Back To The Shipyard

Although I have a nice set of counters for 'A Billion Suns', it would be nice to have some miniatures as well. I did make some spaceships a few years ago, but I'm not sure I'm entirely enamoured of the designs, and even if I can reproduce them. So I thought I'd make some ships especially for the game. And, as you might expect, I have resorted to lolly sticks.

At the scale I'm likely to be playing at the larger ship types aren't going to be a viable option, so my aim was to put together two forces of the smaller ships. I can do a second build session to expand this as required. Here's the start - utility ships (small and medium), gunships, corvettes and frigates.

I'm not planning on anything to fancy - I used small pieces of card to break up some of the flat surfaces. These are the final designs for (front to back) the gunships, corvettes and frigates.

And these are the utility ships

With the basic designs sorted, the next step was to replicate them in numbers needed for the game. I also looked at some flight stand designs, as well as how to do 'wings' - the 'fighters' in 'A Billion Suns'.

The production line at full stretch ...

And the results!

For each side I have produced 5 x Medium Utility, 5 x Small Utility, 10 x Wings (which can be marked as Recon, Fighter or Bomber as necessary), 6 x Gunships, 4 x Corvettes and 2 x Frigates.  

The small rectangular locks at the front are lifeboats, which are objectives for ones of the contracts. That will be my next build phase - making objective markers for the contracts.

Whilst out shopping the other day I found these great beads. They're about 1" square ...

... and make perfect Jump Points. I don't even need to paint them.