Watch it - 'Da Boss' has arrived!

So despite a brief plunge into winter and snow these past few days, the Post office managed to get through the weather and deliver two new ships to me today - The Syndicate Phantom-class Battleship and the Spur-class Heavy Cruiser. Here's a quick review of these two Marauder ships.

Arriving in standard Spartan Games dreadnought-size blisters, both ships are cast entirely in resin. which will please many (Spartan generally being much better with their resin castings than with their pewter work). The hull in both cases are single-piece castings and, true to most recent SG models, hold some exquisite details and fine lines.

The Phantom weighs in at 64g, placing it between the Relthoza Brood and the Terran Razorthorn, which was slightly surprising - it looks deceptively sleek.

Notice the four oval-shaped areas on the top of the hull, and also two large ones underneath;

These are for the bridge, turrets and gunracks - note how they are "textured" to help adhesion - a nice touch and shows good thought about longevity of the model construction - kudos to Spartan there.

The add-ons are supplied in a small bag to stop them getting lost or broken in the blister, and consist (as I mentioned) of three turrets, two gunrack inserts, a bridge and an engine exhaust port piece.

There is a tiny amount of flash on one nacelle and the bridge insert slot, and I noticed the 3D printing lines on the top of the hull which would need light sanding to remove.

Moving on to the Spur, this weighs in at 32g, making it the largest of the Heavy Cruisers and almost the same displacement as the Dindrenzi Gladius Gunship. I think the Spur is probably the best looking ship in the FSA inventory - it's slick, looks mean and is just very "cool".

The Spur is a big ship, no mistake - here it is side-by-side with the Phantom;

Again, another little baggie with the drop-ons;

Quite excited about getting these washed, cleaned up and assembled ready for painting!

So overall I thoroughly approve of my most recent acquisitions - they are most definately Spartan at their best, and represent excellent value too. 10/10

Painting the Pathogen

So the SG Community has been offline for well over a week now...just a very blank holding screen in place, saying "We are currently performing some necessary improvements and upgrades"

Unfortunately I'm not confident that's the reason, since the forum crash earlier this year. Taking any site offline to do upgrades shouldn't take more than 24 hours - ideally you have the coding etc done in Parallel and it's just a migration thing - SG seem to actually develop their sites in a serial manner, taking the server offline and writing the code on that one!

Anyway, whilst the community's offline I've been doing other things, notably our bathroom, and painting the Pathogen X9-V battleship I started in the last post. I've also been coding the v2 MotR Army Builder files, which has been a bit of a task and a half. Still, on to the Pathogen...

So I painted the non-transformed parts of the ship in my standard District-9 inspired Dindrenzi theme, and gave it a quick wash with Paynes Grey. I then basecoated the transformed areas in a medium-dark green base, followed by a Devlan Mud wash and drybrushing in various greens, yellows, and reds. I then picked out details in purples and pinks, then went on to add the infection tendrils and veins. I still need to do a couple of bits, most notably the engine exhausts, but minor stuff.

I'm reasonably happy with the way it cam out, and am looking forward to playing my new, infectious threat on the tabletop soon...

Creating a Pathogen X9-V fleet

So almost another month drifts by without a post...testament to lots of work and little time to get on the PC with intent to write things up - note to self - must try harder!

Anyway, I've been tinkering with green stuff and various models to create a MotR Pathogen X9-V fleet. The first "concept" conversion for this was an Aquan Storm cruiser, part of a second-hand ship lot from, yes - you guessed it, ebay. As there were two Storms, Oscar got one for his Aquans (thus being able to field a full squadron) and the other was used for my nefarious purposes. This one I did as a pure GS adaptation just to see if it would look any good at all. A quick slap of paint and hey presto;

So, seeing as that went OK, I turned my attention to the Frigates that also came with the lot. As there were only 4, one got cut in half for more extensive alterations, whereas the sixth frigate (to make up the full squadron) was a slightly mis-cast resin Terran Alliance Pilgrim. This time I decided to try incorporating other elements that I'd purloined from my old Warhammer 40K bit boxes, mostly Chaos and Tyranid pieces.

Next up is the big one - the battleship. Having been lucky enough to pick up a BNIB Nausicaa for the princely sum of £2.20, I had just the starting material needed. As I decided this would need quite a few features added that I had in the bits box and I didn't want to do a lot of plastic-hacking, I quickly made some push-moulds using thermal-setting plastic (the same stuff I used to make turrets etc in the Thorn conversion) and then cast in GS, whihc would be much easier to use and blend in.

OK, then onto the work! Making the GS pieces was relatively easy, and they proved much easier to use due to their flexibility. They were glued on using cyanoacrylate and then blended in with more GS. Here's some pics at various stages.

Oscar then fancied a go, so started on a Terran Pilgrim;

Almost up to a full starter fleet now!

Marauder of the Rift - RSN Report

Well it's been a while since I've had time to post anything, been busy with work, the house, helping friends etc, so any extra time on the PC has been spent in other ways than on here. Of course, I could have been putting stuff on here as well, but it's so easy to put off to another day, then suddenly you find yourself with so many things to post!

Anyway, penned this the other night after reading some of the MotR Campaign guide for FSA, and thought I'd stick it on here;

RSN Report

Enjoy!