From ByronM - Dropfleet Commander UCM Starter Fleet (67 Points)

Here is my second post of the day, and the first of two completely game playable armies that I will be posting today.  After taking a week off with no submissions (other than my theme week entry), I had to kick myself into gear as I was obviously slacking off too much....

Dropfleet Commander is a game I have been really excited about for a long time (since I first heard about it a few years back), and one that I just had to get.  I backed the kickstarter for it big time, and while there were several MAJOR issues with the kickstarter and everything is not sorted out still (How hard is it to email back to people and sort out missing items....) the game and the figures are very good. I just wish that Hawk Wargames put even 10% as much effort into actually communicating to people and fixing issues as they put into the game and figs to start with.  I don't they realize that no matter how good something is, if they piss everyone off, no one will support it! 

Anyway, rant mode off, Hawk Wargames in general is very good at making unique items and cool rules, and almost entirely done by one guy! 

So, onto the models....

Wow... (not for my paint job, which is basic as hell, but for the models) Ever since I first saw these UCM ships I wanted them.  To me they look like a cross between a B5 and Battlestar Galactica type aesthetic.  Making them look completely real and believable as human space craft in my mind. 

I have been struggling with these models since the challenge started.  Not because I didn't know how to paint them, but because I couldn't figure out how to get a look I liked for an effort per ship that I was ok with.  One of the ships above has been re-painted 4 times....  The first time I got 1/4 of the way done and it had taken almost 3 hours, too much time when you have about 30 ships to do!  The second time, it looked too chalky, the was too long again, then finally I decided to go with something purely for gaming, and not worry too much about it being amazing (which is what I wanted, but was trying to get paint time to less than 2 hours per big ship). 

This final scheme / method is fast and has a high visibility on the table, but kinda falls apart up close.  At tabletop distances though it looks really good, and paints fast enough that I will not get pissed off with all the time it would take to do it a super detailed way and stop painting them! 

In the end the paint method was airbrush the ships black, then fade in lighter grey over the whole top of the ship at an angle to pick up some detail, than fade in a light grey along the edge of the top to provide some contrast.  I then gloss coated the whole ship and let it dry.  I then mixed some black artist oil paint with a lot white spirits to make a thin pin wash.  Done this way you just touch a panel line and it literally runs through the whole line.  I let this dry and then pulled out a secret weapon tool that Greg showed me about 2 years ago....

Gaianotes.com g-06 finish master

These things are amazing.  Think of them as hard q-tips.  They are almost solid, so do not deform into panel lines.  You simply let the oil paint dry, then wet these with thinner and wipe over the model, and it cleans up anything then you slipped up on.  They are pure magic for this kind of stuff, you don't even have to try to be clean, just slap the wash on, let dry, wipe off.  It saves SOOOO much time its amazing.  Sure, you loose some having to gloss coat before you do this and to dull coat after, but its so worth it.

Anyway, once all the panel lines were all done, it was time to edge highlight the outer panels, and then paint in some accent panels.  Lastly, I painted all the little close defense guns on the ships and the engines silver, and then washed them with an armour wash, and called them done.

While the ships did not turn out as the show pieces I had set out to paint them as (I had visions of doing them as show type pieces, silly me), they did turn out pretty nicely and in a time per ship I am happy with.  I still have about 8 capital ships and 16+ frigates to do for my UCM forces so doing anything super detailed would take too long.  These 10 ships done in this method (once I figured it out) took less than 8 hours (and I think less than 6), which I can deal with.

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Lovely work Byron. These are terrific looking spaceships. 

I'm constantly amazed at the amount of technical 'stuff' that you guys do with your vehicles, but the results speak for themselves. That Q-Tip thingy looks very cool and gives a great effect. 

The high-contrast between the grey and white on the ships is both very striking and I can see how they would be distinctive on the tabletop as well.

So, Byron, what is the fleet that opposes this one? Are they already done or will we get to see them this Challenge?

Great work Mr. M!

From SamuliS: Dropfleet Commander PHR (54 Points)

With Christmas over and the tour of relatives done it's time to get back into painting. About 700 years into the future from my last entry with a set of PHR starships from Hawk's new Dropfleet Commander game.

Spaceships have always facinated me and I did love Battlefleet Gothic back in the day and have been playing X-Wing and Armada in the last few years. So when Hawk announced their Dropfleet Commander Kickstarter I immediately had to put in a pledge for a couple of fleets. With the Kickstarter being massively popular (around 550k gathered just from the Kickstarter and a lot more from late backers) I wasn't too surprised when they didn't make their original June/July goal. With packages starting to ship out in late September I was hoping to get in early, but apparently Finland wasn't too high on the list and I only got my package a few days before Christmas as did most other guys here that I know who participated.

I'd caved in already in November after seeing painted ships popping up everywhere and ordered two PHR starter fleets as I was only getting a small force of them from the Kickstarter. I finished those a few weeks ago and now that I have my Kickstarter loot it was time to paint up some reinforcements to allow me to play full sized games.

What we have here is the Kickstarter exclusive Battlecruiser Leonidas alongside one starter sets worth of ships, 3 Cruisers and 4 Frigates. They are pretty darn massive with even the small frigates being slightly larger than 28mm infantry and the Battlecruiser being the size of a smaller 28mm tank and clocking in at about 15 cm length. No idea what points they should yield, I'll leave that to our gracious Snowlord Mr. Campbell.

 

These ships are pretty darn big!

PHR seems to have two different playing styles available to them. Most of their ships have enormous broadsides and fight a bit like sailing ships did. On the other hand they also have the best launch assets in the game with very powerful bombers. Originally I felt drawn towards the broadside way of fighting, but after a few test games it seems very tricky getting it right, so I ended up building a few more carriers for the force from this third set of ships.

Leonidas class Battlecruiser and Bellerophon class Heavy Cruiser

Paint scheme wise I tested out multiple different ones trying out different camo schemes, hexagon effects etc. before finally just settling for a clean airbrushed blue surface with light modulation with lighter blue towards the front and back ends of the ships. With large clean surfaces it just seemed to work much better for me. I might still try some decals on them, but have yet to find nice looking ones. Tau decals from GW seem pretty nice, but I still need to source some to try them out.

 Ikarus class Vanguard Carrier alongside a Theseus class Light Cruiser

They take surprisingly long to paint up. The airbrush phase is actually pretty fast only taking a few minutes per ship, but boy is it hard to get metallic paint into every nook and cranny as there's just so much small raised detail everywhere. Even now from the close ups I've noticed I actually missed a couple of spots on the Battlecruiser that I have to go and fix. And with the metal parts done picking out the tens of 'Gravity nullifiers' on those positioning wings is a pain in the a**. Still it's definitely worth the extra effort to make them pop out, even if it meant that most of the painting time on these goes into such a small thing.

 Two Europa class Frigates and two Medea class Strike Carriers

With these out of the way  it's back to Flames of War. The missus is out of town for a few days with our little warhound so I have the house all to myself and some quality painting time ahead of me. No interruptions outside of a Dropfleet game scheduled  for tomorrow so I'm hoping to be able to crank out a couple of more entries this week.

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Terrific work Samuli!  Your airbrushing really did a lovely job on these ships - That blue that you've used is very sharp. I'm a Star Wars: Armada man myself, but I'm quite taken by the sweeping elegance of these ships. I particularly like the long fins that you've highlighted with the orange running lights. 

I'm going to score the smaller frigates and strike carriers as 5 each, the Vanguard Carrier and Light Cuiser as 7s and the larger ships as 10s. So that comes to 54 points. Well done!