Painted Dropfleet Commander Scourge painted up (first kitbashes added 12/12)

[Hobby Services]

Continuing the Dropfleet Commander painting, now working on Scourge.



Eight of their frigate hulls, including four strike carriers and four planetary bombardment ships.



That makes for a pretty efficient Pathfinder Battlegroup capable of both landing troops and smashing enemy ones under a hail of plasma bombs.



As you can hopefully see, the three-piece models are fairly flexible, with the "wings" on the side attaching at multiple angles for varying looks.



Haven't glued them to their pegs and they don't sit on them unglued as well as the UCM ships did, but they do stand up well for photos.



I like the Scourge bio-mechanical aesthetic quite a bit, and it certainly lends itself to quick paint jobs.



Not quite so sure about their game mechanics, as they seem a little too glass-hammer-styled for my tastes.



Still, they do have some interesting tricks, especially among their frigate-sized hulls.

[supervike]

Very cool paint on those.

I like how they look both mechanical and biological, all at the same time.

[Major_Gilbear]

Nice take on the official scheme.

The paint seems very smooth too - did you use an airbrush, or was it just several watered-down coats and some patience?

[Hobby Services]

Nice take on the official scheme.

The paint seems very smooth too - did you use an airbrush, or was it just several watered-down coats and some patience?

Couple of washes over blended metallics, followed by a bit of highlighting.  Say what you will about GW, they do make some darned handy washes.

Finishing the cruisers today, hopefully.

[Elbows]

I like the paint jobs.  My only beef with the Scourge designs are that they're increasingly tough to determine what is what.  I don't care for the aesthetic at all, but I'd have found a way to differentiate between classes and types (maybe with paint schemes?). 

[Hobby Services]

Inevitable problem due to the number of shared parts on the different kits.  The UCM fleet has the same difficulty, but at this point I've painted enough of them that the different (very similar) ship configurations are becoming second nature.  Darned if I can keep the class names straight yet, but that'll come with experience.  Haven't played BFG in a decade or so, but if I can still tell a Dictator from a Lunar from across the tabletop I'll eventually get the DfC ships memorized.

Going with more radical color coding for classes or even Groups could work, but I prefer a more unified look to my fleets.  You could also label the bases, obviously.  The Scourge frigates aren't quite as bad as some for that problem anyway due to their specialized weaponry.  Weird tubes pointing up?  That's the thing with the Escape Velocity guns that plays boomer sub games.  Weird tubes pointing down?  Bombardment ship.  Looks like it has teeth?  Close action plasma boat, kill it before it shoots or die in a fire.

[Major_Gilbear]

I think the design of all the Scourge models (i.e., not just in DFC) is fairly divisive.

Personally, I do quite like them, although I find some of the DSC models like APCs and Dropships rather ugly and boxy/unimaginative.

The DFC ships I really like however - although I accept they do look rather similar. Maybe, taking a cue from their organic nature, you could give them patterns like stripes or spots across their backs to denote squadrons or classes/configurations. They don't need to be really obvious either - they could be done with a wash or something similarly translucent.

Anyway, just some observations/thinking out loud rather than suggestions for the ships shown here! 

[Elbows]

I think the main issue would be more with the opponent than the player.  As an opponent who may not own/play Scourge it'd be incredibly tough to remember/identify during the game (not that you couldn't simply ask).  The other models are more identifiable (to an extent).  The burn-through lasers are pretty easily identifiable, and you can see normal turrets and aircraft bays on most of the other fleets.

Not a game breaker, but I can see - if facing them - having no freakin' clue what the hell any of your ships do! 

[Hobby Services]

I don't think that's unique to Scourge, although they do have a slightly worse case of it than UCM.  The PHR in particular relies on banks of broadside mass drivers which look rather same-y from across the table.  It's easy to tell them apart when you see them from the side and pause to count the number of barrels pointed at you, but during the game you're often a) seeing them nose-on and b) rushed, neither of which aids accurate identification.

The Shaltari are probably the most distinctive simply because their weapons look more different from one another than most.  Not likely to confuse the lightning-ball guns with the run-of-the-mill disintegrator banks or the particle guns, that's for sure.

Oh yeah, a few shots of the cruisers:



That's a pair of Sphinx cruisers, with lots of oculus beams:





Shen Long heavy cruiser, with even more oculus beams and stealth systems:



Hydra carrier, lightly armed but hauling swarms of fighters and bombers:



Ifrit cruiser, with narrow-arc spinal-mount "furnace cannon" beam weapons:



Chimera troopship, the bulk lander in the fleet:



Oh, and if you were wondering what the engines look like, here's a belly shot:

[hubbabubba]

I have absolutely no interest what so ever in spaceship combat games, but those are beautiful looking alien vessels. Top job on the painting.

[dijit]

A really alien looking paint scheme - love them!

[Hobby Services]

All right, here's the big boy - a Scourge Daemon-class battleship:



This thing's a monster, as you might expect.



About 5" long, comes in fifteen resin pieces.



Assembly is surprisingly smooth, and the model is even more poseable than the smaller Scourge models, especially the ventral fins (each of which is two pieces, all with ball sockets).



There's also some real potential for making custom models out of the parts, since you could add or subtract parts all over the place and still have a great looking model.



For a "light battleship" you could leave out one of the "fin attachment point" body sections, or use smaller or fewer fins, or both, or you leave out the middle body section (although that would require you to drill a new hole for the flight base, which normally goes in that piece).



You could make a bigger super-dreadnought design by adding more sections to the centipede, obviously.



You could even build an amphisbaena version with a second head replacing the tail section, although you'd probably want more of the smaller engine fins in that case (they will attach to one another or the main hull, although the fit's not perfect).



The kit also comes with extra weapon fin bits to build the carrier version, which could be attached to a double-header design.  Or you could do carrier fins on both ends and have an instant supercarrier.



Of course, kitbashing this beast of a model would get stupidly expensive in short order, since they seem to retail around $45 at full price (at least judging by asking prices on ebay).  Neat idea that would take full advantage of this thing's modularity, but maybe impractical.



You can (and maybe should) magnetize the weapon fins with a bit of dremel work, allowing you to swap between Daemon and Dragon classes from game to game.

[YPU]

I might or might not be drooling. I can't tell, my mind has been blown.

[Hobby Services]

I might or might not be drooling. I can't tell, my mind has been blown.

It's not you drooling, it's the razorworm looming over your shoulder. 

[Elbows]

I'm leaning more and more toward picking up the rulebook for the game to see if I can convince myself to start it.