Bobs Battlespace

Well with the new ships, I was able to start from scratch, and use Contrast paint which hadn’t been available when I did the earlier ships. So After a GW Wraithbone spray primer.

1) Base coat of thinned out GW Basilicum Grey, about 2/3 paint to water.

2) Very light Dry Brush of Corex White over the models

With what was a surprisingly nice finish it was merely a case of painting gun port Engies in MP Paints Chainmail, and Using Corex white to add some detail.

I used  MP paints Black Ink for more detail, but have to get some actual Black Paint to finish the Bases.

Here finished ships pre addition of Penant Nos using Decals

As part of the Spring Clean, it was the Intention to finish of my Knights Mercian fleet, and ordered the requisite models from Iron Wind, all but one are the original 2750 designs of the class.

The 2 models on the Black Bases are Achilles Class Assault Dropships,  that I found in a box when re-organising to put all my Battletech stuff in one place.

In an note for Gerry, at same time found a bag of Marathon Corvettes and 2 Omega Destroyers for Babylon 5 (Fleet scale).

For Sundancer the Battlespace/Aerotech rules are stiil going  but spread out a bit, the basics for aerotech is in Total Warfare, and additions for Jumpships & Warships is in Strategic Ops, including rules for space accurate vectored flight. Not sure how well they work, played the old Battlespace, years ago, but they were broken, Warships, vs Fighters was fine, Dropships vs Fighters fine, but Warships and Dropships didn’t work as the later were to easy to hit with capital ship size wpns and died easily . You always seemed to have a spare gun battery, that had nothing else to shoot at but some stray Dropship.

After I did the 1st blog, I found 2 more models, so they also got completed.

I then pulled out one my previously completed models and added decals to match

The Mercian Fleet I’d a hodgepodge of ships many dating back to the Reunification war at the start of the Star League, which reflects the Mercian 300 year salvage program. As the the Succession Wars destroyed the ability to build and repair starship  the Mercians were one of the few factions that didn’t regress and were able to consider salvaging and refitting ships lost during the final days if the Star League and Succession Wars.

There original dropship accident had forced their onboard research teams to look for the reason it had happened,  during their research they detected that their ships had a unique radiation signature,  that were then able to detect over considerable distances. With this they began travel to places were this radiation was detected and often found lost ships, unlike the Mercians,  these ships had jumped to uninhabited and uninhabitable systems , unable to repair their drives (it took the Mercians over 30 years) the crews starved to death leaving repairable hulks for the Mercian’s to Salvage.

Strange thing is I stopped working o  them when it didn’t take a lot of work to finish. In fact I did a couple of ships at  time probably taking a bit over an hour to add details and colour.

So in this case a Spring Clean that didn’t take much time.

Whilst looking for something else these models were found and rescued from a 8 year obscurity.  I’d always wanted the original Black Lion Battlecruiser and had planned a small fleet around it based on the the fleet escort idea for the remnants of the 101st Royal Hussars  Regiment of the Star League who were to become the Knights Mercian Mercanary’s.

I don’t think I had a particular plan for the makeup of the fleet,  but went for models Iiked from the more traditional looking Star League/ Reunification war era ship designs

I did start painting them to add to the more modern Battlespace ship Collection,  but lost enthusiasm.

A few repairs and a bit more dry brushing and washs, removable fittings made of brush protectors replaced they are now ready for finishing off. Temporary bases from my Babylon 5 collection to ease final painting.