Starships!?! Yes...Starships

"Dad, what are these?"

"Those are space ships for a game I used to play."
"Who are these guys?"
"Those are the Minbari."
"Are they the good guys?"

".... Maybe we should start with Star Trek..."


My Son's foray into my old Fleet Action Scale Babylon 5 collection ignited my 1000 figure goal for February.  Basically, he dug out the unpainted/partially painted models and started asking about them.  I saw the mountains of unpainted fighters and resolved to finish all of the fleets for a game I stopped playing many years ago..... (It sounds strange when I put it that way.)

First up were the ships/fighters for my League of Nonaligned Worlds collection.  This amounted to some Drazi warships, some Vree flying Saucers and a mass of Brakiri fighters.  The Vree have always been a favorite just because they are alien greys in flying saucers.  The B5 episode where a human is suing one in court based on the abduction of an ancestor is part of what got me hooked on the show.

Squadron of Firebirds

Sunhawks?  It's been awhile

So many little fighters....

Vree Battle Saucers.  

My Minbari fleet is mostly done, but I did find some of these Morshin carriers.

All of my ships are Fleet Action scale, because 1) The are cheaper and 2) I like the look of the scale for epic space battles.

By far my favorite group are the Earth Alliance.  The attempt at realistic physics and ship design pulled me away from any form of Trek-fandom in the 90's and planted me squarely in the B5 camp.  Walter Koenig's Bester is far more memorable than his Chekov.

A mass of Starfuries

 The Star furies are all color coded to make squadron ID easier.  I left some of them out of the above pic, so I included them here with my custom Marathon.  When Mongoose Publishing picked up the B5 licence they used all of the designs from the old Agents of Gaming B5 Wars line.  The ships were beautifully done, and AoG ensured that all of the non-canon designs blended almost seamlessly with the ships from the show.  When Mongoose Publishing attempted to add some designs of their own to the mix, I am not alone in saying they were just awful.  The models were cartoon-ish and stood out like a sore thumb amongst the old designs.  As such, I opted to make some custom FA scale models I thought looked a less outlandish...

Custom Marathon made from a Warlock and spare parts.

Two other custom Marathon designs with my version of the Nemesis

The Thunderbolt fighters were painted up along the same lines as the Star Furies.  Some of the models are on the old bases, as I ran out of the wood hexes I purchased back in 2005(?).

Mason and I have also developed our "lads and dads" space combat system I will post latter.  Suffice to say we borrowed heavily from our Battle Cattle: The Card Game deck and a hex board.  The game is a joy to a 6 year old, and not too bad for the 40 year old either....