Here is a blast from the past. Years ago, Games Workshop released a space based game called Battlefield Gothic. While it is no longer available (except as online downloads), a number of buddies and I have rather large collections. We do not dust them off very often, but still enjoy the game when we do play. The game still is one of the most fun games that I have played to represent space based combat. It’s not perfect, but is enjoyable.
As mentioned, I have a number of fleets for the game painted. and… a few not painted…. While reorganizing my storage, I came across one of the fleets and decided to get it done in a simple scheme to at least get it on the shelf!
The ships themselves are not the actual Tyranids that GW did years ago. I did not like the look of their models, so took a pass. I have seen where some people have taken 40k Tyranid bits to make ships. They look OK, but still not my thing. As such, never really went down the path. However, about five years ago, my favorite FLGS went out of business. During the last month, they marked down the inventory to get it sold. When the discounts got to 50%, I found myself buying things that I would have taken a pass on at a higher price. One of the things I noticed though is that they had a decent number of ships for Full Thrust. Specifically, there space aliens. Looking at the ships, I rather liked the look. They gave a Babylon 5 Shadow vibe, so I picked up all the packs. With these in hand, I then walked over to the Babylon 5 ships and found some Shadow cruisers. I was golden. Bought everything and stuck the bag full of blisters in my storage room…
Well, that brings us to a few weeks ago. I took it on my self to re-organize my hobby storage room. Basically, just decided to consolidate things into better boxes and group like items, so they would be easier to find. One of the (many) things I came across was the space ships. Looking them over, I decided they would be a quick win, so pulled them out to work on them one weekend.
I started by getting a pack of long nails and gluing them through GW plastic flight stands. I like the round flight stands for this type of thing, but hate how the plastic rods break off from the miniature, so the easy answer, is to replace the rod with a nail. This ensures the mounting is strong. I then glue a washer to the bottom of the base. This gives it a little weight, so the model does not fall over too easily and makes transport easy, as the washers are magnetic. The hole in the middle is good, as it ensures the nail head on the bottom is recessed.
Once the bases were done, I glued the ships together and then glued them to the bases. I normally would do this after everything was painted, but since I was going for a black shadows look, the base coat would work. I chose a black satin color to give a little bit of a sheen.
Once the spray paint dried, I drybrushed the top of the model with a very dark grey and then hit the top highlights with a medium grey. Hit the top with a satin sealer and whola! Done. The scheme is probably too simple for some, but it fits the bill for what I was looking for. It was also nice to just get something done, which motivates me to work on some other stuff!
- Mantueffel