Monday 2 May 2011

Space 1889 - a very personal view

Regular readers must be aware of my on-going relationship with the great game system Space 1889/Sky Galleons of Mars, a gaming system that until quite recently had been waning - if not near dead. Recent development and in particular a new Blog by Frank Chadwick (the game designer) had led me to be much more optimistic. However new posts have left me a little numb!

Frank Chadwick's Space 1889 Blog is reporting that the new Space 1889 miniatures will be 15mm scale for the adventurers and 1:1200 scale for the Aerial vessels. A decision that in my opinion is very wrong.

Let me explain; Firstly, I believe that the character led system of Space 1889 deserves 28/30mm figures and secondly it has long been my belief that 1:1200 scale ships are just too small and that a 1:300th scale choice would have allowed for much more detailed and easily recognisable ship miniatures.

To illustrate this I have included with this post four examples of my scratch-built Space 1889 fleet. They are;

HMS Wasp

A Martian Hullcutter

HMS Dauntless

The Martian Glory Shed

My own collection of aerial craft is now quite large and using modified Aeronef rules I have fought many ship-to-ship battles and very much enjoyed the background fluff. I will have to wait to see how Highlander Studios transfer these iconic craft into metal (maybe even plastic or resin).

I think I will stick with my own preferred scale of 1/300th (1mm = 1foot).

Tony

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