Over the last year, I have been returning to the Star Frontiers universe over and over. It has to be one of my favorite settings of all time, and is to me what Traveller is for many other scifi role-players. I missed the Traveller boat. I have often read/seen other retro or nostalgia projects done by other gamers and have a strong desire to do one of these myself. The big problem is that I've never been able to get into any one setting deep enough to do such a project justice.
These projects usually involve either tracking down old miniatures or, in a lot of cases, finding new minis to represent those forces of old. Though the SF ship minis are not off the radar, they are rare and hard to find as the line was never overly huge, popular, or well-supported. I can order a few of the older models and then try to fill the gaps with other figures that sort of fit or I can go with newer models for the whole project and not have to worry so much about it. Does anybody know of any currently produced figs that fit the look of the figs in this post?
I've looked around, but found little. Fleet minis are not my strong spot, so I may have missed some stuff.
Help a brother out?
-Eli
Posts
I don't know if they're still current or not, but there was a Fading Suns miniatures game (I think it was called Noble Armada, but I'm not 100% sure.
ReplyDeleteI always liked Star Frontiers myself. Especially Dralasites and Yazirians.
ReplyDeleteI don't know of any replacement figs, but I will keep my eye out for the originals if you need more.
You might look at the Silent Death line. I seem to recall they had some bio-blob looking ships that might go with the Sathar.
Yazirians would be in something Romulan-y I think. Winged, at any rate.
Dralasites... Hmm... Either organic again or very angular. Imposing order, and so on.
Vrusk, maybe something spiky looking. Spiky like a balled up porcupine or anemone looking, that is. Or a big Christmas tree star.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJ,
ReplyDeleteThe original game never broke it down by race. There were Fed ships and there were Sathar and independent vessels. They alls folowed a similar design philosophy.
I think that one thing that always appealed to me about SF was that the aliens still used hardware. Vrusk, Yazarian, and Dralisites all used variations on a universal set of tech with minor variations. The creators of the game avoided the usual tropes of bio and spikey bits and such.
If you can keep an eye out for the ships, that's be great. If I can get a hold on some of the originals then I may be able to kitbash the fillers.
-Eli
@Gamethyme - Yeah, Noble Armada was the one for Fading Suns. I am not so much looking for a game system as I am ships that look similar to those in the SF universe.
ReplyDeleteSome of the Star Fleet Battles ships might work nicely.
-Eli
Noble Knight's got some of the original SF sets here - pretty fairly priced, too. I've also seen them listed on eBay at very low prices. (They're not as hard to find as you might think.)
ReplyDeleteJust be careful if you buy these old minis still in shrinkwrap: I picked up three sets of SF characters a few years back, and several of them had tumorous "lead rot" - a couple had disintegrated altogether.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up. I saw the Noble Knight stuff but right now I am only in the planning stages. The line from TSR was never huge to begin with and I am still considering other possible options before commiting to buying "official" minis.
Do you want capital ships (BB, BC, DN, SD, or CV), swarms of fighters, light combatants (DD, FFG, LC, etc.) or what?
ReplyDeleteSF tends to follow the usual sci-fi tropes of the time it was written. Capital ships exist as doe fighters, frigates, destroyers and a sort of corvette known as a "Scout" and "Assault Scouts"
ReplyDeleteOK Eli, here you go.
ReplyDeleteGround Zero Games is the best around when it comes to Sci Minis (15mm) and Space Ships. Go to the Full Thrust Spaceships lines. http://www.gtns.co.uk/store1/commerce.cgi
You can use the Games Workshop Battlefleet Gothic spaceships. I have bunches and they can be used for anything. Best to troll ebay for these.
Also I would highly recommend the Ninja Magic spaceships. They are some of the best. I have bunches of these. I would recommend BArandon at Rattlehead games for these. Great guy unmatched service. http://www.rattleheadgames.com/catalog/WithHostileIntentProducts.html
Also BRigade Models makes some nice figs, but I don't use any of those.
I was luky enough to buy the Cold NAvy line of fleets before it went defunct. And thay are great too. But not available.
Hope this helps.
As far as using them with SF. I am planning on using them for it as well, but I have so many fleets because of my own personal Space Opera background that goes from fleet actions to 6mm epic scale ground battles, to squad based combined arms actions in 15mm to 28mm man focused games.
@Ken,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input and the suggestions. Those are all great lines of ships, of which I am aware, but the big thing I am looking for is the SF asthetic which few if any of these ships have.
-Eli
Dunno if these are exactly what you're looking for, but they came immediately to mind:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.veltd.net/stardate.htm
http://www.mondayknight.com/Miniature%20Pages/GalacticKnights/GalacticKnightsShips.htm
http://www.adastragames.com/index.html
http://www.ravenstarstudios.com/
http://www.kallistra.co.uk/Shop/SD3K%20Shop.html
Oh, and Cold Navy is available through Raven Star Studios.
This might be cruel, but a local shop has a pack of the Sathar for $36 US.
ReplyDeleteI can put you in touch with them..lemme know.