3rd Faction + ship for 5150: Fighter Command

Introduction

I had intended to post something a few days ago, in order to keep to my rough schedule of 2 updates per week.  However, a combination of things has delayed this.  Firstly, I had a cold and was feeling a bit washed out as a consequence.  Secondly, our computer was playing up and would shut itself down at seemingly random intervals.  This has been traced to an intermittent fault in the keyboard, so trying to type anything was interesting!

Space Fighters

Previously, I showed you my first 2 sets of painted fighters for "5150 Fighter Command": here .  Later on, I bought some "Space Battleship Yamato" plastic kits and asked for help to decide how to paint my 3rd faction of fighters: here.

Well, it should be obvious from the pictures that I decided to go with the yellow and black scheme for these models!  These are light interceptors from the 5th Chutai of the Frontier Pacification Force, belonging to the Empire of 1000 Suns.

Minotaur

I've also completed one of my "Space Battleship Yamato" plastic kits.  This is definitely my favourite vessel of the ones I have, so I painted it first.  The colour scheme is loosely based on a real-life airline's livery (from memory, it was some Chinese freight outfit?).  Anyway, here is the spaceship "Minotaur"!

I haven't yet decided whether to use here as a capital ship in "Fighter Command" (at around 5"/12.5cm long, she's out-of-scale with the fighters, but then so is pretty much any practical model).  Alternatively, I could use Minotaur in Full Thrust - she's got "bulk freighter" written all over her, I think.  Perhaps I'll use the ship in both games.

That's all, folks!  Hopefully I'll have something a bit more interesting next time...

Japanese Spaceships and Request for Help

Introduction

A few weeks ago, I showed you my progress so far on fighters for the new 5150: Fighter Command ruleset.  That's fine as far as it goes, but I need some capital ships as well.  I've seen Bandai's "Space Battleship Yamato" [aka "Star Blazers"] series of plastic kits widely recommended for this role; HobbyLink Japan seems to be the most popular source for these.  I'm not a great fan of the styling of spaceships in Japanese anime, but I thought I should take a closer look to see why the Bandai kits are so popular.

Ordering from Japan

I quickly discovered that many (not all!) of the Space Battleship kits are a mere 180yen each.  That's about £1.20 (UK) or $1.80 (USA).  This seems too good to be true, but there are 2 other factors which affect international purchases a lot: postage rates and time-to-deliver.

I put together an order of 4 kits on the HobbyLink Japan site; the postage came to 680yen, or about as much again as the kits themselves.  That's not too bad; I figured that I could afford to take a chance for a little over £9.

So what about delivery time?  Well, I had a shipping confirmation notice 2 days after payment was made and a carton containing a Japanese customs label and other markings arrived some 6 days later than this.  I'd say that 8 days from start to finish was quite acceptable for goods from the other side of the world!

What's in the Boxes?

Each box contained 2 or 3 sprues of parts, coloured to match the predominant colour of the picture on the box (apart from the blue one?!).  What was more of a surprise is that 3 of the 4 kits also contained the parts for a second, much smaller spacecraft.  This wasn't at all obvious from the packaging or the online kit descriptions and came as a very pleasant surprise.  Instead of buying 4 models, I'd actually obtained 7!

Construction

Each kit was very easy to build; the parts fitted together well and there weren't huge numbers of them.  Because these will be used as gaming models, I left off some of the more fragile-looking protruding aerials and pylons.  I suspect that they would all have been broken the first time I transported these ships!

I also left off a few of the turrets, some of which I felt had very improbable locations (blocked by parts of the superstructure &c, with virtually no field of fire).  For the turrets that I did use, I cut down the gun barrels considerably; the Japanese style has excessively long, thin weapons for my taste.

The Results

I'm not sure of the original names or types of these vessels in the Space Battleship Yamato series, so I'll just refer to them by the kit numbers instead.  This is #15; it includes a large warship and a smaller vessel.  The big ship will probably end up as an alien capital ship in 5150.  The smaller craft looks somewhat like a submarine; I'm not certain what I'll do with that.

This one is kit #17.  It's a bit unusual: most of the Space Battleship models are long and thin, with more than a passing resemblance to World War 2 Japanese naval vessels.  However this ship is flat and wide, almost like a saucer, though it does still have the tall, multi-layer conning tower.

Model #26 is probably my least favourite.  It's undoubtedly a carrier, but behind the flight deck and narrowed waist is a somewhat boxy structure.  The smaller ship included in this kit is also rather ugly and not really to my taste.  It might be used as a civilian vessel or priority transport in Fighter Command, as it's clearly got a cockpit and is therefore a very different scale from its "mother ship".

Finally, we have #28.  I think this is the model that I like most from among the sets I bought.  It could play the part of a capital ship in Fighter Command, or perhaps it'll end up as a bulk carrier for my Full Thrust merchant fleet.  The smaller ship is probably destined for Fighter Command, maybe as an alien civilian vessel.

Conclusion

I will certainly paint up some of these models and use them in my games, though probably not in the "official" colour schemes as shown on the boxes.  The others?  I'm not so sure - there are enough competing demands on my time that the ships I like least will be some way down the workload queue.  Still, it was a fun experiment and hasn't cost a great deal of money or time so far.

A Request for Help

I've just started on the smaller fighters for my 3rd faction in 5150: Fighter Command.  However, I'm completely undecided on the colour scheme for this group.  Please, give me your thoughts and maybe I'll paint them up using your suggestion.  Here are some concepts that I've considered so far:

• Yellow all over, with black nose and red markings.
• 2-tone "camouflage", much as used by the RAF for the past 75 years.  Maybe green/brown, grey/green or brown/grey.  This might look good, but what would be the point of such camouflage in space?
• Overall block colour (red?), but with "flying circus"-style markings.  The leader is just red, while others all have variations to distinguish them, such as black and white stripes on the wings, a yellow fuselage or a blue tail.

I look forward to hearing your ideas :-) .

My forces for 5150: Fighter Command

Introduction

I've spent a large part of today cleaning out my garage, so this is just going to be a short post - sorry!

A long. long time ago, when it was first released, I tried the PC game "Wing Commander" and flew space fighters in dogfights against the cat-like Kilrathi enemy.  For a while, this was my favourite game and I enjoyed it so much that I also bought and played the first sequel.  I've experienced many computer games in my life, but few were as memorable as this.

Also many years ago, I became aware of the plastic spaceship models from EM-4 miniatures.  I thought these were really neat, but since I couldn't think of any game I'd play with them, I managed to resist such a purchase on many occasions.  Even if it had occurred to me to use the EM-4 fighters to revisit the world of Wing Commander, there were no suitable rules, I thought (although Silent Death always seems to have been very popular).

What finally cracked my resolve was the recent release of 5150: Fighter Command by 2HourWargames.  It took only a few days for my determination not to start a new project to crumble and so I ordered both the rules and some plastic spacecraft.  This, I believe, is in no way unusual - many others have done exactly the same thing.

I'm slowly painting my way through the craft I bought; here are the first groups.  I haven't yet come up with a lot of background fluff for these, so you'll have to make do with the pictures:

The Good Guys (Star Navy?)

Here's some interceptors - Blue Flight from the 34th Pursuit Squadron.

A flight of heavy fighters from the "Lucky 15th" Attack Squadron.

Torpedo bombers from the 218th Assault Squadron.  I've added the under-wing anti-ship missiles myself; these were made very simply from lengths of plastic rod with the tip sharpened into a point.

The Bad Guys (Kilrathi?  Hishen?)

"Fandango"-class interceptors.  These are very common and often seen in large wings, but individually not very capable.

A little-known type of single-seat heavy fighter, codename "Firewall".  Such craft are very new and there is no accurate data on their performance.

Conclusion

So far, so good.  However, I've many more fighters yet to paint up; these will make up at least 1 (maybe 2 or 3) other factions.  I'm also looking for inspiration: what to use for capital ships and how many different types of these I might need.  Finally, I'll need to go through all my gaming boxes to see if I have some large, black hex mats.  Fighter Command can be played free-form, but reading the rules suggests that hexes might make things easier.

I really didn't need this distraction from my other projects.  I've just not got enough willpower to resist all the shiny things!