Kooth at Midway

 The Coalition must have rebuilt their strength and repaired their warships after taking the Hydran homeworlds, because they mount an enormous offensive on the Hydran Starbase that stands between them and the Old Colonies. The little guys fight with an admirable combination of ferocity and tactical cunning as they fight off wave after wave of enemy attacks, shattering the Lyrans completely and mangling the Klingons as well. My cruiser the Deathblow takes part in two engagements, strangely enough on both occasions facing off against other mercenaries. The first one is a newly-built Battlecruiser, the first time I have seen one of those. Our ship of course comes off the worse, but the exchange is followed up by a hail of hellbores from a Hydran cruiser squadron with full fighter support; the enemy drifts off, crippled. We are not so fortunate in our second fight, where again we are met with another Orion vessel, this time a CR Cruiser, and the shoe is on the other foot. We win the relative firepower contest, with the enemy crippled by following Hydran Destroyers, but we are ourselves crippled by a Klingon Dreadnought. Slightly wounded, I watch the remainder of the campaign from the vid screens as the Hydrans wear down the assault by sheer tenacity. Eventually, the Klingons leave as their last E4 is vaporized by a Lord Bishop Command Cruiser.

This campaign is probably going to go down in history as the moment where the tide turned on this front. The Terran military liaison toasts the Hydran victory with reference to a famous naval battle from her own history, saying we should be proud to have taken part in the Midway Campaign.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fly me to the moon

Image
 And other places. These are resin pieces, 6" diameter, sold by Combat Zone Scenery in the UK, and very nice they are too. Part of their Armada scenery range, they are useful hemispherical planets of various kinds. Here's my attempt at the moon/planetoid/large asteroid one: In any tabletop space combat game the miniatures are going to be wildly out of scale when compared with model planets, but often we need something visual to do the job well. These fit the bill nicely. Jungle planet: I used gloss acrylics for the sea effect. You'll notice a couple of metallic building son the surface - the moon of Endor? In fact, the other two definitely show the Star Wars Armada theme:  Ice planet - aka Hoth. And yes, that is a representation of a dead Tonton at middle right. You can also see a destroyed At-At walker at the top of the photo. The details are fun, but they have to impressionistic. I think this one turned out well, to my surprise. Someone once told me a long time ago not
Read more

Jupiter IV SFB decals

Image
 I bought some of these. They took well over a month to arrive from Canada:  For the Kzinti: ship insignia to the left as you look at them, and ships' names in suitably off-looking script to the right. I've tried them out now on the model I put together as a Kzinti Starbase, and they are rather disappointing. The sheet of Kzinti names comes out very dark, too dark for use, in fact, even though I tried them on a painted stripe of white. The ship insignia are also dark, but those ones are usable. I'll probably paint a little white rectangle on the ships themselves to make the decals 'pop' a bit more. One thing to look out for is that the entire sheet is covered with transfer film, so you need to cut around the individual decals to make sure there isn't too much extra - that can become a bit awkward when you are trying to put them onto a ship panel. This reminds me of older transfer sets like the old Revo medieval ones. Overall verdict: worth getting the insignia s
Read more

The Lyrans are coming!

Image
 Well, not quite - this is my attempt at a Battle Station. It would actually do for pretty much any of the major powers, but I gave it a base sandy color and stuck some Lyran Homeworld Clan markings on it: The Lyran decals have come out much more sharply than the Kzinti ones did, possibly because of the lighter background tones. And for some reason my stations always look manky rather than Star Trek pristine, but I like the well used look. The second photo shows more of the detail, of which there is a great deal indeed. The model is six inches across by two inches high. It came with a flight stand, but being made of resin the station was far too heavy to balance safely so I simply glued it straight onto its base. In any case its relative height means it will still fit nicely with my spaceship models. I'm getting quite a lot of painting done at the moment. Teaching has finished for this academic year, although admin and my own writing will keep me busy. Doing a colour every so often
Read more