A ‘fresh’ batch of civilian vessels; these were finished months earlier and purchased nearly a year ago during the last Black Friday sale, and I realized now I never posted them. Happiest with the tugs, as they were painted with Vallejo Xpress Caribbean Turquoise which came out quite vibrant. The freighter was painted similarly to the store scheme of greys due to a lack of inspiration for anything else. As for the luxury yacht, I had in mind something like a Lunar New Year red/gold scheme. Feels like I haven’t had as much success with a good result for reds yet. It has the TTCombat Viscera Red as the base, which performed fine, but just didn’t have the richness I had in mind.
Originally built these two to be used as light cruisers, with a 2x missile broadside + vent cannon loadout, but they always looked a bit too flimsy even for light cruisers to me. A quick fix of bulking them up with armor panels and an extra scanner bit, and they can fulfill duty as either light cruisers or mediums/heavies with extra structure options now, and look much better in my opinion.
Shaltari fleet is nearing completion, with just a handful left to do now: Heliums done! Decided to start snipping the flight rods to different heights to make ship groups easier to move together and look more dynamic.
Three battleships! Two of the new plastics, with the Shaltari one from some time ago finally finished as a Thorium, the Resistance one done up as a Nimitz, and a customized Nephilim built from the second wave of resin battleships.
I went with a Thorium based almost entirely on liking the look of the status broadside gun, and thinking it was the most interesting out of the options with it. The Lanthanum, even if much better than a Diamond, felt a bit redundant with one already on hand if I desired a particle gun triad, and the Actinium was a similar decision with a Bronze around filling the gravitic gun niche, leaving the Thorium.
Resistance battleship sprues! Two in the box, each the same. You’re able to build two of the old battleships, limited to one of a particular variety of old battleship per box, or one of the welded together grand battleships. I decided to go with a grand battleship, as even if the newer variants are mostly defined by “has a big pointy gun”, a large forward facing weapon like that was mostly lacking in my Resistance fleet so it would stand out. Rules-wise, the old battleships give the impression of being basically battlecruisers without the new (and very powerful) Vanguard rule, and model-wise they look nice but are also kind of just larger battlecruisers which isn’t as interesting.
The Nimitz was my choice, as I prefer the look of the stacked missile turrets over the mix of gun and and missile turrets seen on the Drake and Yamamoto. Overall, I think the design of the old resin battleships is stronger, as there seems to be more greebling with exposed internal portions that add depth to it. Something odd here concerning the paint is the coloring of said internal portions. These are both the same: Vallejo Model Copper and Citadel Agrax Earthshade, but the newer paint job came out much more orange than the old one! Formulation change? Overzealous application of the brown wash in the older paint job? Not sure!
As for the Scourge battleship… I’ve generally been of the opinion that Dropfleet is kind of mediocre for kitbashing. I’ve seen dozens of examples of people slapping a laser on a ship backwards and calling it an engine, or gluing an engine facing forward and calling it a laser and so on, and it looks awful to me as I can never see it as anything other than the part it was intended to be. So when I decided I’d like one of the super battleships for Scourge, but wanted to make it out a resin kit, I had to come up with a solution that maintained proper visual language of what the replacement pieces are intended to be and adhered to WYSIWYG as much as possible.
To start, assess what the original ships offer:
- Demon/Dragon:
- Mandatory: 2x oculus beams and furnace fangs, then 2x oculus beams or torpedoes/bombers/fighters.
- Devil/Beelzebub/Lucifer:
- Mandatory: 2x oculus beams and bombers/fighters.
- Optional: Mega plasma lances, furnace fangs.
Now, what’s required for each of the super battleships?
- Nephilim:
- Plasma beam triad
- 2x furnace fangs
- Oculus beams
- Bael:
- Mega plasma lances
- 2x oculus beams
- Torpedoes
- Fighters/bombers
- Samael:
- Mega plasma lances
- Furnace fangs
- 2x oculus beams
- Torpedoes
- Faust:
- Plasma beam pair
- Oculus beams
- Torpedoes
- Fighters/bombers
Going through the options, it seemed like the choice that would require the least modifications, kept kit purchases to a minimum, and had the easiest sourcing of extra bits that well represent their intended use was a Nephilim using the second wave battleship as a base. Two things would be required: filling in the launch bays on the back wing, and finding something to use as the plasma beams. Addressing the launch bays was simple enough, but the gun replacement would be more work.
The first check was some leftover plasma guns from the Scourge behemoth, as they are visually very similar:
But they were ruled out quickly for two reasons. First, the behemoth guns are much chunkier and lacking in a clean way to attach them. Secondly, one reason I don’t like the plastic kit is that this gun already looks too much like the Dropzone weapon and feels off in scale as a result.
There was another gun from Dropzone that looked far more suited to the job, though:
Underslung so it could fit onto the ship like the mega plasma lances, a bit larger than I wanted but not to the point of disqualification, and with plasma weapon motifs. Simply had to cut off the ball joint for the two that fit under the wings, and glue the unmodified one to the bottom of the prow, and I’m pretty happy with it:
A Raum would be easy to build as well with the same kits, just don’t fill in the back launch bays or use the furnace cannons, and put only a single gun under the prow. Would probably also not put the additional wings on the back, as those could represent the engine refit upgrade that the Ruam doesn’t have a choice of picking and are a good way of bulking out the model to look more like a ‘super’ battleship.
Lastly, a shot from a recent game as I want to comment on one thing with respect to the scenario:
Here, I was using an old Hawk blast marker to represent the Agrippa holo-debris field. It was pointless over-protection of a dreadnought that didn’t actually need it, as I lost every cruiser in my fleet who should have been the things I was guarding with the Agrippa. In any case, we played one of the newer scenarios, Moonskipper, as it had the interesting twist of having the large object move across the table over the course of the game, destroying any ships caught in the path. There was one thing about it I would recommend: we decided that debris fields would be swept aside as well, and if you’re using fleet stations I would probably include those as well. This is part gameplay, and part practicality, as picking up and putting down the moon through the game while trying to keep debris/stations in the correct spots would be a giant pain in the ass, especially if you’re using a 3D model to represent your moon.