The Gothic Empire

A couple of years ago I scratchbuilt some spaceships in order to playtest a possible starship combat game based on the 'Songs of Blades and Heroes' engine. The game was fun, but there were still flaws in it when the developer seemed to stop work on it, so nothing more came of it. This was a shame, as it had about the right level of detail (not much) complexity (not much) and scale of game (small) that I wanted in a starship game, and had yet to find in any commercial rules up to that point.

Anyway, at he time I built three forces, whose adventures you can find documented elsewhere on this blog. However I built a fourth force that never saw action. I found it today whilst rummaging through boxes for something else, and thought they deserved a quick iPhone photoshoot. Say hello to the ships of - The Gothic Empire!

Here's the fleet deployed - one Battleship, two Cruisers, three Frigates and four Destroyers.

The Battleship Sombre Poetry of Dreams

The Cruisers Master of the Tortured Existence and Mistress of the Exquisite Solitude

The Frigates Stygian Purpose, Dark Enshrouded Desires and Fearful Symmetry

The Destroyers Shroud, Suffering, Seduction and Silence

A top down view of the vessels - the largest is a couple of inches long, the smallest about an inch. As with my other starships they are built from stacked layers of card, toothpicks, lentils and grains of rice.

I have to say that, having found these models I'm keen to give them a game of some sort, even if it means fixing the last published playtest version of the rules myself.