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!!!

 

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.

Persecution Class Dreadnought - WiP

So thought I'd get the first basecoat on the Directorate Dreadnought last night, and write a bit of a mini-review on it, having also finished our first game with it in last night too.

So the Persecution class is a relatively short Dreadnought, being a shade over 16cm long - this places it just slightly longer than the Relthoza battleship. Bulk, however, is where the Directorate excel, and this is over 7cm wide and 3cm deep, weighing in at about 110g, which (like most Directorate craft), gives an impression of being a hefty slab of a ship. The hull is a single-piece casting with the three resin cannon accelerators being supplied separately in a little baggie. Mine had a slight mould mis-alignment at the rear, but as I got it at less than half price it was nothing I was that bothered about nor that will be very noticable on the table. It has some great detail, including 19 plasma turrets underneath and the characteristic Directorate armoured carapace. She's a sleek-looking ship despite her bulk, and looks like she means business, especially with those cannons glued in place (a completely painless operation, incidentally).

Stats-wise, I'm not sure how it plays compared to other dreadnoughts, and it didn't see a whole lot of action in our recent game. It did get some damage, but nothing major, and it was able to throw out some big dice rolls - 19AD in range band 2 with linked fire from the fore broadside and cannon, which is pretty nasty. 13AD from Starboard/Port with linked fire is also not too shabby, and although I had variable results with these, this was really down to my dice rather than anything else. Its shields did (very luckily) prevent a critical hit, so even though only SH1 I can see some value there. I did try the FSD boarders, but even in range band 2 I managed to space them, so not sure about that MAR. Lack of mines, FW and torpedoes means its activation is pretty short and straightforward - it moves and shoots, making it quite limited in some ways. I think where it's going to get mostly used is as a capital ship hunter - a hunter-killer submarine type role.

When looking for a colour scheme for my Directorate I was pretty uninspired by what I've seen out there - I didn't mind the metal/green scheme, but that felt a bit unimaginative and "samey" (I do like to have unique fleets - maybe its an ego thing?). The Directorate are a corporate group, so how would a company approach things like spaceship paint schemes? Well, looking at military companies today, they usually go for military finishes, which today are usually muted green tones for ground forces, and greys for air/sea. This got me thinking about navy schemes, and although they're all just low-vis grey nowadays, back in the first half of the last century they had disruptive camouflage applied - often in hard-lined "splinter" pattern. With the Directorate ships having a distinct top & bottom, I thought I could also paint the lower hull a brick-red like many ships hulls then, with a black band around the centre - this would provide a bit of colour and visual interest, yet still be relatively easy to paint.

As I'd already primed the model in grey car spray primer, I just needed to add dark and light shades (this already providing a mid-tone). I masked up with Tamiya masking tape and sprayed the dark areas with thinned Adeptus Battle grey, then remasked an repeated with Astronomican Grey. When dry I then masked the edges and sprayed the entire underside with Scab red, followed by highlights of Red Gore and Blood Red to give some tonal variation and impression of depth. That's as far as I got before going to bed - and here she is;