The Changing of the Guard

If you've looked at this blog in the past many months, you will probably have seen some half-painted, unloved Imperial Guard Heavy Weapon Teams decorating some rather prettier terrain. I finally decided to do something about this, and took a very simple course: painting some simple and fairly light colours on the models, hitting them with a quick and dirty drybrush, then whacking then with a load of Agrax Earthshade. Granted, they won't be winning any painting contests, but I'm pretty pleased with the wee lads. At the very least they'll make my terrain look tidier by association! Until next time, folks, happy 'gaming!

Star Fleet: The Defeated Fleet

When you get to buying several fleet packs of one faction, you do tend to end up with some surplus ships. Therefore, I decided to hack up a few, and make some objectives for scenarios. The battlecruiser USS Australia appears here in part, specifically her detached saucer. Her engineering hull and nacelles are awaiting some work. There's also the dreadnought Konkordium, which has lost her third nacelle, and a seriously battered Constitution-class, identity unknown, which is barely half there. I painted them much as I usually do, but deliberately made them dirtier, and added some black and brown marks to signify where they were hit by enemy weapons fire. The "smoke" is white cotton wool sprayed with black spray paint. I tore tiny wisps of cotton, then stuck them in a box and hit them a few times with the spray. Since tiny pieces of cotton vanish in breezes, I tore up more than I needed, and was pleasantly surprised not to lose any! I had to reconstruct the Constitution-class's neck with the nacelle support from the Dreadnought, as I had used the original neck and the Dreadnought's nacelle to make the old-style Federation Destroyer. I hope you like the pics, folks. Until next time, happy 'gaming!

Star Fleet: a septet of small ships

Last time we had a battlecruiser and some larger cruisers. Today it is the turn of a pair of light cruisers, USS Bavaria and USS Lorraine, a trio of Burke-class Frigates, Lehman, Beatty and Jellicoe, and a pair of funky, triple-nacelled battle frigates, Red and Blue. In universe, only four of the things were built, but these are my fifth and sixth miniatures. There does seem to be a related fifth ship, an FBV called USS Bryant, and there's a gap in the numbering system which allows for several more ships to be made up and inserted without mucking up the other ships in the fleet list, so I'll probably come up with something eventually! Enjoy the pictures, and happy 'gaming until next time, folks!

Star Fleet: new ships

A quartet of new ships up today. I got a new fleet box for the Federation the other week, and these are the first fruits. You have already seen the heavy cruiser herein depicted, albeit without transfers, alongside the Saladin in my recent conversion tutorial. I am filling in some gaps in my heavy cruiser numbering, so first up are the Constitution-class heavy cruiser NCC-1704 USS Yorktown and a Lexington-class command variant, NCC-1705 USS Excalibur. Next up are my second Strike Cruiser NCC-1637 USS Daedalus and another battlecruiser, NCC-1753 USS New Zealand. There are several more ships to come from this force, so I hope you like these wee chaps! Until next time, happy 'gaming!