Surprise: The Other Fleet

 

At last the other fleet, after months... on checking back to my last spaceship fleet pot, nay four years... I finally got around to finishing these. I took the opportunity to varnish them whilst doing some other spraying.

 

I like to call this my Chris Foss Fleet, because how Chris Foss used to do multi-coloured spaceships that use to adorn so many SF book covers when I was young.

 

I originally painted these to portray merchant ships. At one time I had plans to run convoy games with the Green fleet as escorts. The reality is if I use them now it will be as privateers.

As per usual, clicking on the pictures to enlarge. And finally, the odd one out. A Galoob B5 Star Fury, which I had lying around and decided to tart up back four years ago because I could.

 
Ah well, at least they're done.
  

Jovian Wars KickStarter

I told myself I wasn't going to get into another project and resisted making a pledge with the new Dream Pod 9 Jovian Wars.  I really can't afford it: time more than money, but also money: it's a thing, right?

Anyway, I failed my resist new shiny roll.

So now I have a pledge in for the basic four capital ships and a pack of exo-armors and fighters.  Given the KS ends in the middle of next month I may be able to add a couple more ships to my pledge.  We shall see, but how could I resist Gundam!  Sorry, I mean Jovian Wars cough Gundam really cough.

The latest blog on how to make a fleet for a basic skirmish game.

Jovian Wars is about building a strategy when selecting your fleet and then using that fleet to achieve your objectives in a game, usually by out maneuvering your opponent and defeating in combat.

 

The Jovian Wars Kickstarter has new ship designs available so let’s look at how you might go about building a fleet.

And here's the link to the full text.  And the KS is already fully funded with extras unlocked, so it looks like a good deal is there to be had, and those spaceships are gorgeous.

NB: Edit, to add link to the Jovian fleet link.  And, a picture of all the lovely little Exo-armors.

  

The Fleet from Above

On their first showing I received a request to show the ships from above.  I'm happy to now be able to do so.  Hopefully this will enable people to see the shapes of the ships more clearly, despite being cunningly photographed on a green cutting map where their camouflage colours break up their shape.

As a reminder the four long slim ships are part of my cruiser squadron, the two big ships with drive pods are my main battleships, the fleet tender and the two smaller corvettes  are representatives from the supply squadron and destroyer squadron.  I've still got to get around to refurbishing the other six models of this fleet, which is delayed because I'm busy re-writing my novel the progress of which you can follow here.

Today also saw the arrival of my desert mat from Monty's Wargaming World.  It's lovely, and now I'll be not only able to do desert conflicts, but have a cunning plan that will allow me to use the mat for towns too.  No photo of the mat, because I need to find the time to clear the table off and get some models out and take some pictures.  I will also add that the friendly service of the Desert Rat is second to none.  All round good chap, what, what!

300 Posts! This is Madness, This is Paint it Pink!

Except green ships again...

Well I've been anticipating this post for a few weeks, and at last my anticipation has been met.  After five years I've reached 300 posts.  Yippee, hip-hip hooray and all that.  What more can I say?  Well if you read Miniature Wargames & Battlegames magazine you may well have seen Henry's editorial content on the internet and blogging, and if you are thinking about joining the bloggerverse his pieces are well worth reading.

Above is the missing spaceship from the nine that I've repainted so far.

Had a problem with the base and had to remount the pole and touch up the paintwork around the hole.  So here it is, and off it will go towards my 2015 Vis Lardica painting challenge total.  For those of you looking at the spaceship and wondering who made it, sorry I can't remember.  What I do remember is that it's a lash-up of parts that I glued together to make something that can work as either a dreadnought, or spy-ship, or in my case a Fleet tender.

NB: Picture changed as feedback suggested my picture wasn't showing the miniature and its colours off to their best.
  

The Fleet Arrives

So what you see here is the refreshed GSN fleet, courtesy of Rear Admiral Henry Hyde who commissioned me to write a spaceship article.  They're also my first entry to this year's Vis Lardica painting challenge.
 
To my dismay, I found that several of the models were damaged: bits broken off and castings deformed by gravity (lead is softer than pewter and several ships were noticeably drooping), and so they're all going through a refurbishment programme to get them fit for purpose.  I should add that none of the bases for my space-fleet were finished either, so I took the opportunity to actually repaint the ships.

This is therefore the first of several posts that will show off my space-fleets.

These are unimaginatively called my Green Space Navy (GSN for short, where the "G" can also stand for generic, if I feel in the mood).  These are very old models that I've had for over twenty years.  They've mostly been sitting on my display shelf getting dusty all that time, so when I took them down to photograph I had to wash them to get the dust off.  Oops, as they say.

The above picture shows part of my cruiser squadron.  These are models from the QT Models Starforce range, which later became part of the Citadel spaceship line, all to 1/10,000th scale.  The three smaller ships have been modified them by the simple process of removing the add on fins that I thought looked terrible.  I have two more ships to finish to complete this squadron, but they need more work to rectify age related stress fractures.

More QT Starforce 300 models representing my main battleships (dreadnought and super-dreadnought) and two corvettes.  Both of the larger ships have added stardrive units attached to them.  Also, the larger model to the right has also been modified as I didn't like the front end of the original, so I cut up a spare model to get the front bridge unit you see here, which also gives the ships a unified fleet look.