Showing posts with label Silent Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silent Death. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Silent Death: Worm Pods

 

Found some more ten year old images, this time a squadron of Silent Death figs I'd forgotten about.

These are sold as Worm Pods.


In Silent Death they're fancy boarding pods, delivering bio-engineered crew-killers to enemy ships - which is how the Night Brood dealt with the much larger human warships.


Unsurprisingly, I mostly used them for Tyranid escorts in Battlefleet Gothic or as smaller astrofauna in Full Thrust and Starmada.


If I had them to do over again I'd probably go with a color scheme that makes them look less like the unholy spawn of Cthulhu and a cabbage, but a decade ago it seemed like a good idea.  


I've also added these images to my old Silent Death gallery for completeness.


Saturday, September 7, 2019

Full Thrust Arrow of Heaven-class Battleship

Today's post carries on from an older one where I showcased Ground Zero Games' Islamic Federation starship range, along with some suggested stats and background fluff.  You can see the original post here:
 
 
 
I had some comments saying they didn't like my take on the fleet, preferring the missile-heavy version over here:
 


Now I'd already done a very missile-intensive force using the Brigade Models' EuroFed ships didn't really want to do another, and I liked the idea of a fast, fragile, shorter-ranged force with direct fire weaponry.  Still, I guess there's room in my own version of the IF fleet for a proper missile ship, and I had some parts around to kitbash one.

 
So, behold, the Arrow of Heaven class missile battleship!  The model has been kitbashed out of parts from the stock build of the IF carrier and mounted on a 2.25" base (which might be a bit excessive, but it's certainly stable).

 
Arrow of Heaven class Battleship
 
A newer design dating from just before contact with the Kra'Vak, the Arrow of Heaven class is still fairly rare in the IslamaFed navy.  Built as a specialized missile platform, she carries five heavy missile tubes fed by a single huge internal magazine, backed with a modest array of medium weight beam emitters.  The vessel's great standoff capability makes he ideal for planetary siege and blockade duties, although she can also serve well as a heavy raider.  The lack of the ubiquitous IF fusion cannons makes her harder to use in fleet actions, but with the advent of the Xeno War it's been found that her massive missile payload is excellent at draining the supply of Kra'Vak scattergun charges, leaving their ships open to other friendly fighters and salvo missiles. 



Mass 121 NPV 425 / CPV 450
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3 Fire Control Systems qqq
3 PDS qqq
5 Heavy Missile Launchers (F/FP/FS) qqqqq
Ammunition Magazine (15 Heavy Missiles qqqqqqqqqqqqqqq) q
5 Beam-2 (F/FP/FS) q (F/FP/AP) qq (F/FS/AS) qq
2 Beam-1 (360) qq
1 Armor, 28 Hull
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Several Arrows have been lost in action including the first-in-class ship, seen here as a drifting hulk after an encounter with a Kra'Vak fleet that riddled her with K-gun rounds.

 
The shattered hulk was evacuated of survivors then left behind in TZX-7798, an uninhabited system in the Outer Rim. 

 
Her exact course was carefully recorded with an eye towards eventual recovery and refurbishment.

 
While this might have seemed a bit optimistic considering the damage inflicted, there was at least a certainty that her magazine (still mostly loaded) was undamaged and the payload of expensive ship-killer misiles could be salvaged.

 
Eight months later the Rami Alsiham, another Arrow class ship, was on detached raiding duty against Kra'Vak and Phalon fleet elements when she found herself on the run with empty magazines.  She had been made aware of the original Arrow of Heaven's last known location and vector and her captain elected to attempt to salvage a reload from the wreckage.
 
 
While the hulk was located without great effort, the Rami Alsiham found more than she'd expected.  The heretofore unknown xenofauna that was "grazing" on the remains of the Arrow proved to be more than a minor complication.

 
The smaller bases on the hulk and the solar worm are 50mm, the battleship is on a 60mm.

 
 

Friday, September 6, 2019

Silent Death Gallery

Had the opportunity to paint a few Silent Death miniatures so I though setting up a gallery for the line might be a good idea.  The range is a big one and well-sculpted but it doesn't get as much online exposure as it deserves, to the point where many people don't realize the figures are still readily available.  The Metal Express web store is still going strong, and as reasonably priced as always:
 
 
Anyway, here's the gallery so far.  I'll hopefully be adding more as time allows.

Half a dozen Worm Pods, a Night Brood mini that delivers killer bio-organisms to enemy vessels as a boarding party.








 
Muckworm formation, a Night Brood design.  Used these guys as Tyranid proxies for a few years.  Never could decide which end was supposed to be the front.  They're small (those are 1" diameter GW bases) but at $1.75 each they're still quite a bargain. 
 



 
The Revenge, a torpedo boat.  Another example of an SD mini that makes a great larger warship in games like Full Thrust or High Guard.  This one has a Traveller vibe to it for me, with an obvious ventrally-mounted spinal weapon.
 



 
Pharsii II heavy fighter.  Like this one as a Star Wars setting craft, personally.
 



 
Star Raven gunboat.  I like this one as a capital ship for Full Thrust and the like.  It's also one of the rare designs where you could call either end "front" and have it look plausible - being pulled along by warp nacelles in front, for example.
 



 
Shryak Shuttle, a personal favorite.  Makes a great, well, adventurer's shuttle, as well as a nice ground attack craft.
 



 
Dracula fighter, one of the more recent designs.
 



 
Sorenson II, one of my favorite SD sculpts.  It's got a distinct pulp scifi feel to it and would look right at home in an early Buck Rogers newspaper strip, and I've painted it to suit.  If you assume the cockpit is a bridge dome or protomic ray turret or something it makes another fine "adventurers' starship" model, especially since it has a kind of obvious boarding ramp on the belly.
 



 
Seraph heavy fighter.  Simple no-nonsense design, and easily modified to add more obvious weapons (eg a dorsal turret) or replace the cockpit, which is the only feature that really suggests scale.
 



 
Epping gunboat, one of the smaller of the type.  The nearly vertical nose pod brings to mind the Slave-1 from Star Wars, although the rest of the hull is more aircraft-like.  Could still be a small patrol ship for roleplaying games, maybe some kind of customs ship.
 



 
The Beta Fortress, a gunboat design.  This is one of many sculpts that make good "adventurer ships" for roleplaying games like Star Wars, Firefly, Traveller, etc.  Big enough that it's obviously not a one-man fighter but with detailing that indicates it isn't a giant capital ship either.  Just the thing for a bunch of dodgy space entrepreneurs to fly around and break the law in.
 
 
The model runs $6.50 through Metal Express, a bit above average for the range.  It's bigger than most though, about on par with a medium cruiser fig from one of the Full Thrust ranges.

 
You'll have to pardon the striping, it does make it a little hard to see the shape of the mini itself.  Hopefully there are enough angles to make it out okay.



 
Another gunboat, this time the Drakar.  A bit smaller than the Beta but also only $3.25, which is pretty typical for the range.  I like the curvy sleek design, it looks very advanced and a bit alien at the same time.
 
 
This is another "adventurer ship" for me, likely a mercenary or bounty hunter pursuit ship.




 
The Solar Worm - one of my favorite astrofauna minis, a category which isn't well covered in general.  At $8 it's one of the more expensive figs in the line, but it's quite large and comes in two parts plus a variable number of mouth tendrils.  I used two here, but there are sockets for three and you could drill more.  I've also given it a custom 50mm base instead of the twin 1" bases it comes with as stock. 
 




 
Baker's Dozen, a mercenary starfighter wing composed of a mix of Blood Hawks and Eagles.  The Eagles are the larger heavy assault designs, the Blood Hawks the smaller craft.
 


 
Bellies done in a "cloudy sky" scheme to make them harder to spot for the groundpounders.