Starfleet Wars - Galactic Knights

One of the things I enjoy about wargaming is background. A game has to have a good story. At least for me. About a year ago, I came to know about the Galactic Knights line of miniatures through Desertscribe's great blog, the Super Galactic Dreadnought. The game carries on an old line of spaceship miniatures from the 80's, originally published under another ruleset, the Starfleet Wars.

Those minis slowly grew on me, as I followed Desertscribe's numerous posts about them, where his remarkable passion for these models was made quite evident. 

What got me into that line is not only the appealing design of the models, but also the background story involving the game. It takes place in a fictional universe were humans (terrans) are in conflict with 4 major alien races: The Aquarians, The Carnivorans, The Avarians and The Entomalians (insectoids). It is truly a very original idea, isn't it?

From the moment I came to know the outlines of the story behind the game, I got very curious as to how each alien race would look like. Not long ago, I finally saw a picture of an avarian on the Super Galactic Dreadnought, but I was just recently able to check the rest of them through a link on another great blog about these minis, the Starfleet Wars.

The link redirects you to a store that sells sculptures of characters of each race. Here it is: link.

Terran (human)

Aquarian

Carnivoran

Avarian

Entomalian

Desertscribe also has some of the best paint schemes around for these races. I'm going to copy the look of at least 2 of his fleets, since he gave me green light for that.

They are the Carnivorans and the Entomalians:

Link

Link

Monday Knight Productions is the store currently selling those models, as well as the Galactic Knights Rulebook and expansions, and they have recently announced that the huge and heavy Super Galactic Dreadnoughts of each race are going to be available also in resin, bringing their weight and costs down.

I just hope they keep the metal SGD's available, for those (like me) that prefer to pay a little more to have those behemoths in full heavy metal (!).

My first fleet of Galactic Knights is already purchased. When I return home from work travel I'll start working on them. Next in the wish list are the Carnivorans!

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Ori Warships: The beginning of my Stargate Collection

Prior to leaving on a work travel, I managed to prepear one additional post to publish while away, so this blog wouldn't be lacking action for such a long period.

It is about my Ori Warships, which I finished painting.

They are made by Armoury Hobbies, a small gaming company from Canada. I thought of having more of them, but those ships are so powerful it's unlikely I'm going to use the 3 I already own on a single game.

This is the beginning of my Stargate collection. I still need a Wraith fleet, a Goa'uld fleet, an Ancient fleet and a Human fleet.

The Ori ship is my favorite spaceship ever, so I'm thrilled to finally have those on my collection. Looking forward to play with them! They are probably the most powerful vessels in my collection, even more dreadful than Borg Cubes (!)

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The Borg

One last post before I go out on a 20-day work travel. This time, we feature the Borg!

Those are Furuta models, easily found on Ebay at very affordable prices. I based them on some Litko's hex flight stands, and painted a little white mark on each to indicate which side is the front, so I can determine each fire arc.

They come pre-painted in black. The only painting I did on them was adding some green spots here and there, to represent internal lights.

Initially, I had bought micromachines for my Borg fleet, but I ended up finding them too little compared to my other minis. They would seem way too much out of scale.

On the picture below, you can see a furuta compared to a micromachine cube.

I'm now satisfied with the size of my borg cubes. It's not to say now they are in scale with the rest of my trek ships, they are just big enough now to represent their massive size.

In fact, I wouldn't want them exactly in scale with the rest of my trek collection, as it would require them to be too big to be playable (!)

I'm looking forward to using them on a Pax Stellarum game. As I mentioned on previous posts, troops on my homebrew may have specific traits. The borg, for instance, have "Modulate Shields" and "Assimilate". 

The first trait makes their defense better at each subsequent round of combat on the same boarding action. The second trait makes them gain 1 troops every time they kill 1 enemy troops.

Further playtesting on my ruleset is going to have to wait a while, though, due to the reason mentioned on the  opening of this post.

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More Space goodness

I had a happy surprise upon arriving home from work today: 2 Parcels were waiting for me. One of them was from Pahoota, owner of the Solipsist Wargaming blog. He was kind enough to send me 3 of his home made ships, which are pretty cool designs.

Check out the amount of detail Pahoota manages to put on those little goodies.

On the pic above, we have them next to a Micromachine's Warbird and ruler to give a sense of scale. They are about 2" long.

The other surprise waiting for me at home was my long awaited Ori ships from Armoury Hobbies.

They are huge, a little over 5", just as this massive vessels should be. Chris ships them primed already (don't really know why), and as you can see the paint is chipping off a bit. 

There is also some dust to remove, but nothing a quick bath won't do!

They have sufficient detail, and I'm overall quite pleased with them.

Here is a pic of one of these behemoths alongside the Warbird, for comparison:

Unfortunately, I'll be away the next 2 weeks, so I don't think I'll be able to work much on all those ships before I return. Still, it's good to know they will be here waiting for me on my paint desk!

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My Narn Fleet

Finished one more fleet this weekend: The Narn!

The Fleet

G'Quan Heavy Cruisers

Another G'Quan in close up

G'Karith Patrol Cruiser and a couple Sho' Kos Police Cutter

Var' Nic Long Range Destroyer

Bin' Tak Dreadnought

T'Lot Assault Cruiser

Engines detail

Engines of the T'Lot Assault Cruiser

The spotted patterns were all hand made, no decals, so I'm pretty satisfied with the result. My next order from AoG will be an Earth Alliance fleet - the last fleet missing in my B5 collection. Upon doing so, I'll also order the Minbari and Narn fighters.

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The Romulans Vs. The Ferengui

Last saturday I played the second playtesting of my system with an adversary other than myself. It was a small game - only 500 points - as my buddy didn't have much time in hands.

My gaming parter, a fan of the Ferengui, choosed that race for his fleet. I picked the Romulans, one of my favorite Sci-Fi races.

Now, I enjoy playing with lots of D'Deridexes, but on such low-point games its not possible to field many, as each costs about 250 points.

I choosed to have 1 Warbird and spend the rest of my points on small ships, as I was fearing the 6 D'Koras could easily outmaneuver my heavy hitter.

The game didn't work in my favor. The D'Koras concentrated their fire power on my flagship, and my small escorts were too weak to inflict considerable damage on the enemy.

I kept maneuvering badly, and failed to get decent targets on the D'Deridex's powerful prow fire arc.

On the pic above, we see my D'Deridex performing an assault on one of the D'Koras. My troops inflicted severe casualties to enemy crew, and at the end that could barely function. But my Warbird had a breach on its Life Support System, and it wouldn't take long for my whole crew to die, too.

My adversary didn't wait for that and finished my flagship while its Shields were at half strength. After that, my other ships looked like sitting ducks waiting to be blown up too - which didn't take much either.

On the end, it was a victory by annihilation. No single romulan vessel survived the clash. Still, lots of fun for me (and I suppose even more for my gaming buddy...).

The system is working very well, now. All that is left to be further playtested is the fighters and the opitional 3D rules. Hope to address both issues soon.

Pardon me for the lack of posts on the last couple weeks, but my narn fleet needing painting real life stuff has kept me busy.

My recently finished armada is going to be featuring on my next entry! Almost done with my Babylon 5 collection.

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