Spring is here! April excitement, Salute, plans and plots

April in the UK is great. Spring is here, beautiful crisp sunny mornings (between about 9.02 and 9:30 am), flowers appear, lots of daffodils, and for the wargaming community, we all come out of hibernation to sniff the fresh air, soak up the sunshine, and for Salute, this year held on April 14th at the ExCel.

Salute remains wargamings big UK event. VERY big. I've a love\hate relationship with Salute. In the past I've had a mixed day at Salute - sometimes it can be overwhelming and for me it is a long haul - 260 miles each way and no change out of 4 and a half hours drive, plus another hour in the queue. I've been a couple of times by train and last year the luxury of a car share where I got to be the passenger all the way both ways. This year I'm "designated driver" but we've wangled some accommodation so the cunning plan is to cruise down Friday then Tube \ DLR to the ExCel. It can be a pain getting in but once you get in however, well, you get to feel the love :-).

This year I'm helping demo Dropfleet Commander at the TT Combat DZC pitch, alongside Emily K who is demoing Dropzone Commander. I'm looking forward to this as it will be the first chance to meet the new TT Combat DZC\DFC team and chat about "the future" after they took over Hawk Wargames. Additionally there will be the "show specials" available, plus hopefully the new Dropfleet Destroyers on sale for the first time. That could be expensive :-(

But there's more! Rather a lot of companies use Salute as a showcase and launch games to coincide. This year there are two games I am really looking forward to playing -  "What a Tanker" from Two Fat Lardies, and (no surprise) Blood Red Skies from Warlord Games. WAT has a release date of 9th April but Rich (the Lard Meister) is running a "rolling" demo game where you can just turn up, drive a tank around to get a feel for the game mechanics, have fun, then probably blow up!

Blood Red Skies isn't due for release until mid May but customers who pre ordered (err me !) will get theirs a month before or can arrange to pick up at Salute - there's a link here if you want to do that - and if you have not pre ordered if you are quick you may still get one. Warlord are planning to have a limited supply available at Salute, and they're running a stunning demo with a 1:200 scale attack on the USS Hornet which should be spectacular.

And then there's the other stuff that you just run across when you are wandering (assuming I can escape the stand for a while).

So it is looking like a rather busy April, and I'm really looking forward to these new games landing.

On the subject of Sporing and Spring Cleaning I've done a bit of tidying up here on the Blog, a couple of layout changes, and importantly a nice, shiny new "follow" button which for some reason (probably my incomprehension) should have been there all along but wasn't. It's over here somewhere near the top ================================>>>>>>>>>
Please click it - not only will you get notifications on any updates here but you will also (probably) get a nice warm feeling from knowing you are making a curmudgeonly old gamer a bit happier. Thanks :-)

DropFleet Commander Battle Report Part 5 - Set Condition Brown!

End of Turn 2 - Scourge Frigates taking a beating......

Turn 3 -
Turn three saw a serious step up in the action. Both sides moved their squadrons forward, with the Southern Scourge Nickar Group homing in on a solitary PHR Strike Carrier, with the "Northern" group moving up to threaten the central objective.

The reprieve of the Scourge Troopship was short lived. The PHR Frigate squadron attacked, crippling the Troopship, and she was finished off by a wave of bombers even though the Scourge tried to bolster her point defence with a swarm of fighters. In return the Frigates were destroyed by a combination of fire from the advancing Scourge Carrier group and the Flagship, assisted by fire from the now active Station.

The Scourge Ifrit burned a hole in the PHR Troopship that was heading towards the central objective. At that moment there was a (insert sound effect) as the PHR Battleship unleashed its massive Dark Matter Cannon - the Ifrit staggered, and was ripped apart by crippling internal explosion - one shot, one kill! The Scourge Admiral went to "Condition Brown" :-)

Carry On Admiral - Feldherr Maxi Case for Dropfleet Comander

My football team Hartlepool United got relegated last week. This was something of a disaster, but there was one little ray of sunshine. As we were playing the team challenging for the championship, and as we hadn't won in about eight games, the bookies were offering good odds, so more in hope than judgement  had a little flutter. We won, but still got relegated, but I was suddenly fifty quid better off. Rather than drown my sorrows I decided to put the ££ to good use and get a Feldherr case for my Dropfleet Commander Scourge.

I'm a confirmed Kaiser Rushforth case user - I have maybe twenty in a mix of card and aluminium, and on the whole I'm happy with them, but they don't do anything suitable for Dropfleet. I've struggled on with some pick and pluck trays but they were a bit naff. There's no real chance of KR ever making any more cases for Hawk products as they seem to have suffered an "irretrievable breakdown of business relationship" or something like that. That being the case I thought I would give Feldherr a try as they have just released a DFC range. Details are here https://www.feldherr.net/

I ordered direct on Sunday evening, and went for the standard "Maxi" Scourge set, and it arrived this morning so I thought I would share my first impressions.

Here it is - hiding behind my assistant Bella with a standard KR Card case next to it

and without

The internals consist of one tray to carry Battleships, plus four Cruiser \ Frigate inserts each holding three Cruisers and up to six Frigates, and two trays for launch assets. (see edit below) At the moment there is no tray to carry Corvettes, but by happy coincidence I noticed the UCM Frigate tray looked like it would hold those bat winged Nickars - so I took a risk and ordered one, and happily it works rather well.

So back to the actual product. The foam feels comparable to KR. The slots are cut very clean and hold the Scourge ships well enough - even some of my cruisers which were built with the wings spread wide fit with a bit of a squeeze as you can see above. The outer fabric bag is very nice, with a lined interior, carrying handle and optional strap. All rather German in efficiency.

So my initial thoughts. Very nice. What it appears to lack and causes me some concern is robustness. My KRs, both card and aluminium get a lot of regular abuse but the contents are safe. I can't be sure that will be the case here. On the other hand it is VERY light and easy to carry, which can be important.

How about cost? Difficult to compare with KR but the Feldherr Maxi plus the spare UCM tray cost £56 including postage (actually postage was free as the order was over 60 Euro) which is more than a KR card (£37) but less than a KR aluminium of similar capacity (£60) .

I'm happy so far, and will probably get the equivalent one to carry my UCM, but will probably have to find another source of funding as I don't think Hartlepool United are getting promoted soon.

******Edit There are five NOT four cruiser inserts, so the total capacity is 2 Battleships, 15 Cruisers or Battlecruisers, 30 Frigates and 60 Launch Assets. Swapping out one Launch Asset tray gives you 30 Launch Assets and 11 Nickar Frigates***********

Dropfleet Commander Battle Report Part 4 - Opening moves and first Casualties

Our first turn saw the Scourge bring on their Troopship group and a Nickar\Gargoyle Hunter\Killer (HK) group. The Trooper headed straight for the nearest Space Station, the Hunter Killers for the northernmost Communications node. The PHR brought a Frigate group and one of their Troopship groups and moved forward towards their nearest Space Station - everyone dropping to low orbit in preparation for the assault landings next turn. No-one had any viable targets due to scan ranges so there was no combat, and no Command Cards were played on turn one as we couldn't decide if the Fleet Commander had to be on table to do so. Something to look up later.

  Turn 2 Saw the arrival of the Scourge Admiral in his Shenlong class Heavy Cruiser and his escort in the centre, plus the second H\K Group south. The Troopship changed course a little to bring it into a position to assault either the Station or the ground cluster. In the North the H/K Nickars swung in at high speed towards the enemy in the centre and dropped into atmosphere. On the other side however there as an ominous sight of the Heracles lumbering on to the table with an escorting ECM Frigate, plus another Troop carrier group. The Frigates moved straight on to try and hit the Scourge Troopship with their burn-through lasers, one using the "Active Scan" order, however this didn't work as the Troopship used a command card to launch Chaff, temporarily reducing its signature to zero and dropping off scanners.

The Scourge also played a nasty "Abandon Hope" command card which caused the PHR to discard a command card at random. The two Scourge Charybdis Class Bombardment Frigates were forced to fight as standard warships, and suffered accordingly, with one Charybdis and one Harpy being destroyed in an exchange of fire with the PHR Frigates. At the end of Turn 2 it looked like the Scourge had a narrow advantage on the ground, having control of one Communications cluster and a Station but were in trouble in space.

Dropfleet Commander Battle Report Part 3 - The Scenario - where all the careful planning falls apart!

So with both sides set we now needed a scenario, and we picked Scenario 8 at random. Defence Relay - Oh Dear!

This is an attack on an interlinked Defence position, with a lot of potential ground fire PLUS the added complication of a pair of orbiting space stations - heavily armed ones at that. This threw a spanner into the works for me as my main landing group was configured to assault surface targets, NOT orbital ones. Even worse, this scenario uses a "Column" approach, where each player only has two battlegroups available on turn one, with the others arriving on turns 2 & 3. One effect of that staggered entry was that the players need to make a decision about their order of arrival - do you send in the light and fast units to try and grab objectives early or push the heavier units forward first and risk finding your opponent already hunkered down around the objectives?

Here is the table set up ready to go. Again we have not finished our Space Stations so a pair of old Ground Zero Games  stations from their excellent Full Thrust range were dusted off and pressed into service -  in need of a repaint and some new bases I fear. Here is the table laid out and ready for the game to start. I should add the star mat - or rather night city mat is from Deep-Cut Studios and is made from neoprene (mouse-mat) material that rolls up into a carrying tube - very nice and highly recommended.

The Communications clusters (red) are "Critical Locations" which score bonus Victory Points, as are the two stations (blue), but the Military "clusters" (green) have some serious defensive capability. This leaves the players with some interesting choices. Scourge are entering from the left, PHR from the right.

So next time, we actually start rolling dice :-)

Dropfleet Commander Part 2 - The PHR "Orca" Fleet

It seems my opponent Paul had also not quite caught up on his painting schedule, so his killer whale themed fleet still had some gaps. He was fielding his hugely impressive Heracles Class Battleship, but he didn't have any Corvettes, which put him at a severe disadvantage in atmosphere when faced with my Nickar Hunter Killer groups.

This is his list

--------------------------------------
pelagic - 1490pts
PHR - 8 launch assets

SR16 Flag battlegroup (322pts)
1 x Heracles - 285pts - S
   + Director (80pts, 4AV)
1 x Calypso - 37pts - L

SR20 Vanguard battlegroup (360pts)
1 x Bellerophon - 180pts - H
1 x Bellerophon - 180pts - H

SR12 Line battlegroup (315pts)
1 x Orion - 107pts - M
2 x Medea - 78pts - L
1 x Orpheus - 130pts - M

SR7 Line battlegroup (213pts)
1 x Ganymede - 135pts - M
2 x Medea - 78pts - L

SR4 Pathfinder battlegroup (200pts)
4 x Pandora - 200pts - L
---------


I'm no expert on PHR ships or their roles so I'll not speculate too much. It looked like I had a minor advantage in launch capacity, and a big one in atmospheric combat, but nothing that could remotely be expected to slug it out toe to toe with that Battleship.

As you can see, he was using the "drinking straw" method of Battlegroup identification, which I'm happy to go on record as saying is utter genius.

Dropfleet Commander Battle Report Part 1 - Scourge

Ok I don't usually do battle reports. Truth is I am both crap with a camera and would rather spend the time playing rather than taking pics, so what follows is a rarity....

We've sort of let Dropfleet slip down our agenda over the last few months. In truth this was partly because of the c*ck-up Hawk made of the Kickstarter delivery. Frankly we didn't fancy playing at clubs and shops when there was still a lot of folks waiting for their toys - didn't feel like having to field the questions to be honest, however since the KS has now finally ran it's course and everyone has their stuff, and because I enjoyed demo'ing it at Salute, we thought we would give it a try.

Between our last game and now the game has advanced (matured?) quite a bit, particularly with the introduction of Command Cards, Battleships, and at the other end of the scale, Corvettes. All three have or will alter the "meta" and the game is rather different with them. Sadly part of the lethargy has included not painting the substantial fleets I have, so having decided to play this evening I spent an hour or so rush painting my spiffing new Nickar class Hunter Killers using the methods I described back in the Sheet Metal Age here , and there was zero chance of getting my Scourge Battleship ready on time.

In the end here is the fleet I decided to take - incidentally this was generated by the excellent Dflist program available here - highly recommended!

--------------------------------------
May Day - 1498pts
Scourge - 11 launch assets

SR13 Vanguard battlegroup (319pts)
1 x Manticore - 190pts - H
3 x Djinn - 129pts - L

SR15 Vanguard battlegroup (280pts)
1 x Shenlong - 170pts - H
   + Fleet Overlord (100pts, 5AV)
1 x Ifrit - 110pts - M

SR12 Line battlegroup (344pts)
1 x Hydra - 140pts - M
1 x Hydra - 140pts - M
2 x Gargoyle - 64pts - L

SR9 Line battlegroup (259pts)
1 x Chimera - 105pts - M
2 x Charybdis - 70pts - L
2 x Harpy - 84pts - L

SR4 Pathfinder battlegroup (98pts)
3 x Nickar - 66pts - L
1 x Gargoyle - 32pts - L

SR4 Pathfinder battlegroup (98pts)
1 x Gargoyle - 32pts - L
3 x Nickar - 66pts - L
------------- dflist.com -------------

To quickly explain the two Vanguard Groups would perform slightly different functions. The Mantichore \ Djinn group is a close combat brawler and the other was (hopefully) going to allow the Ifrit to spike enemy ships for the Shenlong to target using a weapons free order . I like the Ifrit - as you can tell from this earlier post. The first Line Battlegroup is basically a pair of Hydra Class Carriers with two Gargoyle Strike Carriers (Light troopships) attached, with the intention being to leave the Hyrdas at the back of the fleet where they can reach out with their fighters, while the two Gargoyles operated independently to grab ground objectives. The second Line Battlegroup has the main troopship, plus a pair of Charybdis class Frigates. These are specialist ground bombardment units. A pair of Harpy class general role Frigates rounds off the group. The theory here being the combination of heavy troopship and bombardment would make taking larger ground objectives easier, and the Harpies could provide limited support and protection. The last two Battlegroups contained my newly painted Nickar Hunter Killers. These are specialist atmospheric attack ships who in theory would prey on enemy Strike Carriers trying to drop troops to the surface, which would leave the attached Gargoyle free to grab objectives - that was the plan anyway.

Here's a slightly blurred pic of the fleet before we kicked off. I'm using the clip on Battlegroup Indicators designed for Dropzone by  Dark Ops . They're really useful for Dropzone but I suspect I will be moving over to the "straws" option for Dropfleet.

Next time - the opposition - Space Whales!

Dropfleet Commander – Ifrit – the Scourge Stiletto

 I’m going to add a bit to the general level of speculation and jetwash about Dropfleet Commander tactics by taking a closer look at one of the Scourge Cruiser options – The Ifrit, and explain why I think this is a must have for Scourge Fleet Commanders, at all points levels.

 The Ifrit is one of the “recommended builds” in a Scourge starter fleet box, so most players probably have one. I’m also fairly sure it is one of the first to be “dropped” when the fleet expands  past Skirmish level, because on pure numbers other ships do it better – the Raiju in particular seems to do everything the Ifrit can, and much more. I think this is a mistake. Allow me to explain.

The Ifrit is something of an odd fish in the Scourge fleet. It falls squarely into the “Medium” cruiser bracket, a bit slower but more resilient that the Yokai and Strix Light Cruisers (which may be worthy of another post) and below the Raiju and ShenLong Heavy Cruisers which are the backbone of most Scourge Cruiser Battlegroups, with good reason as they both are serious bruisers with the added advantage of Stealth Tech. At 110 points it is not expensive, and has the bonus that it can be bought in singles, unlike the theoretically cheaper light Cruisers.

Looking at the basic stat line the Ifrit looks a little “meh”, quite fast and resilient as far as it goes, but under-armed. This is the first Scourge ship to mount a Furnace Cannon, but that takes up so much room there is only a single Oculus Beam, albeit with a good wide firing arc. The Close Action weapon suite is respectable, and the point defence is good, even if the armour is a little weak. Comparing the raw numbers to the other Scourge Cruisers at this point level the Ifrit seems something of a lightweight.

Scan	sig	thrust	hull	armour	pd
6”	8”	10	10	4+	6

	lock	att	dam	arc
Oculus Beams	3+	1	2	F
Scald
Furnace Cannons	4+	4	1	F(N)
Alt-1, Scald, Burnthrough(8)
Furnace Cannons	2+	1	1	F(N)
Alt-1, Scald, Burnthrough(4), Flash
Plasma Storm	3+	D6+2	1	F/S
Scald, Close Action

It is the Furnace Cannon that makes the Ifrit so useful, at least in its “Flash” mode. This is the Scourge “Burnthrough” weapon and unlike those of the other races it has two firing modes. The first is what at first looks like the main contender, a four attack dice and max 8 damage option. That makes it in theory the heaviest damage potential of any weapon mounted on a cruiser, enough to cripple a Battlecruiser. In reality however you are unlikely to make all eight of those hits count, and even if you do the limited chance of critical hits (which ignore armour) mean quite a lot of that damage will de deflected – particularly against hard targets like the PHR. In comparison the second mode looks less attractive, with only one attack and only four max damage, however on closer examination I think this is usually the better option. In this second mode it hits on 2+ and causes armour avoiding critical hits on 4+. Not enough to cripple a cruiser, but more than enough to cripple or kill a frigate sized target - like a Strike Carrier. Additionally, the Ifrit has sufficient thrust to time a run on turn 2 that can potentially catch Strike Carriers before they hit the safety of atmosphere, or even turn one if the Strike Carrier is rushing to get in drop range of a ground objective. Dropfleet is all about the Ground Objectives, so denying your opponent a Strike Carrier is worth a try, and few other ships can combine the speed and sufficient damage output to kill or cripple them in one attack.

And it is not just Strike Carriers that are vulnerable. Less immediately “game winning” but equally valuable targets are the point defence or sensor Frigates of the other factions. The UCM Lima and Jakarta Class Frigates are so damned useful they will soon be universal, but they are both easy kills for a well handled Ifrit.

Even against larger targets such as Troopships or Fleet Carriers the Ifrit has the power to cause significant damage, and the relatively high thrust rating allows some inventive tactics – such as driving through enemy formations to avoid the bulk of return fire and taking shots with your Oculus Beam or even rear shots with your Close Action Plasma Storm. Having only two main weapons systems makes you less reliant on “Weapons Free” orders to optimise damage output – a blessing as you need to manoeuvre to keep the narrow arc of the Furnace Cannon on target

All well and good in the skirmish game, but what about the higher points games? Here the Ifrit’s second string kicks in – as a designator for larger attackers. Pairing the Ifrit with a heavy hitter such as a Shenlong (or bigger) will allow you lead with the Ifrit and “Flash” targets(again in the second firing mode)  to make them more visible to the heavy hitters.

So that’s my thoughts on the Ifrit, one of the slightly unloved Scourge Cruisers. The game is constantly evolving and in a direction away from sheer firepower into much more specialist Battlegroup builds. As tactics evolve I can see an even greater role for this useful ship with a lot of potential.

Painting Scourge for DropFleet Commander - First ships off the production line

So Dropfleet Commander Kickstarter pledges are due "soon" and retail release hopefully mid October. I was lucky enough to get some Scourge ships pre-release and decided to try and paint them. The aim was to have a system that could be repeated without too much effort but looked nice at table ranges - so here goes.

First I undercoated white - I used Citadel white undercoat as it was recommended - and it certainly did the job.

This was followed up with airbrushing everything Vallejo Model Air Chrome - I airbrushed because I didn't have any spray silver - I don't think you need an airbrush but I had it there so used it rather than getting a spray can.

Then everything got a heavy wash with Citadel "Nuln Oil" and left to dry

I followed the Null Oil with a heavy drybrush of Chrome again to return the highlights to a nice shiny effect.

Purple ink (Citadel Druchii Violet) was added to the ridges and left to dry, followed by green (Citadel Athonian Camo) to most of the rest. I went for green as I always see the Scourge Cruisers as almost serpentine in my head.

Once dried I deployed my secret weapon - a make-up brush as recommended by the Hawk painting gurus at Cardiff. I  drybrushed everything with Vallejo Model Air Gold. This gives a really great sheen I think

Picked out "eyes" in red etc, quick coat of matt varnish for protection followed by gloss varnish on the eyes and done. I tried a rough yellow \ white effect on the engines but this may get changed.

Not 100% happy - I think they may need a bit of red ink on the arms \ tentacles but not sure? Similarly the matt varnish takes the sheen down a little which is a shame - not sure if plastic models need a coat or should I try gloss then matt? On the plus side none of this took much time and I'm pretty sure I can churn out a reasonable force once the KS delivers.

Dropfleet Commander - a short update

Still twiddling thumbs waiting for DFC Kickstarter to ship. This is something of a problem. Anticipation is very high, but at the same time there is a dawning reality that when it does land I will have a metric sh*ttonne of ships to assemble.

In the meantime I have decided to try and get the painting technique down to something manageable.

I have had a bit of an experiment with the Seattle I built earlier from the sprue given away* at the "pre-launch" in Cardiff.

Firstly I undercoated the whole thing in GW white undercoat - I don't know the name and care less, but it did give rather a good covering. I suspect I may have to review my long held GW antipathy as at the moment they seem to be doing some nice stuff as far as paints etc goes. Still a long way from buying any Space Marines though :-)

Once the undercoat dried I painted a basecoat of Vallejo German Grey with my airbrush. With hindsight the airbrush is probably unnecessary. Once that dried I went for a generous wash with GW Null Oil - really generous,

Left that to dry, then a heavy drybrush with German Grey again. Then a couple of progressivly lighter drybrushes with Vallejo light greys. For these I pinched a trick from the painting tutorial they ran at Cardiff and used a soft make up brush which helped keep it light.

All the weapons and engines were picked out or drybrushed Vallejo Oily Steel - I've ran Null Oil over the engines and will probably drybrush them again with Oily Steel - just to see if its worth the effort.

The dorsal panels wer painted with Vallejo Off White followed by some real white in thin coats where possible, and some other details picked out.

I still need to do the flight deck \ hangar - with hindsight this would have been so much easier to do before sticking the damned thing together!

So here she is - still work in progress but looking quite nice I think

And here she is with the Frigates

* if you pre-ordered £75 worth of toys on the day!

Dropfleet Commander "We DO need those Stiinking Magnets"

My previous post was about building one of the new Dropfleet Commander ships, in that instance a Seattle class Carrier. There has been a lot of talk on line about the possibility of magnetising the new Dropfleet Commander models. After a bit of shameless begging I managed to get hold of a second sprue from my mate Paul who had also attended the pre launch event at Cardiff last weekend, so decided to try magnetising the model to allow building different versions. I thought about this quite a bit. I certainly don't intend to do this a lot, but there are a couple of UCM Cruisers - the San Fransico Class Troopship and the Madrid Class which is a specialised orbital bombardment vessel, that I dont think I will need often, but having the option would be nice. As you can see from the pics below, they share the same superstructure and general layout, except the ventral positions have a large troop compartment or the orbital bombardment turrets.

These are rare specialist ships so I don't think I will be using them regularly, so it would be useful to be able to have the model do double duty. There are two much more common Cruisers that share the same layout, the Berlin Class which has a burn-through laser, and the Rio, which has a pair of heavy turrets. The Berlin has been one of the stars of the demo games I have seen, everyone loves the burn-through laser and the ability to saw a target in half, but I suspect the Rio may well see plenty of table time as a good all round mid sized cruiser. All I would need to do would be to magnetise a burn through laser and a couple of heavy mass-driver turrets and do the same with the troop pod and bombardment turrets and I could in theory field any one of four versions from the same model - sounds good.

Firstly I needed some magnets. I had some 2mm x 1mm disk magnets I used for small turrets on Dropzone tanks so they seemed to be a good starting position. I assembled the troop pod and the two sides of the main hull, then drilled out some holes using a pin vice. One tip to pass on, the turrets sit on 3mm "plugs" so take a lot of care drilling your locating hole for the magnet as you only have half a mil each way. I used a 0.5mm drill bit to create a guide hole before opening it out with a 2mm bit. I found wood bits were preferable to metal ones - no idea why but they seemed to work better.

Once drilled I stuck the 2mm magnets in the holes being very careful to get the polarity right. Another tip is to use a wooden tooth pick or a non ferrous tool to position the magnets. Its bloody fiddly anyway.

After that it was plain sailing! Actually it wasnt. The turrets on the Rio and Madrid both fit the socket fine, but the troop pod and burn-through were designed to be glued over \ on to the now redundant turret rings. This created a gap between the two sets of magnets which meant the connection was not that strong. With hindsight I could have predicted this - in fact if may be possible to glue the magnets directly to the burn-through without drilling out a hole, but that may cause other problems with the magnet detaching. In this case I dealt with the problem by gluing a second magnet to the first ensuring a contact with the one in the hull. I suspect it may even be possible to do away with drilling on the Troop Pod altogether and surface mount a 3mm x 1mm in the sockets - but I don't have one at hand, but will pick some up to try it out when the Kickstarter delivers "soon".

Once the magnets were in I assembled the rest of the model and here are the results:

San Francisco

Madrid

Rio

Berlin

So is it worth the hassle? I think so. The magnets give a good attachment to the various components so I can run several different options with the same model. The last step would be to magnetise the dorsal cowling to allow you to build the Moscow \ St Petersburg type Heavy Cruisers, but that is I think a step too far.  

Dropfleet Commander - Seattle Class Fleet Carrier

So one of the perks of being at the Dropfleet Commander "Pre Launch" event at Cardiff over the weekend was getting my hands on a UCM Cruiser sprue.

This is currently a rather sought after item, so I thought I should strike while the iron is hot and see how the thing goes together. For the uninitiated, Dropfleet Commander (DFC) is the new Sci Fi Space \ Orbital combat game due for release "very soon". Once it is released I will revisit with some comments about the rules but in the meantime here's one of the toys - the UCM cruiser.

When you buy the starter set you will get enough bits to make three Cruisers and four Frigates for each side - enough for an interesting game. One point about the ships is that they are plastic and each cruiser sprue contains enough parts to allow you to build any one of the cruisers in the game - that has to be a bonus. So without further ado, here is the sprue!

There is a lot on there, but before I get into the different parts I should mention just how crisp and clean the parts are - very nice.

I'm going to build a Seattle Class Carrier - something I am guessing everyone will have at least one of as it is a very useful ship. The pic below shows the main parts - the hull and engines are universal but the rest are variable depending on what you are building.

Side clippers and here are the main parts off the sprue

Once cleaned up I checked them for fit and I have to say  they were excellent

So on I went with the Liquid Poly glue. Top Tip - Liquid Poly is far superior for this sort of work than the gel stuff you get from most games outlets - invest in it and you wont regret it. Here is the finished model with all the bits attached. I'm really struggling with the camera so may have to get a better pic, but needless to say it is a beautiful model