Niðavellir Shipyard

The Nidavellir Shipyard is a large UCM Shipyard hidden far away from any planetary system.
After the scattering of humans after the first Scourge attack many ships used their ftl drives and made an random Foldspace jump just to get away. Many of this ships found themselves alone in the dark, to close to a star or a black hole and perished but some made it to an empty place in space. And that’s how the Nidavellir belt was discovered. A collection of large rocks, asteroids in different sizes and collection of dust and sand. Exactly how this place come to be, far from any sun, placed in between systems is not known. It is believed it was created after an extremely unlikely collision of two larger celestial body, with no stronger gravity pull in the vicinity this collection of minerals and rocks have held together by their own combined pull of each other. The scatter of large rocks and the natural background radioactivity have created a hiding place. After the survivors made contact with the now formed UCM the area have been put to good use.

Named after the Norse mythology Nidavellir, the world of the dwarves, for its rich mineral and metal resources. Perfectly for foundries and a large shipyard complex.

This is the place to produce ships...


Tuesday 27 February 2018

Santiago class Corvette squadron

Here we have have a small squadron of Santiago class Corvettes for my UCM.
The work in progress pictures have been shown previously here

Each of these ships are given a special decoration to break up the somewhat boring military grey colour scheme. To make them somewhat more interesting to look at.
I just love the Santiago class Corvettes, they are a nice design and were fun to paint.

But I think I got some ships from an new mould as the "lines" from the 3d printing of the original models are clearly seen and I didnt manage to hide it all in the painting. But besides that disappointment I really like the miniatures.

It was hard to get good light today and it was all snowy outside so taking a picture outside was not an option, hope you see the details good enough.

For the last ship in the squadron 132, I gave her a pin up girl "Take- off time"


The 131 with the Trireme Eye and 133 with there "no guts- no glory!














/ Eng

Sunday 25 February 2018

Military Spacestation

Here we have a medium sized military spacestation.
I used a small piece of plasticard to raise the commandstation from the main hull a little.



A Moscow class heavy cruiser escorted by a Jakarta class Aegis frigate are seen here pass by the M-32 Spacestation on a routine patrol.

/ Eng

Dropzone Commander tournament game 5, Shaltari vs PHR

Here are a small After action report from the fifth and final Dropzone Commander battle from the tournament we had.

My Shaltari would face of against Daniels PHR.

The scenario we played had three buildings at the middle line with one objective in each. I think they were indestructible in this scenario.
In each players edge a further noteworthy point was placed, I think it was a "Focal point" and as long as the your commander were close by it gave that player a +1 on the search table to find the objectives in the middle buildings.

I rushed my Thunderbird gunships behind a building early on.
I dropped all my warstrider in the centre on the focal points and started to spread out from there.
The smaller gates and infantry speeded to the middle buildings with the objectives, trying to find them before the PHR forces could stop them.
My Panther managed to find clear line of sight to a small enemy dropship when it walked in and downed it.
Unfortunately the enemy had some dirty tricks up his sleeve and played a card that gave him infinite range with his guns and his large HQ battlegroup took out the Panther in return. 
My infantry was super quick in. The Pungaris deployed on the right flank, Braves in the middle.

The Commander in his special Coyote Warstrider with two Tarantulas and a Dreamsnare. This would be my anchorage.

Withe the commander on the special point got a bonus to search for objectives, this combined with the Pungaris own bonus for searching made it no problem to find the objective in the building on the right flank.
The Braves in the middle building also had luck finding their objective really fast.

Two Jaguars are deployed from a large Gaia gate. I love the model for the Gaia, with its massive wingspan it looks like a big butterfly...


I used Eldritch Energies on the enemy in this building and then sent in the infantry to engage.





The firefight had taken its toll on the enemy and he was down to just two heavy walkers in his command squad.
The infantry in the middle had no problem to carry the objective to their Haven transport and tried to use the terrain and the warstriders as cover or protection as it was carried back to safety.

I had found the objective in the building with the Pungaris and a unit of Braves, but...
Enemy forces had stormed the building.

The Braves ordered the Pungari to hold off the enemy and engage them as the took the objective with them and left the poor slaves to their fate...

They fought the enemies of their masters but they were totally slaughtered by Medusa and the squad of Valkeries. They did manage to make some small damage on the Valkyries but thats hardly enough. What they did manage to do was uphold the enemy long enough for me to evacuate the objective.
Enemy dropships and Athena air superiority fighters harassed my two Haven gates and my Eden as they fall back with the objective. With multiple targets I thought at least one of them would survive the onslaught..


On my left flank things didnt look as good. I was heavily outnumbered and Daniel managed to use multiple command cards to boost his forces in close combat. My troops was getting slaughtered here to. In an attempt I tried out a rather different tactic... By deploying gates in his way, his dropships had to fly through the charged air from the gates and hopefully get downed...
Not the most solid plan but I was getting desperate and that was all I had to not let the enemy get that objective of the table...
My opponent would have nothing of this rouse and sent in the Athenas to deal with it...
Havens were seen crashing to the ground....

In the centre his commander had taken a beating... He had lost all his bodyguards and the AA walkers were backing him up as my Thunderbirds tried to snipe enemy walkers without return fire...

The warstriders of the Shaltari had really made a heavy anchorage and with the boosted shields from the Dreamsnare and fieldrepairs had managed to take a beating...



In the end it was a victory for the Shaltaris, I had secured two objectives and Daniel one.



And just some quick pictures from the other boards.





When I had won this battle and was ready to place a marker I noticed that my fellow Shaltari player Jens had already conquered all of the former PHR spacestation. Not surprisingly as it had come under invasion and was further reinforced with a new stronger commander and fresh troops...
I opted to instead fortify a ground area on the planet.



After the final battles this was the map for the campaign.

Yellow - Shaltari
Green - PHR
Red - Scourge
Blue - UCM/Resistance

All in all I think the map campaign really added another layer to the tournament. A fun little extra moment. More about the rules for the campaign in the previous post at http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2018/02/dropzone-commander-tournament-campaing.html


And the tournament worked great to. A nice mixture of different scenarios with different types of objectives. And I liked the terrain for the boards, always nice to play on a board you like.
A special thanks to Erik for organising this.

In the end I managed to take the second place, just one point after the winner. Linus, the Resistance commander.

Saturday 24 February 2018

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Dropfleet Commander, work in progress. Late night painting Sanitago class Corvettes

Last night I started painting some UCM, Santiago class Corvettes from Dropfleet Commander.
Here are some work in progress pictures with bad light.
Its good ta have some really small brushes...


133 - No Guts No Glory, fighter nose art.


 131 - Greek "Trireme Eye"


That leaves 132 still undicided. Im thinking on giving it also som kind of ww2 nose art, maybe an Egyptian eye, a pinup girl like those ww2 American bombers?
If you get a nice idea Im open for it or for future ships. Thanks

Monday 19 February 2018

Dropzone Commander tournament game 4, Shaltari vs Shaltari

The forth game of the tournament.

My unbeatable Shaltaris would meet their own kind... They would be facing another Shaltari tribe, under the command of Jens.
The mission we would play had a focal point in the middle of the board and lots and lots of potential objective scattered all over the board.
If I remembered correctly it was called "Swedish search", it is a tweeked "Seach" scenari with a focal point at the midle to push the armies to actually engage the enemy.





Using the protections of the trees in the park the Braves dares to leave to safety of the buildings.


My Pungaris had been pushed up but were assaulted by enemy elite Firstborn infantry... this will not be a beautiful carnage...


Using this gate, the enemy starts to deploy lighter flanking units. Besides being able to push at my flank it gave him the option to start collect possible objectives here. His small light skimmers were a particulary nice little addition, easy to hide, fast to move but still able to search for points in the scenario. I might have to consider to include a small unit if these in the future.



I tried to use my Jaguars for an push, but they could not bring their guns to damage the opponent.
But the dices was really not with me in this game. A lot more 1s then should be statistic to roll were found in my rolls...
The Jaguars AA fires also failed me.
The Thunderbirds failed misserable and where easily taken out, them self failed to hit their targets in the entire game.

Edit: My opponent pointed out that the bad dicerolls did not include my rolls for my shields. The Dreamsnare did his work and the dices behaved accordingly in its presence...



It ended in a loss, not a big one butt still.
The killpoints were equally tight, I think they ended in something like a 8pts favour to me.

Jens abuility to use his gates and spread out his force to seek out the objectives gave him the game.
I was really tired in this game and did a lot of mistakes.

Jens played really good, had I not loost focus on capturing objectives on the last couple of turns things could have looked different.

It was a fair win for the Shaltari, Jens played the objectives for the scenario and I did not.



During this game I only managed to take these pictures of the other players games.





This was the status of the campaign map at the end of game 4.
Jens used his victory to reinforce the hold on the space station.
Sacking the incompetant commander and reinforce with more Shaltari troops. The invasion foothold on the space station had been fortified.