The Alien Armada has arrived

Well, I finished up my Zentraedi themed Covenant fleet.  I tried to incorporate all the main colors (green, black, yellow, and grey) but had trouble putting the grey in.   There is usually a trim of black across the middle of Zentraedi ships that "blooms" into a grey area but I couldn't really find a good place to do it.  I tried putting a grey areas on the top, on the back "wings", and just on various struts underneath.  The biggest model, the ORS cruiser, has a spot for it on the top front but I wanted a consistent design throughout and didn't really find one so I decided to just accentuate a few minor fins in grey.

 
Normally I overcoat a few times with gloss spray and then do a final dull coat to take off the shine (too many layers of dull leads to frosting!)... but, as a nod to the usually metallic reflective Covenant color schemes, I decided to leave it shiny.  I think it's a nice juxtapostion to my dull coated utilitarian brick UNSC ships.

I've got more ships to build for both factions but I'll probably take a break from them for a bit because I don't actually have any space left to put more models in my carrying case for this game.  The above fleets give me roughly 800pts worth of ships for each side which is enough hopefully to get a taste of the game in practice and for unofficial demos.

Next up, I've got one more Tau Broadside battlesuit left to build for my small retaliation cadre to finish off the hobby work for the year.  While I didn't plan it that way, one more green model is on the way in 2015!

Have the Zentraedi joined the Covenant?

Just a quick update... I've decided to continue painting some of my Halo Fleet Battles ships to give myself a fleet to fight against with my UNSPACY fleet.  I had already dipped my toe in the Macross pool with my decals on the human fleet and my previous Covenant paint scheme (the "Tron Legacy" look) didn't work out as well as I had hope so I just went full in on the Macross crossover theme.  I'll be painting up my Covenant ships in the typical Zentraedi paint scheme from the anime shown below:

Zentraedi Fleet Paint Scheme

Sorry for the bad cell phone pic in a dimly lit basement but I just finished the work for today.  So far, I've done the base coat, a wash, and a drybrush of the base color again to highlight the raised parts.  I just have to pick out which parts I'll be detailing in black, grey, and yellow next.

I took out my x-wing miniatures from my carrying case so I have a little bit more room to play with.  Initially, I planned on just dividing up my human fleet down the middle for demos but the extra room gives me enough space to instead put in a roughly equal Covenant fleet along with an RDF/UEDF force for the Robotech minis game as well (my zentraedi were to be split down the middle for demos as well previously).  Now I'll have the rules, dice, counters, and minis for two separate Heavy Gear, Robotech, and Halo factions if I find someone interested in playing them.  On another side note, I finally got my Tau model over the weekend as well so I hope to finish off the year with that quick project to complete my mini-tau Farsight force.