My Origins Haul

Earlier this year, I managed to make it to Origins for part of a day, but was really struggling with an ailment, so didn't stay too long.  Despite being pre-registered there was still a significant wait to get in.  I did manage to get through the dealer room and reinforced Star Fleet and the Klingon Empire a little, courtesy of Lou Zocchi's fine starship models.

In all, I picked up three Klingon D7 cruisers, seven Federations ships (a mix of scouts, heavy cruisers, dreadnoughts, and a tug) and some decals.

I had been concerned that these might no longer be available (and even read as much this past weekend), but need not have worried, as there were plenty to be had.

I had hoped to pick up some other stuff too, but Reaper didn't bring their metal figs (I'm not a big fan of the "Bones" casting material), and a couple others sold out of things that I was wanting, so didn't spend as much as I might have.

There is always a lot of neat stuff to see there, though I wish miniatures had a greater presence.

Anyway, here are pix of a couple of the ships:

A Klingon D-7.

 

My first Federation Scout.

 

All of the Federation ships are multi-piece plastic kits; the Klingon and Romulan ships are both one piece metal castings.  All are very nice quality.  In addition to the ships, he sells decal sets and has a huge range of ship names for the Federation vessels.

 

I'm going to paint the Federation ships in the color from TOS.  I'll be working on these in the near future and will share some pix of them painted, probably around Christmas. 



Revisiting an Old Friend: Star Fleet Battles in Miniature

I received a copy of Star Fleet Battles for Christmas in 1982, played my first game, a fight between a Constitution class heavy cruiser and a Klingon D7, that evening, and a few days later met my now long time friend Craig, who I would battle many hundreds of times in the Star Fleet universe.

SFB became one of the corner stones of the old gaming group, and we would eventually master the game, such that playing 15-30 ships per player with all associated fighters and pseudo-fighters was not a problem.  Only two of us in the old group really went for the Starline 2200 miniatures, and as a result, we only played a few very small battles with miniatures.

SFB was at its peak in our group with the boxed version and the three small expansion sets, it lost some luster with the Captain's edition rulebooks, and went to the back burner as the group members slowly went off in search of education, employment, families, etc.

I've never completely gotten away from SFB, playing the odd game every few years or so, and the occasional game with one of the old group members, usually Craig. 

Over the years, Craig and I had always both intended to pursue SFB in miniature, but it just never came about.  The 120 miles between us, and the interruptions of family and job always pushed SFB back a little longer. A few years ago, I decided to slowly pursue rekindling the SFB miniatures idea on my own.

I went to Origins that year, discovered ADB in the dealers room, and picked up a few packs of ships, I had intended to pick up some Zocchi Starships as well (I had always seen him there in prior years), but could not find him that year.  The rekindling was slowed a little, but didn't die. I  painted a few of the ships, and then they waited in limbo on my paint table for the next step.

The four new ships (Kzinti and Klingon) after

 collecting dust for a couple of years.

I sorted through the rules, and decided to go back to the old boxed version and expansions, chased down the SSDs, and played a couple of games.  In time I found my old miniatures, and started working on a couple of them with expectations of SFB being a Christmas holiday project a couple of years back.  Then we had the basement flood, and SFB went into stasis again.

Well, I waited long enough.  I recently pulled out the old bin of badly abused starships and cried for a little bit.  I don't remember why they ended up in the bin; it was a long time ago. But binned they were.

  
They are now sorted, and on my table awaiting what will be a slow process of refitting for service.

Everything but the Feds.  Bits from three of the FASA ships are located

at the bottom of the second column.  the rest are from Task Force Games

or The Amarillo Design Bureau.

 

...and the Feds.  All TFG/ADB models except for the

Larson class destroyer from FASA, second from the

 bottom in the first column.

 

A few models are from FASA ships, but most are the SFB miniatures. I will probably use the Larson class destroyer for the Feds, and if I find the other parts, the Reliant will be an NCL.  The Bird of prey is just too large a model (should I find the missing bits), and the other Klingon cruiser just doesn't fit in.  I think all of the ships are recoverable, except for one of the Romulan F5s, and the one of the Kzinti cruisers. 

I also just discovered that the local hobby shop deals with the distributor for ADB, so I plan to order the occasional pack of ships from them.  My hope is to build up enough ships to game smaller battles in miniature (maybe up to 25 ships), and do larger battles with counters.  In time, maybe next year, I want to do the (1st) general war again.

Visiting an Old Friend...or Two

A few weeks ago, I had opportunity to visit an old gaming buddy, and re-visit  one of our favorite games from days long gone.

Back in the good old days, when the Cold War was raging, and I had hair on top of my head, I had the good fortune to game with a fantastic group of guys in Canton, Ohio.   For several years, we gamed almost daily, refighting WWII, battling in a Cold War hot,  or Vietnam, Medieval England, etc and brought war to the far corners of the galaxy with Star Fleet Battles.

Yes, Star Fleet Battles, rules upon rules, old rules, new rules, changed rules, and old rules again.  For awhile, keeping up with the rules was trying to keep up with tax law.  But we loved the game.  To go where no man had gone before, and blow it up!!  Eventually Task Force Games fixed the constantly changing and growing rules with the Captain's Edition rulebooks.  Three books of rules in a binder that challenged Empire in tonnage of paper.

For me, the game started with the boxed version circa 1982 and 32 page (wasn't it?) rule book, and hit its peak with the addition of the three soft pack expansions.  The various additions offered by Nexus, the Starletter, and eventually the Captain's log,SFB Supplements, etc never really added much to the game for me.  But one step that I always wanted to make was to game SFB with miniatures.  A couple of us began buying the Starline 2200 miniatures, but there were never enough ship types available to do much in the way of games, at least as far as we were concerned.  The problem was that we were so fluent with the game that 30-50 ships was typical with their compliments of fighters and psuedo-fighters.  It was easy to have 20 or more different ship classes on the table at any given time.

I remember playing only two games with the miniatures, despite our having 60-70 ship models.  Both scenarios were quite small, and not very dynamic.  But the seed had been planted and several of us looked forward to the day that we would line the table (Craig (some of you might know him as Craig of Gaming Models)had a 7'x16' table at one point) with fleets of ships and their accompanying fighters and shuttles.  In time the Captain's rulebooks took a little spark out of SFB for us, the SFB games diminished, and the group broke up as members got married or graduated from college and moved away to new jobs and  lives.

Twenty-four years after our last Star Fleet game with the old group, Craig and I sat down at his table, dusted off  the SFB rules, and tried to remember how to arm disrupters and fusion beams.  We had a grand battle, a couple dozen vessels of the Lyran empire trying to rid the universe of the that nasty infestation known as Hydrans (ugly little tripedal creatures that thrive in a methane rich environment).  A minor miscalculation or seven (got to remember to power up those silly ESG generators next time) and the battle ended it mutually kabloomed annihilation.  I think there were more Hydrans floating in space than Lyrans, but its tough to count, while trying to dodge all of those chuncks of the Lyran fleet.

Anyway, where this is all going, is to miniatures.  Back in the day, I accumulated maybe 40 ships; some built, some painted, some not.  Over the years, I continued to pick up the occasional pack of ships, as they became Starline 2300, and then 2400 miniatures.  

After arriving home from the game a few weeks back, I decided it was time to start working on the long shelved hope to put fleets on the table.   I broke out the boxes of unfinished lead, grabbed a couple of packs and began painting my first miniatures in at least three months and first SFB ships since probably 1985. 

I figured that working with a few ships at a time would result in my not feeling overwhelmed by facing all fifty or so ships at once.  I started with two Kzinti ships, a Medium cruiser and a frigate, and two Klingon, a D-5 cruiser and an F-5 frigate.  The Kzinti are below:

These newer castings had the outrigger drone launchers cast on to the hull, a vast improvement over the old Starline 2200 that had them as separate parts.  And now the first of my Klingon fleet:

I'm still debating whether to paint markings on the models or create decals.  The ships above are pictured on the old Starline 2200 hex paper.

The next batch is four Lyran ships , two DDs, a war destroyer, and a light cruiser.  For the time being, my games will have to be solitaire, unless I can get my daughter into SFB, but eventually after building the fleets a bit, I will get the ships up to Craig's, and we can play SFB as a proper miniatures game.