Kedorian Unboxing Part 1

Now after the Works Raptor unboxing of a couple of weeks ago, I'm following up with the first of two Kedorian boxes - The Support Fleet, which comprises the Battleship and two cruiser/destroyers.

I must admit that when I first saw the Kedorians, I was left a little cold...the idea of floating cities in space was not really my thing. However, when I saw them for real, it completely changed my perception of them - they looked awesome! The support fleet, with the Dei-Nak battleship, was definately the first port of call. The box follows the typical layout of the new Spartan Boxed fleets, a nice shiny outer sleeve covering a sturdy box protecting the precious contents;



So we have the ubiquitous token cards and bases, the Dei-Nak battleship, two cruisers/destroyers, a bag of metal bits, some resin bits and some laser-cut acrylic.

The battleship is enormous - here are the two main resin hull parts, compared to a Poseidon class;

That's a LOT of resin! In addition to the hull parts are the metal parts;

And also the laser-cut acrylic. I've bounced the flash deliberately here to give some definition to the edges so you can see them more clearly;



The smaller parts here are for the cruisers/destroyers. Here are the main hull parts compared to our Poseidon;

I mentioned these are cruisers OR destroyers - the resin parts determine which variant you are building;

The round parts on the left are those used if making them as cruisers, the ones that look more like buildings are to make them into destroyers. The centre two resin parts are used on the battleship.

The parts are all very cleanly cast, only the additional parts really having any flash to speak of. As for the main hull pieces, these are epic castings. here's the upper battleship hull;

As you can see there's almost no moulding flash here, and a tremendous aount of complexity and detail  -very nice for a single-piece moulding. The same can be said of the bottom;

These are gorgeous castings, make no mistake, and the sheer size of the thing is imposing to say the least. The only part of the models I'm not 100% sold on are the laser-cut acrylic pieces. Not to say they aren't done in a beutiful way, I'm just not sure of the flat, featureless nature of them. Having said that, we'll have to see how it all comes together, because when I've seen them built they are deeply impressive!

Next up are the cruiser/destroyer hulls. Equally nicely done, with almost zero casting flash.

So that's it for this installment, next up will be the Carrier, more cruisers and frigates from the Kedorians...





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!