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Thursday 27 December 2012

Post Christmas FSA Present

Well Happy Christmas (or whatever alternative "winter" holiday you celebrate)!

I meant to post this up before, but of course this time of year is incredibly busy, so it had to wait until now.

What I've done is to create some alternative ship stat cards, specifically for printing in black and white (originally as an output source for Army Builder). Once done, I thought it would be worthwhile sharing these more widely.

I know others have done alternative ship stat cards in the past, but they mess with the traditional order of ship stats and I prefer the "original" order. I also wanted to include MARs, not have too big a card and show weapons in a standard format. I like the idea of showing weapons where they are on the ship too.

So that's what I did. 139 times. So here's the full current ship list of stat cards in PDF format. Have a great holiday.

https://www.box.com/s/ruyifxplfcrsp0scwo6b

Saturday 22 December 2012

Relthoza Dreadnought The Fang of Turu'Duth

Have had this painted for a long time, but as I mentioned in prior posts, had issues with taking decent photos of it. Since then, I've got a new camera (a Pentax K-m DLSR), so thought it was about time I got it posted. Here she is, the Fang of Turu'Duth;

Joining the dots - Linking models, stats and ship design

So many will know already that I upgradede the Excel Custom ship Creator for Firestorm Armada, and ship design has always been an interest for me since I first picked up Megatraveller way back in the 1980s. Creating a ship that's useful without being overpowered in FSA is pretty easy, but the rules are rather simplistic and very open to abuse, and there's little in them for a designer to balance in terms of weapons, speed, power etc.

Now the standard ship creation rules are fine for what they do, but I also like my sci-fi to have a relatively high "suspension of belief" factor for me. So, whilst I can fully accept things like warp drive, fold-space drive etc (which are all based on extrapolations of our current understanding of physics), I don't like lazy SF devices like "the alien ship was almost indestructible because it's hull was made of a new element - impervium". That's just daft, and is the sort of pulp sci-fi engine that comes straight out of the '50s.

Now one of the best things about SGs FSA are the excellent models - chunky things with lots of detail. What sometimes irks me about SG though, is the seeming lack of connection between the model sculpt and the game stats, and there are MANY examples of this in the game. Just a couple of examples - the retro MAR for the Directorate is reinforced fore (which applies to all Large/Medium models), yet the Tormentor R&D cruisers fore looks pretty unprotected and vulnerable. The Ba'kash ships all have arms and can be open or closed - this has no effect on their stats, and their best arcs are port/starboard, despite the arms being here and the cetral section revelaed appears to have a weapon...

Again, people who follow my blog and/or posts on the SG community will know I'm a statistics/Excel/analysis nutter, and things like this both bug me and seem to cry out for a solution. As the models are quite clear on their detail, it's pretty easy to pick out details like weapons (or apparent weapons). Take the Terran ships as an example of what I'm menaing - the Fixed Fore weapons on th Razorthorn, Apollo, Titan, Pilgrim, Sentinel etc are all very clear - the Razorthorn & Apollo have 2, the Titan 3 etc. Looking at their stats you can then work out the apparent weapon strength per weapon, and so class them together - so an Apollo, Razorthorn and Titan all use the same main large Fixed fore mass drivers, jus the Titan links together three rather than two. It's thus possible to have a set of base stats for a Large Terran Mass driver to use in other designs - you see where I'm going with this?

With a suite of common weapons, then drives, PD systems, hulls etc, it would be a much richer and more interesting design system, and can be tailored for different races strengths. I've started this process, and it works well for some, not so well for others. It will involve some compromises and stat changes, but I'm not averse to that to produce a deeper, more immersive and more tied-in system. I'll post some specifics and updates as I go along.

Friday 21 December 2012

FSA Scenario - The Battle for Halfway Station

Next up in my Christmas bonanza is a scenario-project I've spent a fair bit of time on recently, a conversion of the Battle of Midway for FSA. There were several barriers to this - it's not a straightforward "just chuck these ships in a battle" kind of thing, because Midway really demonstrated the shift in naval power away from the capital class battleship and cruiser, and over to carrier-bourne air superiority - this is really the opposite philosophy to FSA as a game!.

As such, range is the big thing - in FSA your primary weapon ranges cover up to 32", so there's little of the board that's safe from a gunned-up capital ship. in contrast, the Japanese at Midway had a couple of battleships in the first carrier force that never really got a chance to use their big guns - all the action was between fighters, bombers and what they attacked. The decisive section of the battle took minutes out of an engagement spread over a few days, and luck was a huge factor.

So, the two main things were range and wings. Range was taken care of by reducing range bands to 2" instead of 8", and reducing all ships movement to 2" (there wasn't much difference between a carrier and a destroyer in terms of speed) - this figure arrived at by comparison of wing and ship movement, keeping the wing movement as a standard.

Ship stats I created by looking at all the ships involved in the main action (those of the First Carrier Force for the Japanese and Task Force 16 & 17 for the Americans) and comparing mass, armour, weapons (number, type & effectiveness) etc - that took the most of the time involved in the project, as it meant a lot of research and source data mining

Next up were wings - movement was already sorted, but one of the main strategic parts of the real battle was in terms of being able to keep effective wing combat cover, balanced with offensive capability. Many ships on both sides had to ditch through lack of fuel without a ready landing platform in range. In FSA, wings have no "range". In addition, the American fighters of the time were outclassed by the Zero (an imbalance that didn't take long to rectify, but nevertheless was very apparent early in the conflict). So I needed a way to represent the endurance of the wings, and create the possibility of a log-jam of wings needing to be recovered/rearmed/relaunched.

Doing this with different stats for the FSA equivalents of the US & Japanese fighters meant that some of this could be represented in the game, and as accurately as possible reflect differences in the two sides capabilities.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with what I came up with as a first draft, but it obviously needs playtesting to determine if & what needs tweaking, so feel free as always to try & comment! Here it is;

FSA Battle of Halfway Station

Thursday 20 December 2012

Civilian Ships in FSA

OK, I admit it, civilian ships in FSA have bugged me since v1 - they're way too powerful for me to represent standard civilian designs, and a civilian fleet could actually be a force to be reckoned with, which I think is just a tad absurd.

As always, this got me thinking exactly what I would like civilian ships in FSA to look like, and came up with the following - now shared for your enjoyment.

Alternative Civilian Ship Rules & Stats

Wednesday 19 December 2012

Christmas is coming...and so are the Relthoza!

So less than a week until Christmas now, and things are definately getting more festive in our household...the tree, decorations, cards, invites to plays and Christmas drinks etc....

So, as a festive update, I'll be posting some things I've worked on over the past few weeks over the next few days - hope they're of interest!

The first is the Relthoza Trapdoor Hunter-Killer. I wanted to create a ship in FSA which had more of a submarine feel to it than the Destroyer type currently officially in play. To me a Destroyer is a ship that has a specific protective AA/Anti-sub role in a fleet, more like the Escorts in FSA. Still, the idea of a hidden ship stalking and striking others is an appealing one, but needed a few "extras" to do in FSA. Here's a link to what I came up with, after a few tweaks from community comments.

Relthoza Trapdoor Class Hunter-Killer

Feel free to playtest and feedback your thoughts!

Thursday 6 December 2012

RSN Rising...

A couple of weeks ago I managed to get a couple of Spook Cruisers and a Spectre battleship to add to my Phoenixes, Bulwarks, Sirens and Banshee. None of these are yet painted, though all are primed and I've tried out a scheme I didn't really take to on a Bulwark. The RSN are the extreme end of the Dindrenzi scale, originators of the split from Terra and a bit fanatical. Some people refer to them as "space Nazis", which I think is somewhat misplaced, but actually - in terms of colours - it gaev me an idea...

My Dindrenzi fleet is based around Black, white, grey and orange - taking a lead from the District 9 alien ship colours. I wanted the Dindrenzi ships to be bold and making a statement - they believe they are the rightful inheritors of the galaxy, the cutting edge of humanity...they're not going to be very bland! With all the advanced equipment of the 38th century, unless you go to nano-scale cloaking (as the relthoza do), you might as well make a statement with your ships livery, right?

Which brings me back to the RSN and 1930s German political parties. The one thing th Nazis succeeded at above all else was propoganda - really in a way it had never been done before. The bold red, white and black of its symbology was instantly recognisable. This combination of colours has always been a powerful one, and I wanted to use it for my RSN - in a way that would complement my Dindrenzi fleet so they would look like brothers in arms (which they are).

Of course, my Relthoza are red, so I don't want to create a similar looking fleet.I've taken some side/front/rear/top photos of the ships so I can play around in a painting packge to decide on a scheme...until then, any suggestions are welcomed!

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Dindrenzi Dreadnought "The Destroying Angel"

I like to name my ships, it gives more of a narrative for the games Oscar and I play - we always come up with a back-story to our games too. My Dindrenzi dreadnought has been around for a while, but I've not really used it properly yet, and I thought I'd better get something done with it to field it properly. I fancied something different with it, but also wanted it to fit with the overall theme of my fleet. In the end I decided on linking the paint scheme with the name, and so the Destroying Angel was born. For those of you who know about fungi, the Destroying Angel is a name given to several all-white (even their spores are white), deadly poisonous fungi belonging to the Amanita genus. They contain amanatins, which are very powerful poisons with few effective treatment regimes.

The name and scheme thus seem perfect for the cream of Dindrenzi fleet aggression, and an all-white ship will not be out of place with the others, and will stand out as the flagship in being a little different. Of course the trick here is to successfully bring out the detail in the model without it looking just dull.

So, as my ship was already primed in white, the first thing to do was to paint the engine and cooling areas in metal, before giving it an overall coat of Klear/Future. This helps the next stage (the Paynes Grey wash) flow into recesses and stay off the main panels. Further work was then down to detailing and now I just have to touch up and weather. Here she is in the current almost-done state before tidy-up and weathering.

Painting the Pathogen

So the SG Community has been offline for well over a week now...just a very blank holding screen in place, saying "We are currently performing some necessary improvements and upgrades"

Unfortunately I'm not confident that's the reason, since the forum crash earlier this year. Taking any site offline to do upgrades shouldn't take more than 24 hours - ideally you have the coding etc done in Parallel and it's just a migration thing - SG seem to actually develop their sites in a serial manner, taking the server offline and writing the code on that one!

Anyway, whilst the community's offline I've been doing other things, notably our bathroom, and painting the Pathogen X9-V battleship I started in the last post. I've also been coding the v2 MotR Army Builder files, which has been a bit of a task and a half. Still, on to the Pathogen...

So I painted the non-transformed parts of the ship in my standard District-9 inspired Dindrenzi theme, and gave it a quick wash with Paynes Grey. I then basecoated the transformed areas in a medium-dark green base, followed by a Devlan Mud wash and drybrushing in various greens, yellows, and reds. I then picked out details in purples and pinks, then went on to add the infection tendrils and veins. I still need to do a couple of bits, most notably the engine exhausts, but minor stuff.




I'm reasonably happy with the way it cam out, and am looking forward to playing my new, infectious threat on the tabletop soon...

Friday 23 November 2012

Creating a Pathogen X9-V fleet

So almost another month drifts by without a post...testament to lots of work and little time to get on the PC with intent to write things up - note to self - must try harder!

Anyway, I've been tinkering with green stuff and various models to create a MotR Pathogen X9-V fleet. The first "concept" conversion for this was an Aquan Storm cruiser, part of a second-hand ship lot from, yes - you guessed it, ebay. As there were two Storms, Oscar got one for his Aquans (thus being able to field a full squadron) and the other was used for my nefarious purposes. This one I did as a pure GS adaptation just to see if it would look any good at all. A quick slap of paint and hey presto;


So, seeing as that went OK, I turned my attention to the Frigates that also came with the lot. As there were only 4, one got cut in half for more extensive alterations, whereas the sixth frigate (to make up the full squadron) was a slightly mis-cast resin Terran Alliance Pilgrim. This time I decided to try incorporating other elements that I'd purloined from my old Warhammer 40K bit boxes, mostly Chaos and Tyranid pieces.


Next up is the big one - the battleship. Having been lucky enough to pick up a BNIB Nausicaa for the princely sum of £2.20, I had just the starting material needed. As I decided this would need quite a few features added that I had in the bits box and I didn't want to do a lot of plastic-hacking, I quickly made some push-moulds using thermal-setting plastic (the same stuff I used to make turrets etc in the Thorn conversion) and then cast in GS, whihc would be much easier to use and blend in.



OK, then onto the work! Making the GS pieces was relatively easy, and they proved much easier to use due to their flexibility. They were glued on using cyanoacrylate and then blended in with more GS. Here's some pics at various stages.

Oscar then fancied a go, so started on a Terran Pilgrim;


Almost up to a full starter fleet now!

Saturday 27 October 2012

Marauder of the Rift - RSN Report

Well it's been a while since I've had time to post anything, been busy with work, the house, helping friends etc, so any extra time on the PC has been spent in other ways than on here. Of course, I could have been putting stuff on here as well, but it's so easy to put off to another day, then suddenly you find yourself with so many things to post!

Anyway, penned this the other night after reading some of the MotR Campaign guide for FSA, and thought I'd stick it on here;

RSN Report

Enjoy!

Friday 21 September 2012

Battle Report - The Hunt for the Serene Ocean

So I meant to do this a looong time ago, but it sat unfinished in the bowels of my laptop for ages, so I thought I'd beter finish it and get it posted.

The Hunt for the Serene Ocean is the sequel narrative battle report to The Charter of Might. Enjoy!

Thursday 23 August 2012

Car Wars - A blast from the past!

So before we moved, I picked up Car Wars Deluxe from ebay for a few pounds, and it re-surfaced from one of the many still-remaining boxes around our new house this last weekend. I last played Car Wars when I was only a couple of years older then Oscar, back in th '80s, and I remembered it being fun then, so guessed Oscar would also like it. Sure enough, a couple of test games later, and he loves it!

One of the great things about Car Wars was the car design element - you could create something small and nimble, or a lumbering behometh - all up to you. It's also not something you need to invest hours and hours in like AD&D, which was my big thing when I was a teenager at school. There's lots of guns, fast cars, explosions and silliness - it's not really a serious game that people get upset about when their car erupts into a tumbling fireball (if you do, then you really have lost touch!).

Another great thing is that you don't need a full 6*4 table to play it on - half of a dining table or a space on the floor is fine, you use cardboard cars and normal dice so it's all very cheap and cheerful. It has complex elements, but much of this can be eliminated with modern aids (PC-based car designers etc) - all the toys I didn't have when I was a kid!

In many ways I think some of the tabletop games and RPGs out there today have lost their way a bit, taking themselves far too seriously. At the end of the day, these are games - things to enjoy, not to stress over and become weirdly obsessive about. Going back to a game like Car Wars has reminded me of that once again, which is something many people would do well to remember too.

Monday 2 July 2012

Back to 40K...

After the Spartan community debacle, I couldn't bring myself to look at any FSA models at the weekend, so I thought I'd get back to sorting out my Hellhammer and painting up a landraider. The Hellhammer has sat around for ages - I've always intended to sell it, but other things have always been more important/distracting. Anyway, I need the money so that's always a push in the right direction. First up, I needed to spray the sponsons, and then go over the whole thing paint chipping with a Karisma silver pencil. Here's progress to date...


Next up is to do the detail painting on the sponsons and weathering, then she's done. Then it will be ebay and off to it's new home!

Next up was a landraider, which on a whim I decided to paint up as a Blood Angels vehicle (I'm normally an Ultramarines man). So, a base coat of Mechrite red, followed by Blood Red and Blood Red/Blazing Orange sprayed highlights;


An overall wash of green for contrast (still wet in the photo)...


...and then drybrushed with Blood Red and then Blazing Orange;


Lots of specific painting to go now - lascannons, exhausts, bolters, tracks, emblems, lights....then more washing & drybrushing, followed by weathering & paint chipping. Seems like a long way off but getting the base colour sprayed is always the biggy, as I don;t seem to get the time to spray as much as I should or would like.

Friday 1 June 2012

Old Terran Ships

On the Spartan Games Community recently, I posted a few designs for older Terran ships - The Thorn Class Battleship, The Guardsman Cruiser and the Missionary II Frigate. One poster remarked that it wasn't paper designs they wanted to see, but actual physical ships.


As Spartan are frankly unlikely to create such retro-engineered designs, I thought I'd give it a go myself. I picked up a Terran fleet cheaply on ebay (which had the Razorthorn in three sections - front, middle and engines, plus the multi-part resin cruisers and frigates), and set about creating the predecessors to the standard Terran ships that I'd already crafted using my Excel version of Spartan's custom ship generator protocols.


First up was the Thorn Class Battleship, here are the stats I came up with for the ship;


DR: 6 CR: 8 Mv: 6" HP: 7 CP: 4 AP: 4 PD: 6 SH: 1 Mn: 0 FW: 0

Fore Fixed: 5/6/4/3
Fore: 6/8/3/0
Port: 6/8/3/0
Starboard 6/8/3/0

Torpedoes (any arc): 2/3/4/5

So reduced long-range firepower in Port & Starboard arcs, lowered FF and no turrets, but a fore arc (same as port/starboard) instead, torpedo effectiveness considerable reduced and only a single shield. I wanted a substantial and dangerous ship, but showing older technology - so still lots of guns, but not as effective over range.
So, some of these mods are easy to show on the model - no turrets being the obvious one. I also removed the extreme fore of the front of the Razorthorn and added a thorn-like "nose" of green stuff, which also double as a shroud over the twin linear accelerators I would add later. In order to get sufficient area for the fore arc (in addition to the Fixed Fore LAs), I planned to add some raised platforms on the first and last broadside positions of the Razorthorn. These were built up from green stuff and then cut back with a scalpel to provide a nice clean edge. Here she is at that stage;

Next I would need guns...so I made simple push moulds from FIMO and baked these for 30 minutes until hard and allowed to cool. after that, wetting the moulds and pushing them on to soft greenstuff produced sufficient guns for the new weapons fit.




Now I just have to decide what weapons fit to go with...


 

Friday 25 May 2012

Battle Report - Assault on Peredith

I've been meaning to post this for a while, the first part of a battle report form Oscar & I's latest game. I won't spoil the end for you by telling you the result, but it was very close!

Assault on Peredith Part 1.pdf

In other news, I've been doing a lot of coding for the FSA Army Builder files with Chris (veritechc) from The Black Ocean - check out the website if you get a chance, it's got a whole heap of interesting goodies on there. I've also coded an updated version of the FSA Custom Ship Creator in Excel to make it easier to crank out your own ships for the game and get the right cost for it.

Very little else happening on the modelling/gaming front - hopefully will get some bits done at the weekend. Until next time....

Monday 14 May 2012

Oscar's Aquans Expand...

So it was Oscar's birthday last Friday - last week involving a lot of preparations for that (as one of his presents was a small aquarium with a Malabar pufferfish - not that easy to hide!). On the FS:A side he received a Manta MkII battleship and his Medusa for his good school report, then earned his Mk II Barracudas and got a pair of Stingray Destroyers for his birthday. all in all quite a big boost for his Aquan force...expect to see a clash of them with my forces of evil soon.

Also on the FS:A side I wrote the rules for Firestorm: Marine! (downloadable link by clicking on that) - an alternative card-based way of determining boarding actions in Firestorm Armada, inspired by Captain Dan and Ravager from the Spartan Games Community. I also completed the update to the Excel-based version of Ravager's Orders Received! 1.20 scenery and battle generator. Finally, I've been doing a bit of coding for the Army Builder files with Chris of The Black Ocean, trying to get some of the more difficult bits to work properly (easier said than done)!

In real life, I've been hunting down a new job, and also a new place to live, as we were given notice on our house (as we rent at the moment). More unnecessary stress for the family we could all do without...but what can you do but roll with the punches?

Friday 4 May 2012

A few musings on model photography

So we had some old friends of the family to stay last weekend, and Ian has started his own photography business. He'd brought his (very expensive!) new Canon 5D, lenses, flash etc with him too to get some shots of Stonehenge while they were down.

This proved to be quite serendipitous, as the problems I'd encountered photographing my three-tone Dark Red/Red/Black Relthoza hadn't gone away. The weather has also been apalling the last couple of weeks (as anyone in the UK will testify), so getting good light for model photos hasn't been easy.

Anyway, Ian introduced me to Adobe Lightroom while he was down which, for those that don't know it, is a FABULOUS piece of software. The abilities it has for easy image handling, white balance, colour correction etc are immensly powerful, yet far easier to implement than a very intense program like Photoshop. He also introduced me to the website SLR lounge, which has a fantastic series of tutorials on Lightroom and many other things.

This got me thinking...I used to be an SLR guy, 35mm film, zoom & macro lenses etc, but gave up my old Ricoh for a Fujifilm bridge camera a fair few years back now. I currently have an S8100fd, which is a great piece of kit for those wanting a camera that can do a lot of different things quite easily. I hadn't appreciated, howver, just how much further things have progressed since the last time I lookd, nor how much prices have come down to get a decent entry-level DSLR. We're talking not much more than a decent "standard" digital camera.

So, I've taken the plunge and gone back into the SLR world. Going for a Pentax and various lenses (which my old macro, polarising & UV filters should fit), shooting in camera RAW format with a colour reference chart and then post-processing in Lightroom, and we'll see how we do for accurately capturing those Relthoza ships!

Tuesday 24 April 2012

Aquans and Relthoza

Well, I've been pretty busy over the last week or so, mainly because my employers kindly decided to make my position redundant, so had to spend some time tying that all up, which always occupies one's mind. Fortunatelty its amicable enouh, despite being completely unexpected.

I've still had time for hobby pursuits, but haven't been so inclined to write it all up on here. This means I've somewhat of a backlog to get through! Been spending quite a bit of time helping out Chris of The Black Ocean on the Firestorm Armada Army Builder files, coding Zenian League ships and working out how to do some of the validation of Alliance fleets. Also been redoding the Orders Received! Excel version of Ravagers, and posting on the SG Community too.

Anyway, onto models...Oscar has been busy painting up new Aquans...MkII frigates, a Triton and a converted Mon Calamari ship from Star Wars - the Aquan "whaleshark" dreadnought. Also WiP is a Medusa Dreadnought that I'm not that keen about playing against!






I've been concentrating my efforts into the rather large Apex dreadnought, a Scarab Heavy Cruiser and two Venom class Destroyers. Unfortunately I've also discovered an apparently common issue with digital cameras correctly capturing shades of red - in short they don't do a very good job of it (which explains why I couldn't get good pictures of them). I've ordered a photographic colour correction chart, so hopefully I can use that to ensure I get good, accurate photos of them soon.

Saturday 14 April 2012

Aquan Cruiser Wreck Detailing

So I've been meaning to post this for a few days, but one thing or another has got in the way. Anyway, was asked if I could post a write-up of how I did the Heavy Cruiser aquan wreck I poste on the Spartan Games Community, so here it is.

First of all, the materials. I used the partial Aquan Cruiser, some 10 thou plasticard, some plstic strip, superglue (crazyglue in the US), plastic glue, scalpel - all pretty basic things from your workbench.

So, having assembled everything needed, first step is to cut a piece of plasticard to fit the bottom of the void in your resin. This is superglued in place, ensuring you get it nice and level. I used superglue gel as it has a slihtly longer cure time and doesn't run all over the place, which means you can tweak its position (I used a small strip of plastic strip for this)

The reason you glue this in place is to give a nice stable plastic platform to work on, meaning you can use plastic glue rather than superglue, making the whole process much simpler. You can use other materials and superglue, but it just takes longer and is more fiddly - if I'm going to go this I'd wait until all plastic work was complete then add wire, tubing etc at that stage.

Ok, so when the glue has set, next stage is to add detail to it. Cut a whole bunch of plasticard strip lengths of 5-10mm.


Now cement these onto your deck with plastic glue, varying lengths protruding etc

Now cut out and add a second deck level
See a pattern here? Now repeat these processes until you've filled the void. Keep in mind the original shape of the ship - you don't want to go outside this imaginary 3D boundary much (you can a little, to represent spars etc exploding outwards).

You can bend the plastic strip a bit if you want to represent exploding/imploding forces, vary cross-sectional spars or whatever you like to create the effect you want. Another step you can add is to superglue some foil fragments around the edge of the damaged area, which can then be bent outwards to represent the external hull rupturing out. I didn't do that in this case, wanting to keep it fairly simple. Next stage is painting, and with all the layers it's far easier to spray than hand-paint. Make sure the assembly is fully dried, then mask off and spray.
I typically do detail painting etc first, but in this case didn't, so that was all doen and voila! One wrecked Storm class cruiser.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Directorate Fleet & Aquan Wrecks

So I managed to get my Directorate starter fleet sprayed in its basic dazzle splinter camo on Monday.

Next the undersides were sprayed red as for the Persecution class, followed by washing all the red undersides with Citadel Thraka Green and finally a drybrush in blood red to give some impression of depth. I tried out the "waterline" black on a frigate too (on the extreme right), though the effect isn't that noticable on these ships as they don't have the middle depth of the capital ships. On the larger ships it should tidy up the camo/red interface
The final bit of painting I managed to do were the disruption cannons on the dreadnought, which were done in brazen brass and gunmetal. The photo doesn't show this too well, but then they haven't been washed etc so there will be other update photos in future that will show them better.

On another note, I made some wrecked Aquan ships a while back (much to Oscar's disgust!), but haven't got around to finishing them yet, so Oscar's been dry brushing them as he does his new Manta class battle carrier. Anyway, thought I'd post some pics of them here. We have the mauled remains of a Poseidon class, a heavy cruiser that's suffered very badly and a Storm class, also with no front.
The Tsunami is basically finished, the Poseidon needs a final dry-brush, dormant power crystals painting and weapon impacts finishing, whereas the Storm has only been base coated, and still needs the internal remains adding and the whole thing dry brushed and detail painted like the Tsunami class below.