In keeping with the flight theme, next up Space... the final... well you know.
As the 2 or 3 of you who follow these eratic ramblings may recall I've mentioned 'Project Z' a couple of times, which is my ongoing effort at a space campaign. I've posted some attempts at finding ships with the right feel for what I want, but haven't really found anything that felt right. Although now, maybe I just go old school and repurpose the ship designs most of my generation of wargammers recognize.
A couple of months go while digging through some boxes I stumbled on my StafFleet Battles stuff from the mid thru late 1980's. Sadly, none of the Federation Heavy Cruisers had survived their time in mothballs (The pylons for the Nacelles were super thin, super soft lead and had needed repaired several times before they went into mothballs, and they had all broken again over time and multiple moves. The Klingons, on the other hand, while all the warp engines had snapped off, a few were recoverable, but the ones I could recover were all for the same side of the ship, so no joy there.
In addition to the sad state of the mothballed fleet mentioned above, I also discovered a couple of unopened blister packs from the 80's. So, off to the the Amarillo Design. Bureau store on shap ways and soon most of the below arrived. (fun fact, in the late 80's and early 90's, for a while I was traveling to Amarillo fairly regularly on business. The hobby shop whose name I don't recall, was located in a mostly abandoned shopping mall but I was able to get to meet most of the ADB folks).
All figures are Amarillo Design Bureau (Shaeways store), except for 1 Heavy Cruiser and the stations.
We start with a couple of Frigates
And a slightly different view
Followed by Destroyers
And a slightly different view of the Destroyers
The local star must. have sent out a flare at the time this image was captured resulting in the poor quality.
And some New Light Cruisers
And finally, the fan favorite Heavy Cruisers. The one in the center is the one made from lead instead of all this 3D printed stuff as I recall. (I'm sure 3D printing is just a phase [like cassette tapes vs. 8-track tapes] and soon everything will be back to lead, right? ... right?)
The local system's star seems to have entered an active phase and washed out these images as well. The Science Officer should have caught that before allowing the images to be published.
Support ships, in this case a New Light Cruiser Scout and and Destroyer Scout.
Support bases, I hear the one on the left has implemented a no-tribble policy. These are lead that I've had for at least a decade and a half, maybe 3 decades.
And the ships out on a major fleet maneuver
My hope is this diversion in painting a couple of months ago will rekindle the energy on Project Z. A while back Joe and I had a good discussion about how truly massive the Universe is and how easy it would be to have multiple genres in the same universe, maybe I could build on that thought as well. Or maybe I'll end up going a completely different direction.
Hopefully I can get back to painting proper lead/pewter figures soon.
So much lead (and now plastic) and so little time.
Classic stuff! Did you know that Roger and I played the Starfleet Battles game nearly weekly through the eighties? Do you have a copy of Federated Space? Could do a lot of heavy lifting for background. Color me in as the Interstellar Concordium. The bulk of the fleets are at Roger's now.
ReplyDeleteJoe, you guys should restart that. The last time I actually played starfleet battles was in the eighties as well, at Fort Riley. I had Federated Space, but somewhere along the various moves was a basement with water issues, and some old treasures were destroyed and I think that was one of them.
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