Aquans and Relthoza

Well, I've been pretty busy over the last week or so, mainly because my employers kindly decided to make my position redundant, so had to spend some time tying that all up, which always occupies one's mind. Fortunatelty its amicable enouh, despite being completely unexpected.

I've still had time for hobby pursuits, but haven't been so inclined to write it all up on here. This means I've somewhat of a backlog to get through! Been spending quite a bit of time helping out Chris of The Black Ocean on the Firestorm Armada Army Builder files, coding Zenian League ships and working out how to do some of the validation of Alliance fleets. Also been redoding the Orders Received! Excel version of Ravagers, and posting on the SG Community too.

Anyway, onto models...Oscar has been busy painting up new Aquans...MkII frigates, a Triton and a converted Mon Calamari ship from Star Wars - the Aquan "whaleshark" dreadnought. Also WiP is a Medusa Dreadnought that I'm not that keen about playing against!

I've been concentrating my efforts into the rather large Apex dreadnought, a Scarab Heavy Cruiser and two Venom class Destroyers. Unfortunately I've also discovered an apparently common issue with digital cameras correctly capturing shades of red - in short they don't do a very good job of it (which explains why I couldn't get good pictures of them). I've ordered a photographic colour correction chart, so hopefully I can use that to ensure I get good, accurate photos of them soon.

Aquan Cruiser Wreck Detailing

So I've been meaning to post this for a few days, but one thing or another has got in the way. Anyway, was asked if I could post a write-up of how I did the Heavy Cruiser aquan wreck I poste on the Spartan Games Community, so here it is.

First of all, the materials. I used the partial Aquan Cruiser, some 10 thou plasticard, some plstic strip, superglue (crazyglue in the US), plastic glue, scalpel - all pretty basic things from your workbench.

So, having assembled everything needed, first step is to cut a piece of plasticard to fit the bottom of the void in your resin. This is superglued in place, ensuring you get it nice and level. I used superglue gel as it has a slihtly longer cure time and doesn't run all over the place, which means you can tweak its position (I used a small strip of plastic strip for this)

The reason you glue this in place is to give a nice stable plastic platform to work on, meaning you can use plastic glue rather than superglue, making the whole process much simpler. You can use other materials and superglue, but it just takes longer and is more fiddly - if I'm going to go this I'd wait until all plastic work was complete then add wire, tubing etc at that stage.

Ok, so when the glue has set, next stage is to add detail to it. Cut a whole bunch of plasticard strip lengths of 5-10mm.

Now cement these onto your deck with plastic glue, varying lengths protruding etc

Now cut out and add a second deck level

See a pattern here? Now repeat these processes until you've filled the void. Keep in mind the original shape of the ship - you don't want to go outside this imaginary 3D boundary much (you can a little, to represent spars etc exploding outwards).

You can bend the plastic strip a bit if you want to represent exploding/imploding forces, vary cross-sectional spars or whatever you like to create the effect you want. Another step you can add is to superglue some foil fragments around the edge of the damaged area, which can then be bent outwards to represent the external hull rupturing out. I didn't do that in this case, wanting to keep it fairly simple. Next stage is painting, and with all the layers it's far easier to spray than hand-paint. Make sure the assembly is fully dried, then mask off and spray.

I typically do detail painting etc first, but in this case didn't, so that was all doen and voila! One wrecked Storm class cruiser.

Directorate Fleet & Aquan Wrecks

So I managed to get my Directorate starter fleet sprayed in its basic dazzle splinter camo on Monday.

Next the undersides were sprayed red as for the Persecution class, followed by washing all the red undersides with Citadel Thraka Green and finally a drybrush in blood red to give some impression of depth. I tried out the "waterline" black on a frigate too (on the extreme right), though the effect isn't that noticable on these ships as they don't have the middle depth of the capital ships. On the larger ships it should tidy up the camo/red interface

The final bit of painting I managed to do were the disruption cannons on the dreadnought, which were done in brazen brass and gunmetal. The photo doesn't show this too well, but then they haven't been washed etc so there will be other update photos in future that will show them better.

On another note, I made some wrecked Aquan ships a while back (much to Oscar's disgust!), but haven't got around to finishing them yet, so Oscar's been dry brushing them as he does his new Manta class battle carrier. Anyway, thought I'd post some pics of them here. We have the mauled remains of a Poseidon class, a heavy cruiser that's suffered very badly and a Storm class, also with no front.

The Tsunami is basically finished, the Poseidon needs a final dry-brush, dormant power crystals painting and weapon impacts finishing, whereas the Storm has only been base coated, and still needs the internal remains adding and the whole thing dry brushed and detail painted like the Tsunami class below.

Battle Report - The Charter of Might

So as I mentioned I finished this battle report whilst on holiday, and am posting it here for posterity...am now working on the follow-up battle report. More later today when we've done some other model-related bits!

The Charter of Might.pdf

Holiday Post...Army Builder

4/4/12: I had a couple of back & forth emails with Chris of The Black Ocean about the Firestorm Armada Army Builder files last week- mainly about a couple of ideas I’ve had about solving some of the current issues with wings, cruisers and escorts. I did some work on them last week, and finally got the Army Builder files completed whilst on holiday in France – visited a Caramel factory in the morning and Bayeaux in the afternoon, finished the files in the evening. Also finished the battle report in which my Dindrenzi/Relthoza took apart Oscar’s Aquan/Terran fleet – entitled “The Charter of Might”, which was my Dindrenzi battleship’s name. I’ve put it as a PDF as it’s really too long as an addendum to a post. Missing my fleets whilst I’m away – I should have brought some of them and some paints so I could do them while I’m here…ah well, next time!