Wednesday, March 13, 2019

The Atlas Dreadnought... now in full Trekkiecolor!


A while back, I converted the Atlas Dreadnought that was introduced in the awesome TOS themed Agents of Yesterday expansion in Star Trek Online for the FASA system.   I was holding off from doing a Star Trek Adventures spaceframe until I had the right artwork for that style and JAFisher44 came through yet again!  I've used his 3d models (link here) in the past for my Pioneer and Derf STA writeups and he didn't disappoint with his take on the Atlas either.

I deviated a little bit from the STO version of the ship as I didn't want to stray too close to either my recent Pioneer writeup or my original Hood Class dreadnought in terms of stats and talents.  If you want something that replicates the official console that comes with the ship on STO, just replace the improved shields talent with improved power systems instead (or just take it as one of your optional ones as it's on my recommended list as well).  As with all my fan rules, feel free to comment below.  The full size image is available if you right click/open in new window on the pic or just download the pdf version linked below.







Monday, March 11, 2019

Winged Hussar Digital Conversion Test

I didn't have any concrete plans for more Winged Hussars when I finished my last fig but I've got a few more conversion ready bits to go and one upcoming model really attracted my attention, the convention exclusive primaris lieutenant.  I've traditionally converted ultracheap starter set figs bought as singles on ebay but I may have to splurge on this one as I really like the sculpt.  I'd love to covert him into yet another Winged Hussar and did some purely digital tweaking and color swaps to test out how he might look.

I'm not sure about the head as it's not exactly the look I'm going for but it's the closest in the GW line for the facial hair slightly wild look that I want.  I wish he wasn't screaming but the next closest one I found was either a no-facial hair scarred head or a bald full beard.  Ideally, I'd love to use some of the heads I initially wanted way back at the beginning of this meandering miniproject, the Puppets War Cossack heads, but I can't find a single pic of them on a space marine figure let alone a larger primaris one.  The only one I found was a genestealer cultist and I'm afraid that they'll end up looking too small.  The key ones I'd want to use would be the top right and bottom left heads. 


Technically, yes... they're cossack heads which would make them one of the traditional enemies of the Winged Hussars historically but they also remind me of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski from the Day of the Siege movie that featured the Winged Hussars in one of their most famous battles.  It's not exact but it's close enough I think to be a younger version of him.  It's supposed to start at the 2:00 mark so skip forward to there if it doesn't.


Also not pictured is the leopard skin fur that I traditionally put onto the models.  My usual method of adding a claw/leg strip under the axillary shield won't work on this model due to the tight space constraints.  Instead, I plan to put a Space Wolf pelt on his back under the backpack but adding that digitally is beyond my simple cut/paste/recolor abilities.  Same thing applies to removing the Lt helmet markings and adding a traditional dorsal helmet fin.  Usually I'd want to add a boltgun of some sort to make him a functional marine in his equipment but I think I'll skip that this time for the same space constraints.  I can't fit it chained under either arm and it'll be too tight likely in back to put it on the butt plate with the pelt there.

Friday, March 8, 2019

D-15 Klingon Command Cruiser Refit

It's been a while since I did any Trek content for either the current Star Trek Adventures RPG or the classic FASA tabletop game so I figured I'd put up something for both hopefully this week starting with FASA (age before beauty!).

A while back, I put up a FASA STSTCS sheet for my Klingon D-15 cruiser write up (link here) where I used a future 1701C era design that had a retro feel from Star Trek Online.  The prolific trek fan artist Atolm posted his take on some of the highly incongruous Klingon designs shown in Star Trek Discovery (link here) around the same time.   I really liked some of the designs but figured it would end with just that thread and I couldn't adapt those designs for my sheets.  Fortunately, artbraune also liked the designs and decided to commission Sean Tourangeau (the artist who created the Axanar Ares awesome final look) for a set of orthos for many of the ships (link here).  One of the most recent designs he's fleshed out was the Klingon Command Cruiser shown below.  The command cruiser seemed like a great fit for the D-15 with its plasma weapon and later rotary photon torpedo tube launcher due to the enlarged gullet compared with the traditional thin neck on ships like the D-7.


I was fortunate enough that all involved allowed me to adapt the art/design for my blog so I present the revised D-15 Quick Death cruiser for FASA STSTCS.  I've changed a few things both in the story and the stats from my original version to better reflect what Atolm originally created and Sean fleshed out.  As always, right click/open in new window to get the full sized jpeg image or save the pdf linked below instead.