Delving into Dropfleet Commander - Shaltari Added

[Melnibonean]

Recently my interest in sci-fi wargaming has been revived with Firefight. I've also been attracted to the idea of spaceship gaming and decided that Dropfleet Commander looked like a viable system to start with. I really like the look of the models and the starter set seemed like good starting point.

So, here are my first attempts at painting some of The Scourge models. I quite like them and they look very nice in the flesh (so to speak).

[Codsticker]

I like the models and the metallic-looking colour choice.

[Vampifan]

Superb paint-jobs!   

[smirnoff]

Superb bit of work

[Hobby Services]

Very nice.  Good subtle shading effects with those washes.  You planning on doing any of the other fleets?

[AllenW]

Beautiful painting.  Almost got me interested in the ships until I priced them.  Out of my budget.  Seems strange that one battleship costs as much as 3 cruisers and 4 frigates.

[Hupp n at em]

Woah, those are really cool models.  You've done them proud 

[Melnibonean]

Thanks for the positive responses. I enjoyed painting this lot.

Very nice.  Good subtle shading effects with those washes.  You planning on doing any of the other fleets?

I'm currently doing the UCM ships from the starter set. They require a bit more detail work so they'll take a little longer to do. I'd like to try doing the weird orange ones too.

Beautiful painting.  Almost got me interested in the ships until I priced them.  Out of my budget.  Seems strange that one battleship costs as much as 3 cruisers and 4 frigates.

Yeah, not something that I'm very keen about. If I can, I'll try to get any of them second hand and I can't see myself investing in more than one.

[OSHIROmodels]

Cracking colours 

cheers

James

[Hobby Services]

The battleships cost what they do for a number of reasons.

1.  They're resin, which is always going to be much more expensive than mass-produced plastic.

2.  They have no chance of selling in the kind of large numbers the plastics do, which makes it even harder to keep production costs down.  They cost too many points, eat up extremely rare slots in the fleet org table (you can't even put one on the table in small games), and are generally kind of iffy in effectiveness compared to equal points in cruisers & frigates - although the recent rules tweaks helped with that some, especially for the New York class and as a base for your admiral (who also became more important when the command cards arrived).

3.  And lastly, they're all packed with the parts to make all their variants, and most of them can easily be magnetized or pinned to let you swap parts around and field different classes as desired.  That not only eats into sales even more, it makes them more of a bargain than they appear, especially the UCM ones (which are the easiest to do parts swaps with and have three variant classes, not two).

They do cost a lot, but you don't really need them to play and no one is ever going to need more than two (and even one is plenty for most) for any normal game.

[Melnibonean]

Hobby Services - That make sense. I can't really see the point in more than one unless you're going to play very large games. But then, it also depends on how many factions (and how large) you decide collect.

[Melnibonean]

I finished my UCM from the starter set. These ships needed a bit more detail work than the Scourge ships but the results are quite nice (although I wish I could take better pics).

Now I need to start playing!

[OSHIROmodels]

Yellow and grey, always a good combo 

cheers

James

[Hobby Services]

Hobby Services - That make sense. I can't really see the point in more than one unless you're going to play very large games. But then, it also depends on how many factions (and how large) you decide collect.

There's also the obvious possibility of using them in other rules sets that might support more ships, at which point the high cost of the battleship minis becomes more of an issue.  Playing with DfC figs in (say) Full Thrust might not be too painful, but A Sky Full of Ships or Starfire with their dozens or hundreds of ships in play at once?  Too steep for me.

Your UCM stuff looks nice.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Very nice paint job, grey with yellow really works.