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...

Monday, 31 July 2017

Dropfleet Commader AAR - UCM vs PHR

I finally managed to get a game of Dropfleet Commaner.

For those dont know anything about it, its a space ship game centred around landing troops in cities and on space stations and so on. Its set in the same universe as Dropzone Commander that takes place when the troops have been drooped from the space ships in this game.

As both of us a beginners in this games we decided to use the recommended starter fleets to begin with until we have learned the rules enough. So I think we did more then one mistake both tactically and rule wise.

My grey United Colonies of Mankind would face of Filips yellow Post Human Republic

The battle will take place on a blue ice planet. A really nice gaming mat in "mouse mat" material. It looks even better in real life.

At first chance I speeded my New Orleans troopships at the cities in an attempt to drop troops as quick as possible.

This PHR is a true frigate killer. Besides having a really nice sleek profile and looking good it had special rules against smaller ships and my New Orleans was gunned down before it could deploy my ground troops.

My other New Orleans had some heavier backup.. A Berlin class cruiser and two gun frigates.

I managed to take out one of the PHR frigates and damaged the other.

PHR deploys ground troops under escort from a fleet carrier.

Its payback time for the loss of my New Orleans. My Seattle class fleet carrier have been launching a lot of bombers that all managed to engage the enemy cruiser in a combined attack. And the enemy was no more...

The PHR had made some fancy moves in a try to shoot at my Seattle but now found them selves in a bad situation... I didnt manage to take anyone out but they are damaged.

After some more fancy moves and shooting that wasn't enough.
My Seattle did carry a big gun and it did get to work on the PHR taking out the heavy damaged heavy Cruiser.

My Seattle fleet Carrier moves up behind the PHR ship and blast it to pieces with its close combat weaponry.
I didnt have a chance to stop him landing more ground troops on the centre city.

My Moscow class heavy cruiser didnt perform in this game. I made more then one mistake in positioning it and the enemy was never where I had hoped the next turn.
As the enemy left its ground troops in one of the cities of the flanks the Moscow was ordered to take superiority over the city giving me some points. I tried to bombard the city and the troops on the ground but didnt manage to make an impact.

In the end it was a UCM victory, huzza...
I managed to get air superiority over the cities early on and it was just at the end that the PHR had managed to land troops in more cities then me to cash in more points but that was to late by then.

At the end of the day, I had a BLAST. This was tons of fun and I learned a lot. I can now reread the rulebook and better understand now that I have some experience of it.

Thursday, 23 February 2017

UCM - Dropfleet Commander

Here we got what I have been working on the last couple of nights.

A growing fleet of United Colonies of Mankind.

And with all the spare parts you get its a great opportunity to convert some special ships.

First out is my Military salvage ship.
The idea is to have ship with some self-defence and armour that is meant to salvage ship wrecks, help stranded ship crews, deploy military engineering troops on asteroid mining or military installations.
The ship is meant to be able to take some damage while doing its job.

Lots of doors in the front, for quick access to the transport/cargo bays.

The "arms" on each side is meant to be used as some kind of tractor beams.

I havnt decided on a stat line yet but Im thinking something like:

Scan 4"
Sig 6"
Thr 7"
H 6
A 3+ or 4+ (I want this to be a robust ship that can take a beating but I dont want to go over the top).
Pd 3
G 1
T M

It got two UF-2200 Mass driver turrets
And it will need some special rules to make it work.

It is intended for special scenarios.

Sunday, 12 February 2017

Dropfleet Commander - Shaltari fleet

Hawk wargames had a Kikstarter for their Dropfleet Commander game and were able to produce a lot of miniatures in plastic because of it. The kickstarter as kickstarters often do took longer time to ship out to the backers then originally planned.

I wanted to continue with the Shaltaris as I got them in the ground game of Dropzone Commander and to be able to link the armies in future campaigns.
Here we have my fleet at the moment, its the basic recommended starter list with some added extra ships.

Painting wise I continued with my paint scheme from Dropzone Commander. Im not totally happy how they turned out, I miss some of the yellow/orange details from my groundtroops for that added contrast. I have thought about repainting the now green "core" on the ships in yellow/orange but this will do for now. In the next batch of ship I think I will try that.

But enough about that bring on the ships them selves...