"Not-Star Trek" Orion Fleet (Irregular miniatures)

Introduction

Not long ago, I showed you my "not-Federation" starships.  This time, it's the turn of my second-oldest fleet: their "not Orion" opponents, also from Irregular Miniatures.  These are not canon Orions; they don't quite match the official ship classes from Amarillo Design Bureau (owners of the Star Fleet Battles copyright).  However, they're a great deal cheaper (especially since Irregular is on the near side of the Atlantic for me, so postage costs are also less) and that's good enough!

Irregular's Catalogue

For my Orion fleet, I'm using the "Dysonian" ships from Irregular Miniatures.  These can be found (with some difficulty) by going to the main site an choosing "6mm" from the bottom bar.  Then click on "Science Fiction and Spaceships"; the DYD codes are about 75% of the way down that page.  As before, it's probably helpful to republish the relevant extract of the catalogue here:

DYSONIAN FLEET

DYD1	Corvette, Blitzspear Class
DYD2	Frigate, Jarl Class
DYD3	Destroyer, Thor Class
DYD4	Heavy Destroyer, Wraith Class
DYD5	Light Cruiser, Javelin Class
DYD6	Heavy Cruiser, Loki Class
DYD7	Battlecruiser, Chieftain Class
DYD8	Dreadnought (Battlecruiser with 4 engines), Odin Class
DYD9	Light Carrier (Battlecruiser with 2 hanger bay modules), Raven Class
DYD10	Light Tug (Light cruiser with cargo pallet), Heimdahl Class
DYD11	Revised Blitzspear Class Corvette
DYD12	Rapier Class Gunboat

Orions in Full Thrust

As with my Federation fleet, I decided to base my Orions on an existing set of Full Thrust designs.  This was mainly to avoid the effort of creating an entire fleet of ships from scratch!

In this case, I chose to base the Orions on the ESU fleet.  Their design philosophy (from Full Thrust's Fleet Book 1) can be paraphrased thus "mostly beam armed, varied means of protection, optimised for long-term independent operations".  That fits my idea of the pirate fleet quite well and I'm not averse to swapping a few systems here and there to customise ships.  In particular, I've given many of the larger ships a needle beam; this should allow them to target the engines of a fleeing merchantman and thus be able to capture it without destroying the cargo.

The Fleet

2 things should be noted before we rush into the pictures:

1. These Orions use my own "Fireball XL5" colour scheme: large amounts of silver offset by red and yellow stripes.  That's not Star Fleet Battles canon at all!  However, I reckon that a pirate chief can paint his ships any way he likes; indeed he may even want to make his fleet very distinctive.
2. I started this collection with a "Fleet Pack" from Irregular Miniatures.  This came with no instructions and all the parts were in a single bag (note that I bought this many, many years ago; the way Irregular package and label items may have changed since).  While I'm reasonably confident in my identification of the smaller, 1-piece ship models, the larger ones may not resemble anything actually in the catalogue.  Basically, I took the collection of bigger hulls & separate engines and assembled them in ways that seemed good to me!

I've given the manufacturer's designation for each model where I'm reasonably confident that I have the right number.  However, please accept that I may have made some errors.  Update: I've filled in the missing codes, many thanks to Rich McGee and Irregular!

Irregular Designation	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
Update: DYD2 - Frigate, Jarl Class
DYD3 - Destroyer, Thor Class
DYD4 - Heavy Destroyer, Wraith Class
DYD5 - Light Cruiser, Javelin Class
Update: DYD6 - Heavy Cruiser, Loki Class
Update: DYD7 - Battlecruiser, Chieftain Class
Update: DYD10 - Light Tug (Light cruiser with cargo pallet), Heimdahl Class

So there you have it: my "not Orion" Star Trek fleet for Full Thrust.  These are all Irregular ships and they are all from their DYD range.  However, I'm not at all sure of many of the product codes; if any reader can help me to fill these in then I'll be very grateful!