War Rocket Demo Fleets

Wednesday night of last week I threw these fleets together for display and demoing Hydra Miniature's War Rocket game at Rock-Con and Fall-In. I don't know how much they helped, but it was a really pleasant surprise how much War Rocket stuff we sold at Rock-Con.

The demos we run at the tables use this size of fleet: A class two and three class ones. Not a big game by any stretch of the imagination, but it gives people a feel for movement and the game's combat and initiative mechanics.

I'm showing the engines in most of these pics to show you an idea I had during the painting. Namely that painting the engine glow a color the opposite or near opposite on the color wheel of the main hull color helps the rear of the ship really pop.

I decided to leave the engines of the Zenithians a pure black though, the orange working much nicer on the bridges of the ships.

After Fall-In I'll come back and give final touch ups to the demo fleets. For the Zenithians this will include a gloss varnish over the cockpits and dirtying up the hulls some more. I like the idea of the aliens having dirty/crusty hulls and gleaming weapons and propeller rings.

The Valkeeri designs I didn't really like when I first saw them. However, now that I've painted some though they're really starting to grow on me. I like the way they maneuver in the game as well; while they can forget about complicated turns they can do fun things the Imperials and Galacteers can't.

Again you can see that using opposing colors for engine glow really make the back of this Class 3 pop.

The painting of the Galacteers and Imperials basically involved a couple watered down coats of Games Workshop's Foundation paints followed by a Vallejo wash. For the Imperials it was mostly a glaze to get the metallic gold areas working, (even with a couple of coats the gold I use tends to be pale) and painted the red hull areas over again to even out the color. However I left much of the surface area of the Galacteer ships with the raw results of the wash to leave them feeling a bit grimy and used, especially the Class 3.

The ships (and my paint jobs :) ) have gotten pretty universal compliments as I think they should. It is a very nice range and works pretty well even with a simple two tone paint job.