Wednesday 10 April 2013

"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

DYD1Corvette, Blitzspear Class
DYD2Frigate, Jarl Class
DYD3Destroyer, Thor Class
DYD4Heavy Destroyer, Wraith Class
DYD5Light Cruiser, Javelin Class
DYD6Heavy Cruiser, Loki Class
DYD7Battlecruiser, Chieftain Class
DYD8Dreadnought (Battlecruiser with 4 engines), Odin Class
DYD9Light Carrier (Battlecruiser with 2 hanger bay modules), Raven Class
DYD10Light Tug (Light cruiser with cargo pallet), Heimdahl Class
DYD11Revised Blitzspear Class Corvette
DYD12Rapier 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 DesignationPictureFull 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!

12 comments:

  1. I really like this series, especially as I am making a wishlist for Star Navy fleets.

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  2. Love this post! I've been wondering where your Orions came from for a while.

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    1. All you had to do was ask :-) ! Still, now you know...

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  3. Relaying an email I just had from Irregular:

    i've just tried to post comments on the blog, but wasn't able to! can you pass on that the codes (in descending order) are DYD 2,6,7 &10.

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    1. Thanks very much to all involved! I've updated the page accordingly.

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    2. FWIW, I've had another email from Irregular, the relevant part of which reads:

      "I'm a bit understaffed here, and i prefer to use my time making new figures rather than painting and photographing. Also i'm not exactly a computer wizard! Could you ask the chap with the DYD pictures if he could email them to me, so that i can put them on the site? Anyone else with nice pictures can send them to me, and i will upload them. Hopefully this will give me the impetus, save me some time, and help customers!"

      So, if you (or anyone else, for that matter) has images you'd care to donate for the site, it sounds like they'd be appreciated.

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    3. Rich, many thanks for this. I've sent a message to Irregular Miniatures' e-mail as advertised on their home page (ian_kay at sky.com). I would have copied you on that as well, but I don't have an e-mail address for you.

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    4. You can always reach me through The Miniatures Page - I haunt over there under the handle Chief Lackey Rich. I'd have PM'd you there instead of cluttering your comments but both parties need to be paying members to access the system.

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  4. These are great substitutes for the "real" thing; Irregular I always thoguht had been a much under-rated company but I've used their figures for many years and their webpage can be a challenge unless it's been changed recently)

    (I reckon the Fireball XL5 reference could be lost on a few of your followers)

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    1. Agree about Irregular; a lot of their stuff is somewhat rough and ready but it paints up well and it's cheap!

      I'll leave Fireball XL5 as a Google exercise for the readers, shall I :-) ?

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    2. Very interesting blog entry again, Hugh.

      Like Zabadak says above, the Irregular minis supplement FASA, SFB or Micromachine Trek minis nicely. I've used these ones in my FASA STSTCS games as Orions for years before ADB started re-releasing the SL220/SL2400 ranges.

      Glad you got the missing codes sorted out on these. This was one range I was never sure of what was what before ordering! Its been years since I got mine.

      Nice Fireball XL5 scheme there! You do know they have a 'not-XL5' in their catalogue? :)

      Mark

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