Into the Firestorm: Ryushi Resurgence

And, we’re off! Not to a standing start, fortunately. No, the shipyard has been working overtime.

Out of the box…

According to my three boxes, I should have one Shautrai-class Battle Carrier, two Onnisha-class Carriers, ten Hokita-class Cruisers and twelve Akkarai-class Corvettes. Apart from the ships themselves, I should also have six large SRS (Short Range Spacecraft) tokens – usable as bombers, assault craft or support shuttles – and six small SRS tokens denoting fighters or interceptors. Quite a fleet, actually. And here I was, thinking that I had only kept a souvenir force.

Surprisingly, there were two extra Hokita-class Cruisers in one of the Alliance Fleet boxes. Free reinforcements, good times! They are mainstays of the Ryushi fleet and more of them are always welcome. Funnily enough, one large and one small SRS token were not Ryushi at all: judging from the design (and having played them extensively myself), I’m pretty sure these are old Directorate tokens. Seeing as how the Zenian League, of which the Directorate is a part, is responsible for the current predicament of the Ryushi in the lore, I’d say it is wholly fitting that my outcasts should have… procured these craft on a daring mission behind enemy lines (very Tydirium-esque, isn’t it?). I’m pretty sure that they’ll be handy infiltrators! More on this later, when I flesh out the background of my fleet.

… and onto the assembly line

It took me about two hours to clean and assemble the fleet. It probably could have taken less time (especially when considering that the cruisers, corvettes and tokens are all single-part), but I did this during my weekly hobby session on videochat with friends, so the much-needed banter and laughter filled up the rest. During assembly, I was once again reminded of the amount of detail Spartan Games put into these ships. They really are a feast to behold and I’m at the same time daunted by the prospect of doing them justice during painting. Ah well, that’s verse two.

As for those details: most striking on the capital ships are the latticed domes, which many people once said tie into these vessels remotely operating both the small craft and the corvettes. Still, the carriers also each have a communication dish at the secondary bridge, so it sounds more plausible that the domes are exactly that. After all, according to the lore the ships became their only home when the Ryushi went into exile, so the domes are far more likely part of their living space, so to say. I’ll have to come up with a good spot color for these, anyway.

Another set of great details can be seen on the majestic battle carrier, which is the only ship I’ll be painting in sub-assemblies. You can actually choose to model it in a ‘open’ or ‘closed’ fashion, which means the flight deck is either operational or not. I really want the ‘power fields’ (the blue parts) active, so I’ll assemble the ship after having fully painted it – including the little craft on the flight deck and on the elevator.

Getting up to speed

Well, that’s it for one evening. I’m happy to have finally started this project – also my first project on this website, to boot – and I hope those of you reading this will be wondering how this fleet will end up as much as I do. Until next time!

LX