Category Archives: Miniatures

Third play test of star ship rules

We ran another play test of the star ship rules for fleet sized games we are working on.  It was Deisho vs Whitestars.  The Deisho proved to be more powerful than they should have been, raining missiles and fighters on the Whitestars and losing far too few ships considering their technological level.

I put up the pictures I took of the game.  The Deisho ships haven't been fully detailed yet.

Lots of good feedback on improving the rules.  I'll post them once we have another playtest, but if you want to see them now, email info at whenimaginationfails dot org and I will send you the version with the latest edits when I add them.

Always paint your ships all at once

Last weekend I prep'd and primed a whole bunch of star ships from Ravenstar's Cold Navy line in a medium gray. I finally got the chance to paint the base coat on a set of six Deisho ships to complement the nine other ships I had painted.

Unfortunately, it had been about half a year since I painted, and the base color, a Floquil dark gray, proved to be darker than the previous attempt and I must have put the color on too thick. The new ships came out in a far darker and more green than the previous try. I compensated by making a wash with water and the Floquil concrete, which lightened the base color but, as expected, left more of the concrete color in crevasses. I solved that problem by painting the crevasses with a dark gray wash.

The effect will be nice once I detail the ships, but I didn't get the base color to match well enough. Hopefully, when I apply the base coat to the third group, it will look more like the first group and not the group I am working on now.

Picture of the PsiCorp Shadow Hunters I finished recently

I finished two PsiCorp Shadow Hunters this week and posted a picture of the two of them at Flickr:

PsiCorp Shadow Hunters

I pretty much used the same technique as I have with other Shadow-like ships:

  1. Spray prime with black;
  2. Paint with several coats of Floquil NATO Black;
  3. Apply a wash of silver multiple times.

I cannot list the paint/water ratio I used, since I adjusted it to be more silver between each coat.  I think I applied at least four coats.  I am more satisfied with this result than what I achieved with the other Shadow ships since the silver is more noticeable.  I photographed it under florescent lights so the lighting conditions aren't the best.