Outnumbered

 

Gaming and Guinness XVIII Logo II

Here's the G&G logo I wound up using after some back-and-forth consultation with Jeff Pitts, my partner in organizing this year's swag. 

Gaming & Guinness XVIII Logo

 This is an early iteration of the logo I designed for the G&G 18 swag. 

Something Stirs in the Depths of Space . . .

It's that time of year again . . . artwork by the amazing Jeff Shyluk. 

Asteroids

I made some asteroids for an upcoming event of uncertain impact. 
 

USS Explorer

Here's another Franz Joseph design from the 1970s, the one-nacelled scout. I wish we'd seen just one of these on screen in the show, but I imagine Joseph probably didn't design it until after the series concluded. It would have been a relatively simple kitbash. 
 

You Have Been Recruited to the Star League

"Greetings, Starfleeter! You have been recruited to the Star League to defend the frontier against Xzzn and the Gorn armada. Are you ready?"

This is a 3D-printed rendition of the Federation dreadnought from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual. My paint job looks absolutely terrible in this close-up, but I promise you it looks quite smooth and even to the naked eye. 

The decals look better, too. I need to stop photographing these models under bad light with my phone. 
 

Written in Sand

Just a little playing with scale, filters, layers, and selection tools in an attempt to create a scene using an Eaglemoss K-7 space station and a 3D-printed Federation tug I painted and decalled myself. Might also serve as inspiration for next year's A Call to Arms: Starfleet scenario at Gaming & Guinness...

USS Equity

In sharp contrast to yesterday's Exemplar, I'm actually pretty happy with how the U.S.S. Equity turned out. The decals are almost where they shoot be, the colours are better than I reasonably manage, and, thanks to a flaw during the 3D printing process, there's even a bit of built-in battle damage on the starboard ventral  dorsal side of the primary hull. I figure the damage control crews had to make some makeshift repairs during combat, resulting in the scar you see here. 

The Exemplar

Not, sadly, an exemplar of modelling or painting skill. Luckily, these little ships always look far better from a distance. 

USS Encke with cargo pods

Here is the USS Encke carrying a pair of cargo pods. I presume the Encke was named for German astronomer Johann Franz Encke. Not at bad legacy. 

USS Encke

Many old-school Star Trek fans will remember one of the early in-universe "non-fiction" Star Trek books, the Starfleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph. Joseph's book included several non-canonical Federation starship designs, the first fans had ever seen that didn't look like the Enterprise. One of those designs was the Ptolemy-class tug, seen here painted by me with decals now firmly in place. This one's called the USS Encke, the name taken straight from the Technical Manual. 

I'm quite happy with how this model turned out. The paint is pretty even, and I managed to position the decals pretty close to where they should be. 

Why does the large cylinder have a different registry number than the main body of the ship? Because this is actually two different ships: the tug, which consists of the main hull (the saucer), the warp nacelles, and the spine extending downward to the cylinder. The cylinder itself is an independent sublight starship, an unnamed passenger liner. This is one of the configurations Joseph illustrates in the Technical Manual; the tug can also carry cargo pods, and I'll post a second version of the Encke to demonstrate tomorrow. 

Fearless Fed Five

Here at last are my very first fully completed Federation miniatures - the original five metal miniatures from the squadron box that Steve ordered for me I don't know how many years ago, now painted and with decals in place.

You can see a slightly bluish cast to these ships, as I originally tried to emulate the sort of off-green look of the ships on the original show. Alas, my efforts resulted in denim-blue ships, so I painted over them with shades of grey. 

Excalibur Escorts

Here's my flagship, the U.S.S. Excalibur, with a robot ore freighter and and old Daedalus-class starship. Poor Excalibur is off-kilter because I drilled the hole for her stand incorrectly. 

Enterprise and Exeter

More "e" ships, including "The Big E" herself, the U.S.S. Enterprise. To her right is the Exeter. Once again, we see the difference between the 3D printed model at left and the die-cast metal version at right. You can also see an improvement (such as it is) in my painting skills, as I painted the Exeter quite some time ago and the Enterprise only recently. Actually, it looks like poor Enterprise needs some touching up...but I don't know if I'm brave enough to try now that I've applied her decals. 

Eris and Edmonton

Here are two more finished miniature starships for A Call to Arms: Starfleet. On the left we have the U.S.S. Eris, a dreadnought (though not as powerful as the three-nacelled dreadnought), and the U.S.S. Edmonton, an "old light cruiser," as the game calls it. These two ships are from the first small squadron I purchased; they're made of metal and had to be assembled as well as painted. These metal ships are more detailed than the ones I've had 3D printed, so they have more texture, but it's also more difficult to apply decals to some surfaces. 

Why Eris and Edmonton? Well, since this was my (Earl's) first squadron, I chose ship names that all begin with the letter "e." 

Two Enigmas

Some time ago, I wrote about the U.S.S. Enigma, a Constitution-class variant capable of cloaking, a tool of the nefarious Section 31. Originally, I had envisioned the black ship you see at right as the ship's standard look; when it cloaked, I was going to swap the black ship for a non-painted, translucent model. This was Steve's suggestion, and while I love it (and could in fact still do it), I really wanted a version of the ship that could masquerade as a legitimate Federation vessel. So here's the U.S.S. Enigma in standard Starfleet livery. I now imagine the black ship as the cloaked version, but since it's not truly invisible (as the translucent model would have implied), maybe this, in-universe, could represent a more or less powerful cloaking device than the standard Romulan model. 

More importantly, I'm getting better at applying these finicky little decals. 

USS Flin Flon

Here's another finished starship for A Call to Arms: Starfleet. This time it's the U.S.S. Flin Flon, NCC-1969. This time around, the decals on the nacelles and dorsal side turned out a bit better than the feature decal on the ventral side of the saucer. As you can see, it's somewhat misaligned, but when I got it into this position I figured I'd better stop or risk ruining the decal. It should look fine on the playing surface anyway. 

Constitution and Eagle

I've finally applied decals to some of my models for A Call to Arms: Starfleet. Here are the Constitution and Eagle. Applying the decals is slow, frustrating work; they're tiny, and the starships have weird angles and obstructions that make it a challenge to get the decals in the right spot. Plus, as I feared, I painted the ships such a dark colour that the black and red decals don't show up very well against certain parts of the hulls. Fortunately, they look okay on the saucers, which is important since this is where the ships are identified. 

Two Little Ships

During this holiday break, I also painted a couple of very small ships, to scale with the fleet I posted the other day: a DY-100 of the style used by Khan to escape Earth, and an early Starfleet vessel of the Daedalus class. I don't have stats for these ships, so they'll probably wind up as objectives in our A Call to Arms: Starfleet games.