The Return of the Directorate...Part 2

So I had a chance to go to Spartan Games for a second bout of v2 FSA, and was invited to bring Directorate along...so I thought I'd better finish some ships! As the match was around 700 points (I took 750 in the end), I was concentrating on the carrier, Tormentor cruisers, battleship and drones. I worked on the other ships as well, but didn't finish a lot of them - especially the frigates and cruisers. So, let's start with the mostly finished vessels;

Firstly, the backbone of the fleet, which was the Judgement battleship, which additional shields to keep it alive for longer.

 

Next up is the carrier, which has always been one of my favourites

 

 

A pair of Nemesis destroyers;

 

And the pair of Tormentors - one finished (foreground, right) and one 90% of the way....

Next up are a squadron of Hostility drones, also almost complete - (rim "waterline" black stripes and engine glow to add). I still think they look like shrimps!

That's it for the force I took to battle, but I also finished up the Persecution;

Also in the pipeline I'm almost done with are the cruisers;

Mk II Cruisers and Heavy Cruiser;

Frigates;

And last (and least!) the Punisher escorts.

So almost there in getting my Directorate fleet fully painted and up to corporate devilment...bring it on!!!

 

Works Raptor Unboxing

So I got a lovely box of ships last night, and I thought I'd put a few pics and initial impressions from the unboxing on here.

The ships in question are the Works Raptor fleet - the worst of the worst in the FSA universe! Works Raptor are on the extreme fringe of the already dubious HMR Directorate, that shadowy company that everyone loves to hate...as such they rather appealed to me as the evil dark corporate killers - there's no ambiguity with Works Raptor, they don't even care who the good guys are!

So opening the box reveals a set of resin ships, a lot of metal accessories, flight stands and the ubiquitous card token sheets;

Taking the ships out of their little bubble-wrap baggies, we have the ships themselves. I took pictures of them with a Sorylian Morning Star carrier to give an idea of scale. First up is the Assault Carrier;

This is made up of three resin pieces - the central hull and two handed side parts with four extra launch bays each.

Next up is the torpedo cruiser;

This is a single piece resin hull with some nice detail - especially the central "power core" on the underside;



And finally comes the corvette, a typical Spartan metal single-piece;

Of course, the hulls aren't stand-alone, there are a whole bunch of shield plates;

Overall, the moulding on both the hulls and accessories is excellent, the resin hulls have basically no flash at all, and just need a little tidying on the mould pouring entry points at the rear, which takes less than a minute per hull with a scalpel. The shield parts take a bit longer, being metal, and there's a fair pile of bits when they're done (see the pile on the right here!), but all pretty straightforward.

Next step will be to wash in soapy water to remove mould release agents and then spray prime...see you next time!

   

The Return of the Directorate...part 1

So I've been thinking about v2 of FSA that's been announced for release in a few months time, and the reports that the races are being rebalanced. The Directorate, currently the weakest faction in the game, being brought up to speed with the other races.

Now my Directorate have rather languished in half-painted obscurity for the best part of a year, not seeing much action at all since Oscar and I played a special scenario in our old house and v1. So I decided to get the brushes out and finish what I started.

My Directorate scheme is a grey disruptive splinter pattern inspired by some of the naval experiments around WWII. I spray the tops with a neutral grey, the bottoms with red oxide (both auto primer).

The top gets triangular dark and light grey areas picked out.

It then gets a Badab Black wash.

This picks out the details nicely, and a drybrush with light grey further makes things "pop" on the model. The bottom gets a Thrakka Green wash followed by a Blood Red drybrush. The detail areas then get picked out. Here's a Tormentor that's been through the process;

As for the rest of the fleet, here are some more WIP shots;