The G’Quan class cruiser is one of my favorite ships to model/paint. The Narn ships have these great patterns that were really fun to do, even if they were a lot of work. Base coated in Blood Red and Boltgun Metal, I then had to create the unique spotted patterns using Bestial Brown outlined in White. Trying to not repeat patterns is the really difficult trick, and I wanted to be thorough so the undersides are done as well.
There’s a great scene where a G’Quan is being torn to shreds by a Shadow vessel in the series, one of many great space battles and a real inspiration for playing the game.
There wasn’t a lot of information on what the Earth Alliance Crusade years fleet was supposed to look like. To help differentiate it from the B5 years Earth Alliance ships I decided to take the metal colors and push them in each direction. The top hulls are done in Chainmail with Mithril Silver highlights, the undersides are done in a mix of Boltgun Metal and Chaos Black to push the Boltgun even darker.
There are a few ships I like in this set such as the small Delphi Destroyer shown center here, but overall this is not my favorite fleet.
The Babylon 5 Station was another complex, or maybe delicate, build. The moulds for the station were well used by the time mine was cast and there was a fair amount of cleanup work to be done on the model before assembly. As well the solar panels are fairly delicate.
The station painting was relatively straightforward once everything was together. I wish I was able to do a better job representing all the panels the station is made of, but I rarely use the station when I play so it didn’t seem worth the effort. I aslo felt any attempt to do this would likely result in the station looking worse not better. I’m happy with the current result.
Unlike the Vorlons, the Shadow ships only come in one colour: Shimmering Black. As the show goes you neve see a Shadow vessel until right before it fires, then its cloak drops and against the deep of space a shimmering blackness obliterates you with a beam of green energy.
In order to achieve a similar effect here, I of course started out with the blackest black I could find. Then using the sponge again, I took a dark grey and then a lighter grey, and lastly some black again. This built up layers of black and grey that I think do a fair job of mimicking the constantly shifting layers of the Shadow vessel. Once this was done I used a Gloss Varnish with some Liquitex Iridescent Medium. Similar to the Vorlons except the medium adds another layer to the ships.
The smaller shadow vessels shown here were probably the hardest ships of the range to assemble. Each of the 5 spines above and below had to be individually attached, and on the bottom I had to account for the fight stand mount.
I decided to paint my Vorlons orange-red largely because I never really liked the standard issue Vorlon colour scheme and there are examples in the series where other colours do exist, Red being the most obvious. The technique I employed here was to basecoat the figure in a very bright orange: Citadel Fiery Orange (no longer available). I then went over each miniature using a sponge and Citadel Blazing Orange to create the ever changing pattern of the Vorlon ships.
The interior was done in a similar method using blue/white/purple. Due to the construction of many of the Vorlon ships the interior colours had to be done before gluing. None of these ships are pinned, so enough glue had to be used to make sure the connection was solid. In many cases this meant some ‘ghosting’ - glue turning a whitish colour after drying. The next step took care of that.
The last step was to coat the ships using a Gloss Varnish. This really helps the ships stand out against the game mat, and since I’m doing all the humanoid races using Matte Varnish, it helps the ancients stick out even more.
This is the last of the Subbuteo teams I’ll be painting for a while. I’ve run out of figures and am moving on to other projects. With 4 teams under my belt it’s time to find something a little larger to paint.
I chose FC St.Pauli primarily because it is one of the very few black uniforms I found, and I had to go all the way down to the German ‘Regionalliga Nord’ league. As with all my historical teams I tried to get the starting squad as accurate as I could. I think the Goaltender is my favorite.
In order to have a proper team for my Toronto FC to play against I needed another MLS team. The LA Galaxy away uniform was mainly white and I thought this would be a nice change from all the red/blue of the Blizzard and TFC. I also started making these boxes to hold the teams based on some pictures I’d seen online of similar boxes for sale. The boxes didn’t last however and the teams are now in bags.
Because the teams were intended for actual play, they are all matte varnished and should last a long time.
This is a shot of the Goalie (Black), and front/back of the players. I wish there was a side shot here because that’s where all the lines are on these uniforms and that was the real work. Once I discovered Subbuteo this was a natural progression with the recent launch of the MLS and Toronto being one of the founding teams in the league.
There are more pictures on my flickr account under Subbuteo if you look there. I’m also really proud of the classic label I made.
Based on the 1983 Toronto Blizzard team roster, and pictures from previous years [ NASL Jerseys ] I was able to put together this team.
The nostalgia here is that this is the only Soccer/Football team I have ever seen live, back at the old Exhibition Stadium on the CN Fairgrounds. I thought if I was going to do the Toronto FC club of today I should also have their (not quite) predecessor. I think even at this tiny scale (the height of each player is about the same as a Quarter) the retro look of the collard shirts and shorts comes through.
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