Painted Dropfleet Shaltari - finally done battleship & heavies added 2/27/17

[Hobby Services]

Starting on the fourth fleet for Dropfleet Commander, the dreaded Space Hedgehogs...er, Shaltari, that is.  Just a couple of Amethyst-class frigates done as a test paint:



Sticking pretty close to the "canon" color scheme here, with minor variations.



Pretty happy with the way they came out.  



The models were a bit of a pain to assemble, mostly because the arches are tricky to get aligned evenly.



In game terms these are the Shaltari close-action frigates, aggressive small ships armed with all-arc microwave beamers that (unlike most close action weapons) ignore enemy point defense and have a 12" range due to their advanced scanners.  Fragile and rather expensive but quite dangerous.



They're also (appropriately) a very alien-looking design, and could easily be used in other games as such.  They don't even have a clearly-defined prow in my eyes, since Shaltari grav engines have no exterior parts and the arc of microwave beamers could easily be done as engine lights instead of guns.



In particular, the central spheres (which are probably the main crew compartment in canon) in an open frame make me think of the Vau from Fading Suns & Noble Armada.  Their ships had balls of live plasma in a similar configuration, and you could paint the spheres more "glowy" than I did here.  

[Sbloom141]

While I'm logged in I just thought I would say the painting on those is lovely. Very coral like.

[supervike]

Really interesting design, and fantastic paint.

[Hobby Services]

Continuing the fleet paintup with a slightly modified paint scheme.  These things are a royal pain to paint, frankly.

Troop delivery group with a big Turquoise mothership and a quartet of Void Gates, which make up the teleport network the Shaltari use to get their troops on the planet.









Close action group with a Turquoise and four Amethysts, showcasing just how nasty a group of ships that all ignore point defense and have 360 degree 12" range CA weapons can be.  Even Scourge struggle to match the killing power of these things.









It's worth noting that the "saucer hull" bit of the Emerald comes on every cruiser sprue and is fully compatible with all of the cruiser and heavy cruiser parts, so (if you wanted to) you could use them throughout the fleet instead of the "real" cruiser center hull.  I think they look much, much better personally, and I'm kind of tempted to do just that.  As with the UCM fleet, there are an awful lot of non-canon parts combinations you could use with these sprues if you just want to kitbash instead of building for DfC alone.  The cruisers feel very Kra'Vak-ish (from Full Thrust) to me.

[McKinstry]

Great looking work on what appears to be a bugger to paint.

[Hobby Services]

I will concede, they are not a lot of fun to paint.  Highlights and washes aren't so bad, but picking out all those little blue lights make me long for the days when I only had to deal with the PHR engine ports.

Even more annoying is the fact that the models are very prone to minor breakages while removing them from the sprues, especially the frigate hulls.  They definitely pushed it too far on all those tiny little spines, and I've had some broken right out of the box.  Expect to see a drifting hulk or crippled ship "conversion" or two to hide the damage. 

[Hobby Services]

Another squadron finished, this time a bunch of Topaz combat frigates with their deadly batteries of disintegrators:







Speaking of "minor breakage" issues, I also did up a custom converted "battle damaged" Topaz:



Could be used as a rare frigate that survived taking a roll on the Crippling Damage table.



Hey, it happens a third of the time.  They don't always pop after two damage.



Clearly took a glancing strike from a Scourge furnace cannon or something.  Just look at that twisted, melted wreckage.



Could be useful for homebrew scenarios.  Imagine a game where the fleets are fighting to recover a vital objective from a hulked ship that's slowly falling through the battlespace from high orbit.



Or you play a game where you have to rescue a limping cripple from its pursuers to cement an alliance.



Or it could just be a "blazing wreck" terrain feature, drifting slowly across the table with a chance to explode each turn, defining an ever-changing area of the table where it isn't safe to park ships.   

[Hobby Services]

Pair of Amber-class cruisers, the most common medium-weight cruiser in the fleet.  Fast, very well armed, and featuring quite wide firing arcs, all for an economical 110 points.

[Hobby Services]

Latest Shaltari stuff, a carrier battlegroup with a Basalt fleet carrier, a pair of Opal shield booster frigates, and a pair of Topaz combat frigates.

[Hobby Services]

And the kitbashing begins. 



Bloodstone-class battlecruiser, designed as a proxy for the hideously expensive and rare Kickstarter-exclusive Adamant-class and the "not even on the release schedule yet" Ruby-class that's supposedly replacing it for general sales. 



Nor reason to wait when I can build my own.



The central hull is built out of four leftover light cruiser hull spares.



The rest of it is pretty much just standard subassemblies.



Seen here with a pair of Opal-class frigates.



The large base is 50mm across, the small ones 35mm.



Pretty happy with this one, even if it's not a terribly efficient kitbash.

[Engel]

Great Shaltaris...

I see that you have painted many more "gemstones" then I had the patience to do. 

[Hobby Services]

Great Shaltaris...

I see that you have painted many more "gemstones" then I had the patience to do. 

Ugh.  Don't remind me.  I've still got a battleship, two heavy cruisers, and a trio of frigates to go.  Seeing tiny blue dots in my sleep at this point.

[Hobby Services]

Finally, finally done with these blasted things, at least barring commissions.

Battleship, magnetized so it can be fielded as either the Diamond gunship or the Platinum supercarrier.  A lovely resin model, seen here with my custom Bloodstone battlecruiser:





Note the interior detailing on the Platinum's giant hanger dome, which is nearly invisible when the ship's actually assembled.





Also a pair of Jet-class heavy cruisers, one of the most versatile ships in the whole game.  Bit of shooting, ton of close action potential, solid planetary bombardment, all on a tough (for a Shaltari, anyway) and reasonably speedy hull.  Seen here with a Basalt fleet carrier.





And a belly shot.


 

[Engel]

Great work! 

Really nice work on the battlecruiser, I might study that built later on for inspiration.