Sunday, June 12, 2022

And now for something completely different....

 Sorry to all those who have managed to wade through the last 10 posts. Its been a bit of a mission to get through it (on both sides of the monitor) but the info is now back up online so its not lost (till the next time).

So this  post I'm going to look at another genra entirely; Steampunk airships.

I've had an interst in this sort of thing ever since Sky galleons of Mars from the late 1980's (which still sits on the shelf in der room) and what self respecting scientist could resist a game where Victorian spaceships cruise the interplanetary ether. Later I brought a copy of David Manleys Aeronef from Wessex games and we played a few games with them at the club. Brigade models I think were in business at that point but it was hard to order them (oh and did I mention I was tight?) so we made our own. 

The first up was the british. several of the smaller ships were based on the Sky galleons models but with a few more guns. the Battleship was what I thought could be designed with a single turret and most of the guns in sponsons.

 I then came up with a Ficticious nation for my next collection. The Duchy of Burgundy was a creation of the Viena conference of 1816 being a buffer state between France and the Gemanic states. by the late 19th century it has expanded to become of a similar size to its Medieval namesake. And its got lots of airships....

first up the lighter than air ships (Dirigibles or 'Digs' for short). Burgundian airships have distictive airfoils used to change height. The battleship Dijon (missing one of the control panels) with a landing deck for scouts, escorted by a pair of battlecruisers and two lighter escort Digs. The insignia for the Duchy is a white and blue panel with the cross of Lorraine in red. The models are made from wood dowel with plastic details added. the airscrews are made by using an office holepunch to punch disks out of metal foil, then cutting and bending the blades.

Next up the heavier than aire craft. Depending on which alternative history you are using the craft are powered by Martian liftwood, R matter from ore deposits (though how it stays in the ground might be an issue) or an anti-gravity devide of some sort. The Duchys engineering was not that good and so the hulls of the aeronef needed to be bigger than other nations. The Duchys ships were designed for speed with armour and guns secondary considerations. They also had a cross section surprisingly like a pencil. The Toison d'Or class were named for the order of knights from medieval Burgundy. Initially a fast bomber design, it was found to weak and an escort version was designed on the same hull.

The smaller escort of the Sirene class initially had large winged airfoils and used speed to keep altitude. later models had better anti-grav units and used smaller airfoils. The large vessel at the front is destroyer Le Fantasque sacrifices everything else for straight out speed (rather like the WW2 class of destroyers).

During one of his periodic visits Luke Ueda-Sarson knocked up some models. The Swiss Confederation was a good choice as an enemy for the Burgundians. I can't recall any names or roles.

He also made some Dutch forces which became increasingly odd. The photo shows a mix of home defense vessels and colonial cruisers. The small vessel at the back is a city defense ship with limited mobility. At some point I intended making some similar ships suspended below balloons (the wood balls are in the box)

I'm now interested to see what the newest Osprey ruleset "castles in the Sky" is like. My initial impression is that its based around the models avaliable from Brigade models and I'm not sure if there is a points system.

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