Space ... The final frontier

Tabletop spaceship combat, although I love Warhammer 40.000, are still some of the best tabletop miniatures games I ever played. Full Thrust and Babylon 5: A Call To Arms are the two I used to play the most. Fast paced, minimal bookkeeping and loads of fun!

When a good buddy of mine gifted me the rulebook and fleet book of Babylon 5: ACTA a week or two ago the nostalgia hit hard and I went on a scavenging hunt to find some models to paint and build a fleet of spaceships.

I knew I kept some models somewhere and after some searching I found them: two starbases and a handful of models. If I remember correctly they were part of a larger collection I took of the hands of another buddy of mine.

The models were all built and already primed black, so after a little cleaning I could start painting immediately. Because they are all Starfleet models I went with a pretty straightforward colourscheme:

- dark grey basecoat

- light grey drybrush

- panel lining with mix of grey, blue and black

- some "spot colours" to break the overall grey tone of the models: mainly blue, red and gold

- wash with mix of black and brown inks

Because of the simple paintjob I was able to finish this entire fleet in three days.

Here's the breakdown of my first fleet of starships:

Oberth class ships: mainly research / science vessels, but I intend to use them as the smaller escort style starships.

Danube class ships: shuttle type vessels, but who still pack a punch in combat.

Defiant class ships: relatively small vessels, but purely designed for combat.

Miranda class ships: the workhorse, used as supply and science vessel. Although they can still stand their ground in combat.

Nebula class ships: Used for exploration and patrol duties these vessels handle themselves very well in combat.

Galaxy class ship: Once the biggest and most advanced starship in Starfleet. It excels in all types of missions and will be the lead of my fleet.

Deep Space 9: A spacestation well known from the DS9 television show. Probably will see most use as a terrain feature on the tabletop. The only model that wasn't painted grey, but rather in various shades of brown.

Another spacestation, this one was painted in the same way as the starships.

Biggest inspiration and the guy who introduced me into the tabletop spaceship combat scene used to collect these. If I'm not mistaken he actually had every starship in the entire Star Trek franchise painted up in his collection. I based my paintjob on his beautifully painted fleets, hope I did them justice! He has since moved on to other periods, games and assorted geeky stuff, be sure to check him out on his blog!