May the 4th came and went, and I felt compelled to post something to do with the stars. And wars. And spaceships. And having wars amongst the stars with spaceships. Couldn’t think of anything, though. Yep. Would have been cool. Ah, well. Here are some other things, then.
Let’s start off with a big “thanks” to all the folks who stopped by and looked around for over 15K worth of pageviews – most of them looking at the Starship Size Comparison post.
Next, I want to give a long overdue “thank you” to Star Ranger for placing Sunder the Stars on the Web Games Page of one of my favorite websites: Starship Combat News.
With the advent of Mongoose Publishing’s A Call to Arms: Star Fleet and WizKid's Star Trek Fleet Captains, and, of course, Majestic Twelve Games’ Starmada, the urge to dust off and rebuild my Star Fleet Battles Federation force (most of which was sold off some 20 years ago) was had. I've always been a Star Trek fan, and SFB was the first starship combat game in the collection. The old paint jobs did not fare well, so the ships would have to be stripped and repainted, as well as mounted upon the currently preferred bases. Despite the availability of newer and larger ships, the original series designs won out for nostalgic reasons and the fact that they could be obtained affordably on secondary markets.
The original Lou Zocchi starship miniatures – like the one pictured at top - were based on the art from the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual which fired many imaginations all those decades ago. Welcome to life before George Lucas, kids. The Amarillo Design Bureau still has a well supported line of figures to flesh out the fleet beyond the classic scout, destroyer, heavy cruiser, dreadnought, and tug with cargo pods. Even decals were obtained to streamline detailing. Nothing painted yet, but photos of the ships shall be posted as they are completed.
And on the subject of Star Trek: here are a few entertaining fan sites that, for some odd reason, are without any miniature wargaming content. (Yes, I know: what were they thinking?)
Boldly Gone A Star Trek - The Original Series webcomic. Follow the crew's adventures of the U.S.S.Mandela, a Kennedy-class diplomatic vessel that looks suspiciously like a fancy tug.
Starship Farragut: The Animated Episodes Based on the original Star Trek animated series, the animated episodes will have the same look and feel that you loved and enjoyed in the 70's, but are being created using 21st century technology. They also have live-action adventures.
And a shout out to Adam at Barking Alien who ran the only Star Trek pencil & paper RPG that mattered to our crew of Starfleet “originals”. I always got to play the token alien on the bridge. Missing ya, man.
Then, finally, there is...
Sunder the Stars: The Confederation of Friendly Peoples!
In completely unrelated news, the 6th set of fleet sheets for Sunder the Stars is available for download. Naturally, you can use any ships you wish with StS, and this has absolutely nothing to do with anything posted above. Nope. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero.
If you have any entertaining Star Trek fan sites, please post a brief description and a link below!
