Federation Commander

I finally finsihed my first squadrons of War Cruisers.
I now have 3 fully painted D5s and three fully painted D5Ws. I was so happy to see them finished, I just snapped a few quick photos right there on the workbench, so the quliaty isn't all that it could be. I'll post more pictures later... hopefully of better quality.

Since several people who haven't grown up on Starline minis have expressed concerns about the possible difficulties involved in differentiating the individual classes mid-game, I attempoted to resolve the dilemna while painting.
Although they are not pictured here, My D7s have lighter grey panels than the base color nad the C8s will have darker grey panels.
The D5/D5Ws OTOH, being War Cruisers and a late-war development; I used to attept to tie together the Klingon paint schemes.

The hulls are still the TOS grey, but the wing panels are now green. This serves well I think as a missing link helping to tie together the TOS-era grey Kingons and the TNG-era green Klingons.

D5 War Cruiser


D5W New War Cruiser


Both together:


The squadron:

D7 (just to show the paneling)


D7 Squadron

When you said you were going to do the raised panels on these in green, I didn't expect to like it. However, you chose a really good shade of green; it works with the gray instead of jumping out from it. Nice work, as-always.

djdood wrote:When you said you were going to do the raised panels on these in green, I didn't expect to like it. However, you chose a really good shade of green; it works with the gray instead of jumping out from it. Nice work, as-always.

It's actually four shades of green (no half-measures from scoutdad! )

The panels are based in Dark Angels Green. Next, they get a ry brushing in Jubilee Green. Third step is a really light dry brush with Scorpion Green.
The fianl touch is a bit of a really, really light green (can't remember the name) used to highlight the leading edge of the panels.

I should have taken pictures of the scrap of styrene used as a test palette.
Some of hte combos were just obnoxious!

But, thanks. Glad to know they passed the dood test (patents pending)

Put your best ones in the nominations topic and Joel will pick them up in HF.

What is your technique for doing the two tone blue on the warp engines and warp cooling grills?

marcus_aurelius wrote:What is your technique for doing the two tone blue on the warp engines and warp cooling grills?

It's actually four tone / 5 step.
1) Paint it the base color... in this case: Folk Art brand cobalt blue.
2) Dry brush with lighter blue... in this case: Folk Art brand ocean blue.
3) Wash with a thin (4 or 5 to 1 mixture of base color and magic wash)
4) Drybrush with light blue... in this case: Folk Art brand cyan.
5) Mix a bit of GW skull white with the cyan... and very lightly hight the edges.

In all intances, painting began atthe rear of the fins.. or top of the cooling grill and the paint was puled forward or downward. This left the heaviest concentration of color at the rear of the engine and top of the grill.

Thanks! I will try that out, or at least something very similar using the colors I have available locally.