Ace space base Mace in place

I finally painted this Mace-class space station that I purchased some time ago. It had been sitting on the work table for awhile, so it was nice to get something done.

This Terran base is from Monday Knight Productions' Galactic Knights range (originally the Starfleet Wars line from Superior Models). It was a simple paint job: Spray black, drybrush in metallic black, metallic gunmetal gray, and metallic silver. If you look close, you can spot a dab or two of color here and there.

You can never have too many space miniatures, right?

Civilian spacecraft

For the first time, in a long time, I painted up a spacecraft mini.

The Conestoga-class colony vessel was originally designed for STL intrasystem travel, and constructed without artificial gravity systems. 

Counter-rotating sections of the vehicle used centripedal force to simulate gravity for passengers and crew. 

Although the sublight engines were eventually replaced with a Bachman-Turner overdrive for interstellar travel, it was not cost-effective to retrofit with agrav.

Although the photos are a little washed out, all in all I'm pleased with this nice little model that would not look out of place in a game of Galactic Knights.

GK replay

After reviewing feedback from my gaming group, I ran a refight of my Galactic Knights convention scenario, appropriately tweaked. By designating the starting points for all the ships, I took away a player decision point but enabled the action to start quicker. It also put forces in position where interesting things would happen.

So we had ships attacking transports, ships defending transports, and ships trying to capture other ships. The players tried to play to their assigned scenario objectives, which were at least in theory achievable.

In the full convention game, with individual players for each force (we doubled up in the playtest), the interaction between "allies" with disparate goals can produce some unexpected results--and as the game master, I love it when player surprise me.

I'm looking forward to running this at MillenniumCon, and let me again recommend that you playtest your convention scenarios.

Galactic Knights scenario playtest

For the first time in a long time, I'm running a spaceship game at MillenniumCon. Last week I took it to Dragon's Lair so our group could playtest the scenario. From the event description:

Operation Bug Tussle During the invasion of the Entomalian Empire, Operation Bug Tussle was an unremarkable skirmish until unexpected allies showed up, making this the first battle of the Fourth Interstellar War to involve all of the Five Galactic Powers. Play as the Terrans, Entomalians, Avarians, Carnivorans, or Aquarians in this spaceship miniatures game using vector movement on a hex grid.

The players noted some improvements that could be made to the scenario to make it more interesting for the players. I'm glad we had a chance to try it out before the convention. Hope to see you there.

Of frog demons and space stations

A couple of recent purchases arrived in the mail this week, and I thought I would share them with you:

First in my mailbox was What Ho, Frog Demons!, an adventure for old-school D&D by my buddy Chris from the Hill Cantons (read more about this product on the blog). I don't think our tabletop group did much more than march past the pre-publication version of this dungeon, and the book itself has a lot more packed than even the campaign players saw, with some great art. My favorite is Preved!, the War Bear who likes to shout his own name.

I also received this Mace-class space station for the Terran fleet from Monday Knight Productions. This will make a nice objective for the next time I play a game of Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights, and I'm looking forward to painting it up.

Anyone else get anything cool lately?

Enter ... the Enterprise

I recently grabbed a Star Trek Deep Cuts mini by WizKids: The Enterprise herself--or at least a Constitution-class Federation heavy cruiser. Of course, this is the refurbished ship from the movies, not the vessel from the original series.

Even though the miniature came primed but unpainted, I gave it a base coat of flat black before drybrushing with medium gray, light gray, and titanium white. While the paint job may not be up to Starfleet specifications, I think it came out great for my gaming purposes.

You see, back in the '70s, there was this awesome vector graphics arcade game called Space Wars. It was a player-versus-player setup, where each person controlled a spaceship. One was a triangular craft (which I decided was from the Vega system), and the other had a familiar shape, as seen in the lower center.

Image from this page at Biltronix.

I decided I can use the Trek ship to play a tabletop version of Space Wars. And I already have a suitable black-and-white mini for the Big E's opponent, one of my Terran stellar destroyers from Galactic Knights (and before that, Starfleet Wars).

As you can see, the two ships provide a reasonable approximation of their electronic counterparts on the game mat. Now I just figure out what rules to use for a one-on-one spaceship battle. It needs to use vector movement, to emulate how the ships moved in the arcade game.

Or maybe I will just use it as a special ship in my Galactic Knights scenarios. It might be fun to see this Federation ship boldly go through a battle between the Terrans and Entomalians.

Galactic Knights battle report

Spaceships! It's been a long time since I had a space battle. Last month, I played in a three-way match with a couple of members from our gaming group using the Galactic Knights rules.

I had a trio of Aquarian ships: Two Barracuda-class cruisers (the Ann Wilson and the Nancy Wilson) and a Shark-class battlecriser (the Jaws).

Joseph had his kitbashed his three Terran craft: the Ranger-class cruisers Lober and Sally-May and the Formidable-class battlecruiser Trumter.

Finally, Wes took the Entomalian Wasp-class destroyer, the Hornet of Viria; and two battlecruisers--the Scorpion-class Nemesis; and the Roach-class Minerva.

Not much of a scenario; just the three squadrons stumbling into each other as they explored an asteroid field. As I set myself up between the other two players, my small fleet quickly came under fire from Terran missiles and fighters.

I wanted to share the love, so I split my attacks between the Terrans (beam weapons) and the Entomalians (missiles).

The humans pressed the attack, and my amphibians could not repel firepower of that magnitude, and I lost the Nancy Wilson.

The battle continued, with the insectoids drifting close to my battlecruiser as we traded shots.

The same thing was happening with the Terrans and my remaining destroyer. While I scored some hits, I didn't take out any opponent's ship.

My squadron commander knew he was beat, and he ordered his two vessels to make their way out of the asteroid field. In the end, the other fleets were somewhat damaged, but still battleworthy. If neither one of them outright won, they did tie in defeating me. But I didn't mind--because spaceships!

What's a spaceship game doing on here?

Last week my Frostgrave group took a break from that game and allowed me to run a scenario for Galactic Knights instead. The players were new, so I kept the premise simple: A couple of Terran squadrons surprised a pair of Avarian carriers trying to fly past a planet in order to make another hyperspace jump.

John took the Terran white squadron of a galactic battlecruiser (Big Mo) and two stellar cruisers (Curley and Larry). I took the red squadron, with the galactic battlecruiser Aggravated Assault and the stellar cruisers Offensive Contact and Probation Violation.

Wayne and Yosef each took a galactic attack carrier, the Raptor and the Soarglide respectively. Sorry for the blurry picture, but it's all I got. The flattops' goal was to make it to the other end of the board. The Terrans' goal was to stop them.

The carriers immediately launched all their fighters, making an impressive sight as they soared past the planet.

To the left of the world, you can barely make out my battlecruiser's own fighter wings, trying to avoid the enemy attack craft so they could shoot at the carriers.

The fighters from both carriers converged on the cruiser Offensive Contact. Even with AA support from its sister ship and help from the battlecruisers' interceptors, the Terran vessel took way too much damage to survive. And our sides attack fighters didn't do much to the enemy.

The only positive to my stellar cruiser becoming a rapidly expanding ball of plasma was the fact that all those enemy fighters had to return to their motherships to refuel and rearm. Unfortunately for the attack craft from the Raptor, my side managed to destroy a few of that carrier's hanger/launcher systems, forcing some squadrons to land on the Soarglide and a couple of unlucky flights to circle until they had an open hanger.

Meanwhile, the carriers accelerated as the other ships closed into particle beam range. The Terrans concentrated their fire on the Raptor, taking out weapons and hangers before a beam tore into the carrier's jump drive, stranding it in the star system without faster-than-light capability. Now that we knew one of the ships wasn't going anywhere, we started to shoot up the other one as we drifted closer.

Our shots did pretty much only superficial damage to the up-till-now pristine Soarglide. At this point, the carriers were going to drift off the left edge of the map on the next turn, while the white squadron was headed off the bottom edge (with my two remaining red ships slowing down as the wreckage from the Offensive Contact drifted leisurely away from the battle).

We called the game a draw--one carrier escaped off the map, but its sister ship would be captured without a working hyperdrive, and one interdictor was destroyed, with negligible damage to the rest. Fun game, and they definitely want to play again.

More anniversary starship pics

As my weeklong celebration of Super Galactic Dreadnought's fifth birthday continues (previous pics here and here), have a look at some more photos of my assembled fleets:

This space station comes from the Battlefleet Gothic line of miniatures.

Another look at the iridescent Entomalian fleet. I still have some more of these to paint.

I like the details in this side view of my Terran Red Fleet.

But the ships look even more impressive from head-on.

I got lots of compliments on the paint job for my Shadow Fleet of ships from Garrison Miniatures.

Here's a detail shot of my Avarian fleet.

And a dramatic overview of the Aquarian starships.

I also have plenty of ships to comprise my Terran White Fleet.

The Capellan Raiders is my only fleet where I didn't do all the paint jobs. The two huge kitbashes (a gift from Don M) and the three Silent Death minis (via eBay) were already painted when I got them.

Here are some one-off paint jobs. I want to use these to run a roleplaying campaign where each character gets a ship.

Finally, the Flying Roadshow. I haven't used these in a game yet. Time to come up with a scenario ...

Hope y'all are enjoying these.