Ryushi Battlecarrier Unboxing

The next unboxing in this series is the Ryushi Battlecarrier and attendant cruisers. It's a shame the Ryushi are on the wrong side of the war, as they make some fine-looking ships, and (as for Hawker) I was slightly gutted that they wouldn't be my guys!

Protecting the Ryushi  Shautrai Class Battle Carrier is the sturdy cardboard box that's become all too familiar in this series, complete with its glossy card sleevethis time showing the imposing Shautrai in a rather nice red colour scheme. As with the Hawker ships, they look enviably pretty.

A quick peek at the rear shows the Shautrai in all its glory, plus a shot of the cruisers. Time to find out how they look in resin form;

Opening the box reveals a slightly lighter haul than some of the other fleet sets, but this is hardly surprising given that this is jus a single ship and her accompaniment of two cruisers. The standard Spartan Games layout is revealed, with bubblewrap bags protecting the resin and plastic bags protecting the bases and blue acrylic pieces.

The Shautrai is comprised of three resin pieces, two hull sections and an engine block - plus a blue acrylic insert and two optional blue acrylic pieces, depending on whether you wish to display it "open" or "closed". Finally, a white metal radar dish/sensor suite thing tops it off. Here's the laid-together parts compared to a Manta;

So as you can see, it's a big ship! The hull pieces are quite large, and due to the cut-out for the acrylic, the front upper section is quite thin compared to the rear of it, and my example was plainly warped - more on this later.
As in the Hawker set, the cruisers are single-piece resin castings, and are elegant looking ships. This shot was actually taken from the Support Fleet (as there are four cruisers in that box), but I thought it silly to take two pictures of the same ship in different quantities;

Taking a look at the parts in more detail, they follow the recent trend in Spartan's castings - finely detailed, well cast and free from flash;

 

I love the little wing castings on the inside of the bay, a great little detail to add. The only mars on the casting are pouring stubs on the engine block and upper hull, cleverly positioned to be the joining faces, so they just need clipping back so they fit flush together, and you'll never know.

Next up is the cruiser;

The cruiser is a sleek ship, looking fast and efficient, and fitting with the Shautrai very well. Good detail both above and below, no problem with these beasties at all.

So I mentioned my upper Sautrai hull was warped, which is not a huge surprise given the quite slender, open nature of the upper front compared to the relative bulk of the rear. Here you can see how warped - putting the lower hull flush at the front creates a gap of several mm at the rear.

Now, this is not the disaster some of you might expect, as this sort of simple bend is easily sorted. If it had been twisted, that would have been quite a different matter. So, the first thing to do is put the kettle on....for a cup of tea? Well, yes, that'd be nice, but actually what I need is a cup of just-boiled water, into which I plop my bendy hull piece;

After about a minute, I can take it out (being careful not to scald myself!) and, using the lower hull as a template, clamp my now-slightly-flexible upper hull onto it, forcing it to conform to its straight line. I then plunge it straight under a rnning cold-water tap to fix the resin in its new configuration;

As you can see, the two hull pieces now align perfectly...voila!

Altogether the Shautrai is a lovely model, she's a pretty ship despite her size, and the option to make her two different ways is an interesting one (I might see if I can magnetise mine and make her able to do both!). The cruisers are lovely one-piece mouldings, and really show how Spartan has come on in terms of design and casting in just a few short years. Compare a Storm and an Hokita side-by-side and you'll see what I mean. Not that the Storm isn't a nice ship, it's just outclassed by what SG can do today. 

Hawker Industries Unboxing

When Spartan Games announced the Hawker fleet, I must admit I was rather envious of my son for supporting the Kurak Alliance, rather than my own Zenian League affiliations. The initial renders looked rather good, and judging by just about every FSA ship I've seen in reality compared to their renders, they'd look even better in resin and metal form. Anyway, it was inevitable we'd pick them up at some point, and as we have them now, here's the unboxing!

As usual, SG supply the Hawker Industries Alliance Fleet in a sturdy cardboard box with a glossy card sleeve, the front sporting a nice composition shot of the studio fleet ships. They do look rather gorgeous.

On the rear of this is a plan layout of the three ship types included in the box - an Excelsior class battleship, three Resolute Cruisers and four Endeavour Frigates. Their names remind me of sailing ships of the 18th century great age of exploration, which is somehow fitting for the traditional Hawker company. Anyway, time to look inside;

The box is quite full, and in the now-familiar layout of these offerings - the ubiquitous token cards and bases, the battleship, cruisers and frigates in bubble-bags and a little bag of metal bits. The space is filled rather well as the Hawker ships are not small!

The battleship is pretty much standard size - about mid-way beween a Razorthorn and an Apollo. Here is the main resin hull, together with its resin add-on parts, compared to a Manta;

Now the battleship would be no good if it didn't have a little extra protection, which is where the shield projector arrays come in....and there are a LOT of them!

The cruisers are single-piece resin castings, with cut-outs for six of the above shield parts each;

Again, they're coming out about average in cruiser mass, but they have a sizeable presence when you see them. Next up are the Frigates, which we can see here with our Manta again;

Now these are HUGE for frigates! A third again on a Pilgrim, and only about half the size of an Aquan Storm cruiser...small "Smalls" were obviously not in Hawker's remit!

Taking a look at the parts in more detail, they follow the recent trend in Spartan's castings - finely detailed, well cast and free from flash;

The underside has some visible printer marks on the lower spine, but these will be easily removed (without destroying deail elsewhere), and are also invisible when on the flight stand anyway, so it depends how much of a stickler you are as to whether you do anything about this or not.

Thecruiser is a lovely ship, possibly my favourite of the group. Looking at it's design, perhaps it was enterprising Hawker ships the pre-Dindrenzi Terrans were equipped with way back - the design isn't SO different! make it a bit blockier, don't add the shield emitters and install a rail cannon in the central hull...just saying, it could be how they got started....

Underneath the cruiser is just as detailed, another enormous quad-turret sitting amidships, and a tracking rader/sensor thing located under the nose.

The frigates don't look that inspiring in these photos, but are actually quite impressive, tying in with the design of the battleship especially well.

Looking at the underside, and of the overall shape, and there are definite hints of the terran here, which is unsurprising, Hawker being one of the Terran Alliance's main weapons producers. These metal castings are very clean - probably some of the best I've seen from Spartan, who aren't especially known for their metal (primarily due to them being eclipsed by their resin pieces!). Certainly they'll take less cleaning up than the shield projectors, which (as with the Works Raptor set) are going to take longer than everythig else put together....now, where's that scalpel?

The Return of the Terran Alliance Thorn Battleship!

Remember many moons ago when I was looking at an old Razorthorn I got in a set of ships in an ebay win? Well the poor thing has sat in a drawer ever since, unfinished and ignored...with all the recent stuff happening with v2.0 rules, I've neglected the hobby part of the hobby! So after seeing some conversions on the SG Community, I thought I'd get my act together and finish it....

I've changed where I wanted to go with this design several times, and decided to alter it slightly again, removing the fore greenstuff "island/bulkheads" and putting Sentinel-type turrets at the fore. The rear "castle" casemate I retained, and added further shrouded gunports. I added the same guns as on the port/starboard on the old turret mounts, with the exception of the top central(ish) mount, which is now arrayed with a Sentinel-type turret (on a small mount) plus four single turrets from the front of the Razorthorn.

Of course a good proportion of the model is now green stuff, and it needs a proper paint job, but I'm reasonably happy on how it's come out. I may even use her in an upcoming v2.0 game.... :-)

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!

   

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