Belles and Marshals

Here are the Death Marshals and the Rotten Belles from the Lady Justice and Seamus boxes respectively. They aren't masterpieces by any means, but I'm happy enough to have painted miniatures on my tabletop. I definitely need some work on the flames that are coming out of the pine boxes. It's passable by my standards at this point though, so I'm not going to slave over it anymore than I already have. I hope you like them!

Beginnings of a Space Opera

So I said I was a game designer, although I definitely use that term loosely. I love easy to pick up games, mainly because (at this point) many of the people I play with are people who have no hobby experience whatsoever. The most complex games they have ever played are things like Monopoly and UNO. Most have never even considered painting on something other than paper or canvas.  Rulebooks to them shouldn't be any longer than a couple of pages, and the rules are certainly never long enough to require a reference sheet for you to remember them all. So while I really like miniature games like Warmachine or Infinity that have very intricate rules that make every model unique, I just can't play those sorts of games to their full potential at the moment.

Thus I have begun to take a stab at making games that I think suit my purposes a bit more. I want a fat-paced game that won't take hours to play a single game. I want the game to be easily understood after playing a single game without having to hide any complex rules. I want a game where both players are both constantly engaged in the action. I want to create a "go-to game" to play with friends, whether they are gamers or not.

 For the past year or so I have been ruminating on what it would take for me to make my own spaceship miniatures game. I know about the popular game out there like Full Thrust, Starmada, and Colonial Battlefleet. While I really enjoy portions of each system, I can't really say any of them fit me just perfectly. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, I just want something that better fits what I imagine space combat to be.

This may be the beginnings of a new spaceship miniatures game that I may ultimately produce a full rulebook and a miniatures line for. That is sort of the big goal of this blog; to keep an unofficial record of my progress if that does indeed come to fruition. If not, I hope this blog will at least be one in a myriad of blogs that hobby community deems worth reading.

Anyway, now that we are through with that wordy intro, I have the first ships to be used in the prototype fleets of my as-of -yet undeveloped spaceship miniatures game. These are all from Spartan Games. I don't plan to use their companies miniatures exclusively. I plan on using a variety of miniatures from Ground Zero Games, Studio Bergstrom, Ravenstar Studios, and Battlefleet Gothic to create prototype fleets that attempt to capture the feel of the various races and faction I wish to design.

Battleship

 It should be noted that the Firestorm Armada minis are much larger than most other starship miniatures. So I use Firestorm Armada cruisers as battleships in my game, destroyers as cruisers, and frigates are still pretty close to frigate size so those remain the same.

Cruisers

 I'm actually not sure if I will actually use these ships as one of the four main factions. I really wanted to make a fleet based around the Marauder's Syndicate Spur Class Heavy Cruiser, but since it is part of Spartan Games' mercenary faction there aren't any smaller ships with the same design theme. The RSN ships were what I judged to be the closest, so I had originally planned to convert their smaller ships to look more like the Spur Class. Now, however, they have released a few new factions that look quite nice. I'll be sure to let you know how that mental tug of war plays out in a later post.

Frigates