Bonefleet! Shaltari Dropfleet Commander

The battleship is done!  With interchangeable top section I now have a commanding presence to either punch holes in anything from afar or to unleash fighter swarms upon on my prey…

Quick little update today on the Battleship. The hull and metals are pretty much done, next I will move onto the ‘fins’ and start picking out some finer details.

After a month off painting some Fallout stuff, I am back to my Shaltari and magnetising a Battleship so that I can field either variant.  This was nice and simple as the top section just sits in place and slides out to change things up.

I used 4mm x 1mm magnets which are going to be plenty strong enough to stop the pieces sliding off during play.  The magnet on the hull and carrier piece are sitting in place on the surfaces of the pieces, I only needed to do a bit of light trimming to clear enough space for them to fit.

The particle death triad piece required a hole to be drilled so that the pieces could sit flush.  I first drilled a pliot hole with a pin vice then bored out the larger hole with the 4mm drill bit by hand.  Resin is fairly soft and cuts easily without mechanical assistance.

And after a few coats of varnish and the aid of my lightbox, the cruisers are done!

I like to gloss varnish my models in general as this is meant to dry as a harder wearing protective layer, then I knock the shine back, in this case I have finished with two layers of satin varnish for a slight seen across these majestic alien hulls.

I will be coming back to this project soon-ish as I continue to work through my stack of stuff.  Next up will either be some frigates or a battleship.

One of the features of Shaltari vessels is their dedication to pointing all of the guns forward. And for packing some evil weaponry options like disintegrator batteries and particle cannons.

As these weapons are exotic in nature, they get an exotic and ornate look in the form of bronze and gold. Going for dome darker recesses in the details and a shiny finish, I reached for the metallics. The steps are:

• Tinny Tin basecoat
• Bright Bronze highlight
• Nuln Oil wash
• Polished Gold highlight

Moving on from the hulls, I want my ships to have a bright and contrasting colour scheme.  Shaltari vessels typically feature a central core that houses the ship’s power source and bridge type stuff, and are edged with gravity manipilation devices in the form of the many fins you will have noticed on the models.

As these parts are all about outlandish alien tech and power manipulation, I decided to go with something vibrant – so hot orange!  I want the tips of the fins to be almost glowing and darkening towards the hull, and likewise a brightly going centre to the cores.  I approached this with a series of darker shades ‘washed’ in layers by mixing them with glaze medium.  The steps are:

• Orange Fire (basecoat)
• Scarlet Red
• Terracotta
• Charred Brown

Welcome to the project!

As the description says, my Shaltari fleet is going for a bone-like hull effect and we are starting with my process for that.  Hopefully the pics help to illustrate the steps, but I did end up taking them in different light so some of the effect might get lost.

The process is simple though, first I primed white, base coated in Khaki, drybrushed with Bonewhite, washed with Agrax Earthshade to bring out the gribbly details then drybrushed with Ivory white to highlight.

Now unfortunately I took my pics of each step under different lighting, leaving it kinda hard to tell the difference in the images!  So instead of posting those, I thought I’d just post the final look.  So, here are four cruisers and a battlecruiser before starting work on the fins and cores.