Broken Stars & Burning Ships: July 2017

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Studio Bergstrom's Britannia-class battlecruiser for Full Thrust

Just a quick post highlighting a recent purchase from Studio Bergstrom's Galactic Patrol range, inspired by the 1984 Lensmen anime. This is the Britannia-class battlecruiser, the "hero ship" of the movie.

The model is about 3" long, cast in two pieces, the main hull and asmaller engine cap at the rear that fits snugly and smoothly in place. Quite a durable design despite all the little fins.

The overall sculpting style reminds me of the Battlespace/Aerotech range from Iron Wind Metals, mostly due to the fins and hull detailing.

I've stuck with a fairly plain color scheme to honor the original inspiration, but you could obviously go wild with picking out all those small panels and details in different colors, striping the fins, etc.

In Full Thrust terms I'd rate her as a fair-sized battlecruiser. The anime (unlike the books) doesn't give the Britannia her signature experimental weapon, nor does she appear to be particularly undergunned for conventional combat. The stats below use the playtest rules for the UNSC, including grasers and three-row hulls. See here for details: http://star-ranger.com/UNSCpreview.htm

Britannia-class Battlecruiser

Mass 104

NPV 394 / CPV 398

Thrust 6 q 3 q

FTL q

Screen-1 q

3 Fire Control Systems qqq

3 Point Defense Systems qqq

4 Graser-1 (360 degree arcs) qqqq

1 Pulse Torpedo (180 degree front arc) q

30 Hull

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Galactic Patrol battlecruisers are built for close-range fighting, using their high thrust to close rapidly at odd angles before lighting up their targets with massed fire from their broad-arc graser turrets. They also carry a pulse torpedo launcher for added damage output and a bit of sniping potential. If you want to experiment with some tech-sloshing, you could trade out the pulse torp for a Phalon plasma bolt launcher and an extra PDS mount. Personally I think it's a more interesting design, but it breaks a whole bunch of Full Thrust's rules, loosely defined as they generally are. For balance you might want to declare the ship's screens to be inactive on any turn it actually launches a bolt.

Britannia-class Battlecruiser (Bolt Variant)

Mass 104

NPV 394 / CPV 398

Thrust 6 q 3 q

FTL q

Screen-1 q

3 Fire Control Systems qqq

4 Point Defense Systems qqqq

4 Graser-1 (360 degree arcs) qqqq

1 Plasma Bolt Launcher-1 (180 degree front arc) q

30 Hull

qqqqpqqqqp

The Britannia miniature is available from Studio Bergstrom here: https://studiobergstrom.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=92

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Dropfleet Commander Space Station sprues & parts guides

There don't seem to be many images of these online, so here are images of the parts guide/assembly instructions (more like "vague suggestions" really) from the Dropfleet Commander space station kit.

The box set comes with the guide sheet and two frames worth of the elaborate Dropfleet Commander bases, including their required labels, tracking pegs, flight posts, and widgets. There are six 50mm bases and eight 35mm ones, although any of them will work reasonably well for any size station. That's probably enough to give you a couple of spares even if you really stretch your parts out over smaller builds. You can easily get eight to ten good-sized builds out of one box, and twelve is not a huge stretch. This is what I built out of my first box, with only a few bits left over for future projects.

There are also four identical frames of actual model parts, which you can see photographed from both sides below.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Dropfleet Commander Space Station Builds - A Gallery

Hawk Wargames' Space Station boxed set may be the best starship gaming product I've ever encountered. It was made as part of the Dropfleet Commander launch Kickstarter, but it has uses in virtually any space combat gaming rules set and beyond. Not so much a kit as a very deep toolbox for putting together an infinite number of variant buildups, it's got unmatched modularity and can easily be integrated with leftover parts from their other kits for even more utility. I'm going to be posting images of painted buildups as I finish them, so this post will be getting updated from time to time. It's also likely to get rather image-intensive, so my apologies to anyone who has problems with that.

As of 10/14/2019, the images here represent builds from most of nine boxes worth of station kits, although there are two more large and complex designs to come and over a dozen stations of various types that I've laboriously duplicated for commission customers over the last few years. I still have quite a few parts left over, but there's not a single hub or main section remaining right now.

Without further ado and in no particular order, here are the builds I've completed so far:

These barely qualify, since they're mostly kitbashes using parts from my bits box, but the guns are from Dropfleet Commander, so I'll stick them over here with their kinfolk.

Alchemist-class Industrial Synthesizer Ship - background fluff and many more photos here:

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2019/06/dropfleet-commander-alchemist-class.html

Rogue AI warship Anathema Imperialis - background fluff and many more photos here:

http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2019/06/battlefleet-gothic-anathema-imperialis.html

Orbital Defense Missile Platform Cluster & Sensor/Guidance Station

Battlefleet Gothic Defenses - Lance, Gun, and Missile Platforms

Station Crimson-3

Blue Steel Station

Pirate starships by Ground Zero Games

Two Planetary Blockade Platforms

Large Orbital Battle Fortress

Saturn-7 Refinery Complex

401st Sector Command Station

Medium Spinner Station

Industrial Platform Cluster #2

Industrial Platform 6

Industrial Platform 7

Industrial Platform 8

Industrial Platform 9

Pirate ships by Ground Zero Games

Ziggurat Station

Refueling Station Diamond-Nine

(this is a bit of a cheat, since this is actually a converted Kerebos Station from Brigade Models, but since some of the added parts are from the DfC station kit I thought I'd sneak it in here)