and you might also spot a Silent Death model or two.

I hope to get a game of Star Navy in this weekend.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Sunday Starships: Star Frontiers vessels

I finished (mostly) two Star Frontiers Federation warships, a destroyer and a battleship.  I painted these to match the rest of the craft in my Vogon Construction Fleet.

I was in a hurry to post these as part of a self-imposed blogging goal for the year, so they're not quite complete. 

The ink wash is still wet, and I need to go back and touch up the models.  I also need to paint the stands black.

The photos make the orange appear thicker than it looks in person, so I may have to add another layer of paint in spots.  I also might have to apply another ink wash, to bring out the details some more.

Still, these will go nicely with the rest of my Vogons, a mishmash of spaceships from various miniatures lines.  In-game, they will serve as a mercenary unit or civilian objective.

Sunday Starships: Primed directive

I had hoped to start slapping paint on that Avarian super galactic dreadnought, but I just wasn't feeling painterly.  Instead, I got out the spray cans and primed.

From the Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights line, here are the last of my Terran capital ships, a galactic battlecruiser and galactic attack carrier, surrounded by the last of my unpainted starfighters (although I have a whole bunch of attack craft from ebay that need to have their paint jobs replaced with my own).

I also picked up another can of gray, so I could finish the Star Frontiers battleship and destroyer and their Stardate: 3000 escorts after my other can crapped out on me.  I'm looking forward to painting these guys as part of the same civilian(?) fleet. 

I didn't get a chance to prime everything, however.  These half-dozen starbombers are almost the last of my SfW/GK Terran fleet.  I have a quartet of Terran destroyers to put on stands, and then I'll have my entire Terran fleet (or both of them, since they're painted in two different schemes) completed and ready for battle.

Of course, this means I've been neglected my fantasy figure painting, as you can see from the poor unfinished Reaper kobold at the upper right of the above photo.  But I paint what the mood strikes me to, and lately it's been spaceships.

Has anyone else ever let stuff sit half-completed for a long time while you tear through a number of other projects?  Seems like I do that a lot.

Sunday Starships: On the workbench

(or at least on the kitchen table)

As I travel back home from the game convention, gaze upon the latest starships I'm working on.  In addition to the Star Frontiers Federation battleship and destroyer, I have a number of new Stardate: 3000 vessels.

The ships with the triple engines are Scorpius-class hyperspace submarines from the human faction of the Valiant miniatures line, and the ones in the middle are Pegasus-class h-space subs.  The other SD:3K ships are Draco-class destroyers.  Not sure if I'll paint these as cargo vessels or as some other faction, such as the Vogon Construction Fleet.

What ship is this?

Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy broke out the spaceships this week. He got them from Black Widow Pilot on TMP.  They're some cool ships with some great paint jobs.

I need some help identifying one of the minis.  The silver cylindrical spaceship is a Star Frontiers pirate frigate (a model with which I am familiar), but I have no idea where the blue triangle ship came from.

 

Here they are together, so you can get a sense of scale.    Does anyone recognize the blue miniature?

Hippie ship

This is the Sathar frigate with the paint job that I was unsure about.  Yeah, it looks like a Grateful Dead t-shirt, but I kinda like it.

After seeking advice here and on The Miniatures Page, I decided to go ahead and keep this color scheme.

I did try to blend the colors a little better, and I used a brown ink wash to bring out details.

After some time, I think this paint job has grown on me.  With this color scheme, the ship can serve as an alien scout craft or a trillionaire's luxury yacht.

Still one more Sathar (a light cruiser) to go, then I'll have all my Sathar ships completed.  But don't worry; after that, I've still got plenty of metal to paint.

Some closeups of my Sathar frigate, painted in the tiger stripes of the Capellan Raiders from the old Terran Trade Authority books.

The inspiration for this game from another spaceship gamer (see here)--but looking once more at his photo, I think I may have to repaint mine!

It took about three coats of yellow paint for this job to work, because for I had spray primed this ship gray, then for some reason brushed it a darker gray.

Once I painted it, I gave the ship a gray wash, then drybrushed in the same color to provide a little definition for the edges.

Not the world's best paint job, but it looks good at arm's length on the table.  I'll have to see how it looks next to the starbomber I painted the same way.

Sunday Starships: Painted Sathar models

I finished some of my Sathar ships from the Star Frontiers miniatures game Knight Hawks, a light cruiser and two frigates. 

I was having trouble figuring out how to paint these.  In the end, I decided to keep the tye-dye look on the first Sathar frigate.  Looking to earlier paint jobs I'd done, I was inspired to decorate the other frigate in the livery of the Capellan Raiders.

For the light cruiser, with its bulbous, industrial look, I concluded that ships like this would be a mainstay of the Vogon Construction Fleet.

I painted this entire vessel with a bright orange.  That made it look too ... orange, but a brownish ink wash took some of the orangeness away, as well as bringing out details on the ship.

I then drybrushed with a yellow ochre color, to give the ship a little more depth and convey a worn appearance.  I'm happy with how this ship came out.  It will make a nice target for pirates when it's not constructing hyperspace bypasses.

I still have one more Sathar light cruiser to finish painting.  I'm out of time, so I'll post more photos of the two completed frigates later on.

More progress on Sathar ships

My thanks to everyone who provided input on my paint scheme for my Sathar destroyer.  I took some of the suggestions and touched the ship up a little.  I also washed it with an approximately 1:1 ink-water mix.  I think it looks better now with that bit of detailing.  It still has some work to go, but I think I will keep the paint job on this one. 

I also made some progress on the larger Sathar ship, which I will end up using as some kind of industrial vessel in my games.

I have another one of these ships, which I think I'll paint in the orange-yellow color of the Vogon Construction Fleet.  Back to the painting table!

Your input requested

I wanted to try something different for my Sathar ships from Star Frontiers.  I decided to go with a real paint job instead of my usual multi-shade drybrush technique.  Here's how it came out:

However, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, so I tried an experiment, blending a couple shades each of blue, yellow, and green.  I was trying for an organic look, but it came out as more of a hippy-ish tie-dyed thing.

I don't know if I'm happy with this or not, so I'd like your opinion: Should I keep this paint scheme, or soak this mini in Pine-Sol and start over?  Please let me know what you think, and don't be afraid to be honest.

Bonus work-in-progress pic: a larger Sathar ship, perhaps destined to be a tanker of some sort.

Sunday Starships: Sathar work in progress

Some small progress on some of the Sathar vessels from last summer's Half-Price Books purchase:  I have them primed and based.

As you can see, I used a new technique for basing the light cruiser--two 1-inch stands instead of a larger (1½-inch or more) single base.  This provides a steady platform for these ships, which I may use for the larger Sathar models as well.

I plan on trying a new paint scheme on these, but I'm not sure exactly what colors I'll use just yet.  In the meantime, I primered them a medium gray, which came out very bright in the photos because of the camera flash (as evident on the frigate below).

I'm not yet sure if I will use these models to represent a new species coming into contact with the Five Powers or just as noncombatants of some sort (those Sathar light cruisers would make good tankers, for example).  Either way, if anyone has any suggestions for a color scheme, feel free to share.

Sunday Starships: Privateers

I finally painted up the last of the starships in the Star Frontiers privateers boxed set I scored in last summer's Half-Price Books miniatures find (you can find the rest of the painted privateers here).

These are about twice as large as the other spacecraft in the privateers set, but thematically they blend in just fine.  The streamlining makes them suitable for atmospheric missions, while they have enough engine capacity to perform deep-space tasks as well.

These craft could probably serve as Class II or Class III vessels for War Rocket.  In Galactic Knights or Starfleet Wars, I can use them as in-system defense or local police, or just civilian targets/objectives.

Now that I'm done with the privateers, I need to paint up the Sathar ships my wife picked up for me.  Not sure what paint scheme, but I think I want to go multicolor.  It will have to wait till after Thanksgiving, though.

 Oh, and here's some pics of each ship by itself.  First, the Condor Class:

 Next, we have the Moonlight Stinger:

Finally, the Rollo's Revenge:

Hope you enjoyed these, and thanks for stopping by.