Sunday Starships: A fistful of fighters

I completed some of the fighters in my painting queue.  These are Terran Comet and Meteor starfighters from Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights along with some Federation Intruder IID scouts and Vigilante IIIC interceptors from Stardate: 3000.

I painted these dozen Intruders and the trio of Vigilantes to match the other ships of my civilian fleet.  I'll use these as shuttles, support craft, small transports, or even fighters if I use my civvies as pirates.

Since most of my Terran fighters were already painted in some sort of red design when I got them via ebay, I painted these Meteors to match the carriers in the color scheme of my Terran White Fleet.

However, I also wanted to see how some starfighters would look in the colors of my Terran Red Fleet, so I went ahead and did these Comets with that scheme instead.

I primed all these fighters black, then drybrushed in the trio of colors for each fleet.  I also wanted to paint some other fighters and ships, but I was priming them gray when the spray can stopped working, even though it was more than half full.  It's not clogged, and it's not empty, but it's not dispensing paint.  Looks like a trip to the hardware store is in order.

Where do y'all get your primers?  Standard hardware store paints like Krylon or Rustoleum, or do you go for the pricier cans from game stores?

"Look at the bones, man!"

I found some of Reaper's new Bones line of plastic miniatures during a visit to Dibble's Hobbies in San Antonio this weekend.  I'd read about how cheap they are, and how they're supposed to be easy to paint up--no priming required! 

I've been wanting to buy the the pack of kobolds for some time, but until now I never saw them at other game stores.  So when I saw the package for three-and-a-half bucks, I grabbed it.  Then I decided that I didn't want to cost the store more in credit card processing fees than my purchase, so I also picked up this ogre chieftain for another two-fifty.  Six bucks for a swarm of little dog-men and their large friend isn't too bad.

I'm gonna see if these figures live up to the hype, and try painting them without using primer first.  I'll let y;all know how it turns out.

More Holmes D&D rules-lawyering

Time for another nitpick of the Dungeons & Dragons basic set from 1978.  Did you know that this ruleset allows magic-users to cast cleric spells?  OK, it lets M-Us cast the equivalent of certain cleric spells from scrolls, but that got your attention, didn't it?

How does this work?  The Scrolls subsection of the TREASURE section of the book lists, in addition to the selections for a cursed scroll and various protection spells, entries to pick "Any potion spell" with a couple of exceptions, "Any ring spell" (likewise), and "Any wand spell."  So there's a chance your magic-user could find--and use--a scroll with a spell of Healing based on the potion or staff, the magical equivalent of the clerical Cure Light Wounds spell.

Of course, a good rules lawyer could argue that the Holmes scroll rules encompass all cleric spells as well.  Here's how: some of the other entries for the type of scroll are "Any one spell," "Any two spells," or "Any three spells."  And here's where it gets interesting.  In the EXPLANATION OF MAGIC ITEMS regarding scrolls, Holmes instructs the dungeon master, "Select the spells from the appropriate list by some random method."  Therefore, I would roll a to see which book of spells the scroll contains, M-U levels 1-3 or clerical spells levels 1-2, and then roll to see which spell.  You might argue that since Holmes allows only magic-users to read scrolls (other than protection scrolls), the "appropriate list" means only magic-user spells, I read "appropriate" as the lists mentioned in the table: character spells, potion spells, ring spells, and wand spells.

What about elves?  I'd argue that since "Elves progress in levels as both fighting men and magic-users," they can use magic scrolls.

Which reminds me--according to Holmes, "The spells written on the scrolls can be read only by magic-users, except for the protection spells."  If we interpret that strictly, that means that only M-Us (and elves, who progress as M-Us) are affected by cursed scrolls.

Your thoughts?  Would you run a game this way, with cursed scrolls only affecting magic-users?  What about scrolls with clerical spells?  Allow them at all?  And if you do, allow clerics to use them, or only magic-users? 

Or am I the only one who thinks about these things?

Work in progress: Fghters

I was able to spend some time Wednesday at the table, assembling stands of fighters for priming.  I was able to get quite a few based, but believe it or not I still have a great deal to go.

In addition to some Terran fighters for Starfleet Wars/Galactic Knights, I put together some stands of pursuit ships from Stardate: 3000--both the human faction and the alien forces (the aliens are the ones with the bug-eyed look).  At first I thought about painting these alien pursuit ships as Entomalians, but I decided that they have the right look to supplement my Vogon Construction Fleet, so they'll be getting a coat of that road crew orange someday.

What about all y'all?  For those of you who had the Fourth off, did you have a chance to work on anything?  What's on your workbench?

Happy Independence Day!

It's time for the fleet's annual Independence Day flyby.  Happy Fourth of July from Super Galactic Dreadnought!

For those of you in the U.S., enjoy your holiday commemorating our French-assisted victory over the British by eating German food and detonating Chinese pyrotechnics!

Vintage ad: McEwan Miniatures

Thumbing through my copy of The Best of The Dragon (vol.1), I stumbled across this advertisement for McEwan Miniatures.  While some of the figures for aliens and Terran Marines seemed slightly derivative of mass media offerings, the spaceships piqued my interest.

I don't have any of these designs, and I've never seen any in person or for sale on ebay.  Did anyone ever own any of these McEwan Miniatures starships?

Sunday Starships: Pics from the playtest

Just to give you an idea of how many ships we had on the table: