Star Fleet Battles - Mines and Drones

 In February, I made some mine and drone markers for used with Star Fleet Battles miniatures.  

The Mines are just beads with a straight pin through the center, mounted on my typical fighter stands.  A single bead represents a small mine, with two stacked beads representing a large mine.  I'll probably make some more in different colors to represent captor mines equipped with weapons.

I searched for packs of small missiles, torpedoes, etc, but given that I will ultimately need hundreds of drone markers, I opted to keep the cost down and just make them out of bits of small diameter plastic rod with points sanded on one end.  Kzinti are red, Klingon are their distinctive blue-grey, others will carry the color of their ship hulls.

A tray with 24 small space mines.  
Kzinti drones can be seen in the background.

This tray has 12 large space mines and 12 kzinti mines.

A Romulan Sparrowhawk light cruiser, chased by 
drones and running into a mine field.

Not any great accomplishment as scratch-building goes, but fast and inexpensive.  War is near.

Romulan Fleet for Star Fleet Battles

The Romulans were my favorite race in Star Trek and in Star Fleet Battle for many years.  I've separated the fleet into three groups. The early Romulan "bird of prey" or War Eagle era in SFB, including the various early sub-light designs converted over to warp, once the technology became available.  The Klingon era of ships sold or transferred to Romulan service.  And the new generation of Romulan vessels lead by the Sparrowhawk light cruiser and Skyhawk destroyer.  

My earliest models are the first version of the War Eagle, the Romulan ship depicted in the original Star Trek series. These models mostly date to 1981-82.  And the Condor dreadnaught, which dates to 1983, I think.  More recently I've added various "Hawk" light cruisers, which are actually slightly larger than the War Eagle which became the "standard" cruiser of the Romulan fleet.

Here are some pic of the older Romulan vessels for SFB

War Eagles, the slightly larger Battlehawks (CL) behind 

them, a Condor (DN) rear left and Mauler right rear.

These are all Task Force Games/Star Fleet Battles Miniatures

Though nobody ever sees them, they all have their 

birds of prey on the undersides.

The Klingon ships in Romulan service:

Kf-5R frigates in the lead and and KD-6R cruisers.  

These are old 1982 vintage Task Force Games D-6/7s 

and current (larger) F-5s 

They also got stylized birds of prey on the undersides.

And the newer Romulan Hawks:

Seahawks (FF) and Skyhawks (DD), followed by 

Sparrowhawks (NCL)and a Firehawk.

The current Amarillo Design Bureau miniature for the War Eagle is much larger than the original, which conformed to the animated and original series size.  The Romulan Snipe miniature (frigate class) is roughly the size of the old War Eagle, so I'm going to sculpt a smaller Snipe and cast it to add to my fleet before the Romulans become active in my SFB general war.
 

Star Trek Again

Back in Late 2017, we started a Star Trek campaign for use with Star Fleet Battles rules.  The campaign allowed us to play the General War presented in SFB, Federation and Empire, and Federation Space.  We used a home set of campaign rules for the strategic game, and resolved tactical battles using the Commanders edition/Original boxed SFB and the three soft pack expansions.

We updated a set of home rules that we originally used circa 1985 for the campaign, incorporating new information and the map from Federation & Empire. The campaign was interrupted by Covid, and unrelated family illness, and we finally decided that we'd start over if we wanted to continue with a SFB campaign.

Recently, I've been working on some changes to the campaign rules that we used for that campaign in 2017, including an economic system that forces convoys and supply to bases, and a fighter pilot replacement system that makes fighter loses more important and impactful. 

This will hopefully force greater dispersal of forces, smaller battle fleets, more diverse battles, and a greater burden for losing fighters.  I suspect that it will also slow the campaign down as supply issues catch up to the fleets.  It does add some record keeping, but I'm hoping that it will just add a single convoy/supply sheet for each race.

I'm going to try a solo campaign run to see what needs debugged and how the record keeping works.  I'm going to try to set up a campaign map this weekend with the idea of starting the Lyran-Kzinti war in the next few weeks. The battles will be played with either miniatures or counters, if I can't field the forces in miniature.

Wanderings

 Yesterday, it was September; tomorrow is nearly Christmas.  I don't think I'm doing this whole "experiencing time" thing right.

Despite having plenty of hobby fire, I lost about two months painting my daughter's house and helping them move.  The last two weekends have been catchup, and this weekend we hope to start our Christmas season; otherwise, we'll have to wait until next weekend?

So, I haven't been completely idle all this time, I have managed to paint or update over 80 Dwarves, and I picked up some 15mm Chieftains and Laffly transports for my Cold War British and WWII French.  And somewhere along the way, I received a bunch of West German infantry, though when I got them is kind of foggy, They just sort of showed up at some point, and have been milling about my painting table for some weeks (or maybe months) now.  In any event, I got big plans.

Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to paint more of the Dwarves, maybe finish off the army of around 160 figs, and get a game or two on the table.  I've also got a modified campaign structure set up for a Star Fleet Battles General War Campaign, implementing a more involved supply and economic system.

It is structured to avoid players from abandoning frontiers to assemble a single "sledgehammer force" aimed at opposing capitols.  It forces the player to maintain supply at base stations, starbases, and planets via a convoy system, and immediate loss of new construction points on their loss or lack of supply.  

This will create the possibility of supply/convoy intercepts, and hopefully force more commitment to protecting both convoys and outposts.  Protecting and pointedly destroying freighters will now matter as well as committing resources to building new freighters.  It does create more record keeping, but I've never been too concerned with that, its half of the fun, right?  I may start up the test run before the new year. 

On the year, I've only player three games or there abouts, nothing since Origins in June, but I have painted over a thousand miniatures. So despite the lack of games and blog posts, I am somewhat back into the hobby.

We'll see if I finally can keep things going through the holidays.  Stay safe out there, and hope you have a great holiday season!

Dusting off the Dwarves

I started going through stuff in the basement, trying to purge odds and ends that will just never get used, when I happened on the box with my old GW Dwarves.  This army is a left over from about 30 years ago.  A large number were painted circa 1990-1995, and then a few more might have been added over the next ten years as they got to the table a couple of times facing my daughters Orcs.  

Otherwise, this 150 plus figure army has seen no use, and hasn't been out of the box since probably 2006.

I opened the box, looked at a few of them, and realized just how badly they were painted, which was kind of depressing.  I felt the tug, and briefly thought about completely repainting them, but the nostalgia wont let me, so I decided to finish the unpainted stuff and update some of the others, mostly just adding a little contrast to or details to various figs.

The lost dwarven army.

First I generally sorted them out into the old (I want to say 4th ? edition) GW rules, and started with the Miners.  These were just touch ups thus far.

Generally the figs are in decent shape, though one of them lost the flame to his candle, which I'll fix later.  And, yeah, I've never really been a fan of slotta bases, so they are mounted on .06 inch styrene sheet.

I honestly am not sure of what I'm going to do with them, I mean game obviously, but I have no idea what rules I'll use.  Though right now there is an orc and goblin army lurking somewhere in the basement.  

Additionally, there is some portion of a Tom Meier elven army that's been waiting for paint for a couple of decades (or more) as well.  And I guess my old Celts could join the battlefield if need be.

In any event, thats what I'm paining this week, while working on some the Star Trek campaign rules off and on.

End of the Trek

I spent the weekend more or less wrapping up my Star Fleet Battles miniatures project.  This was what my staging area for painting fighters looked like for Star Fleet Battles last Friday with a touch under half of the fighter painted.  By the end of the weekend, the table was empty.

There actually is a little more to do, the Hydrans still don't have fighters, as I failed to order the proper number of packs, but I am waiting for Trump's tariff thing to get settled out before ordering more.

In any event, I think I finished up 210 fighter miniatures over the three days, in what ended up being a bit of a painting marathon.  Here's a couple of close-ups of Federation and Klingon fighters.

Federation A-10s. The miniatures are from GZG.

These were originally going to be used for 

Klingon Z-2 Fighters, but wil be re-purposed 

as Z-1s as GZG discontinued them.

Paint jobs are pretty basic, and I still have to print the labels, but haven't been able to get the new computer to communicate with the printer yet.  

There are a few other odds and ends to do, the Gorn fleet is short of couple of ships, but will have to wait until I either scratch build them or find older miniatures on Ebay or elsewhere, as I don't care for the newer sculpts of the heavy cruiser or dreadnaught.  Additionally many of the Hydran ships still need their fleet stripe, for which I want to pick up a specific masking tape, as painting free hand did not work out as well as I would have liked.

I'll be getting the fleets out for upcoming games and will share more photos then.

Stay safe out there.

Thinking About Axanar and the Four Years War

I'm doing a good bit of research relating to the Four Years War  (a federation and Klingon War predating Star Trek TOS) from the FASA universe, how that's been expanded on by fans and other parties, and am surprised that it hasn't been more flushed out.  Even within FASA's own development, there seem to be some contradictions or omissions from one source to another.

In my case, I'm trying to adapt it to the Star Fleet Battles game system, which involves some heavy compromises with respect to ship classes and whatnot.  I know the rules inside out, and while I may be the exception to the rule, I've always preferred them to the FASA starship combat simulator. It may simply be a mater of having played SFB first.

I am also pulling in as much of the Prelude to Axanar fanfilm as I can, given that I simply like the ships and the quality of the film is quite inspiring.  Studio Bergstrom makes similar Federation ship models that are quite attractive, and given that I was not a fan of many of the FASA Klingon ship designs in particular, I will be looking to fill some of those slots soon.

I may have to bite the bullet, and scratch-build/cast some of my own models for this, but I hope to keep that to a minimum.

My campaign start out with the FASA version of the war, the events surrounding Axanar and the attack on Arcanis IV (? I think it was), etc., and I intend to start out with a very FASA looking version of a piece of the TFG/StarFleet Games Federation & Empire map.

And currently, the this map is my sticking point.  Trying to adapt the "landmark" planetary systems and bases to the F&E map requires a lot more hexes, a more granular map.  This will also require a different scale of movement than I'm used to in the SFB and F&E game systems.

I'm hoping to rough out a map this weekend, and next week, look at whether any of the SFB Early Years Module ship types can be adapted/adopted for this campaign.

Another consideration is making counters for some of these ships for when the scope of a battle is too broad, or due to the simple lack of certain miniature ships, to play the battles in miniature.  But now I'm getting a few steps ahead of myself.

In any event, that's where I'm at right now in my own little star trek.

Stay safe out there!