Saturday 27 September 2014

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.

6 comments:

  1. Your scratchbuilds look better than some commercially available models. I love the simplicity of construction.

    I was following the development of that game myself... if you work on it and come up something you like, I'd help play-test (but only solo unfortunately).

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  2. Not my thing, but, man, what a sight to see. I'm glad i took a closer look. Very nicely built and finished scratchbuilds. I like the evocative names for the vessels, too. I was thinking perhaps a 5th destroyer might be called 'Suicidal Insanity' to go with the other 'S' names. Trying to make out the name of the battleship from the first picture, I thought it was '...Poetry of Oceans'. But the actual name is a bit more in keeping with a navy belonging to a dark but cerebral civilization... Fine work!

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  3. Have you thought about 5150: Fighter Command from Two Hour Wargames?

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    Replies
    1. I assumed that was more for fighter combat (it seems to be, based on the reports I've read). And 5150: Star Navy seems to be for more ships that I want to use. I want something at about their level of complexity, but for 5-10 ships per side. And that isn't Full Thrust :)

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  4. Very nice ships, and the names are exquisite!

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