BOSS SHOP: ALLIANCE MARK III ASSAULT FRIGATE PART 1

I think it is about time for me to get back to work on my beloved Alliance MARK III Assault Frigate! Eleven months was a long wait to see what Fantasy Flight Games was going to do with X-WING EPIC. My buddies in the industry had mentioned some things to me, and so I thought it was smart to wait for a bit. Well for as much as I love FFG, this has been a drag.

I am done with wondering and speculating endlessly on forums. Waiting and messing around has achieved nothing. I actually want to play some bad ass STAR WARS EPIC without waiting another year!

We know more or less how FFG will move forward with their Star Wars Miniatures products now that GEN CON 2014 has happened.
We are going to get the popular Capitol Ships in STAR WARS ARMADA. I am fine with that actually, in fact I love that they made Armada and I will buy all of the goodies for this new game.

I am still pretty sure that at some point FFG will make a few more Huge Ships for Epic, nevertheless I am equally certain that nothing I really want, except perhaps the Gozanti, will ever be produced. It just cost to much... I get it, but I do not have to like it. One new FFG Huge ship a year is okay, if it happens, but I want more and I want it sooner rather than later.

The B6*R7 Flyers know that I have had the MARK III in my head for a long time, but that is not good enough. It is one thing to imagine how a model will be and another thing entirely to actually build it. I needed to sit down and make a decent visual design for this ship, like I did for my BORG Destroyer. Now that I have a reasonably accurate point to build from I can move forward with this project. The next step is to make a few printable templates, which I will do later this week.

I made my MARK III design image this week... a few days after the GEN CON no show of Epic-Imp-huge-babies sank in.
I decided it would be fun to work from the brand new Armada MARK II model, which I like very much, of course.
I am pleased with how my picture has turned out after only a few hours of fun and simple work in GIMP. What I have here now is close to what I intend to actually make. I might work on this picture some more and turn it into a little piece of finished card art.

The MARK II is very well known to serious Star Wars gamers. The speculative concept design for the MARK I... not so much. I like them both.

What I am doing for my MARK III incorporates the elements that I like from these previous versions of the class. My concept brings a smaller faster frigate to the fleet, which still boast much of the durability and offensive power of it's larger predecessors. This version is basically a frigate-destroyer whereas the I and II are huge frigate-battleships.

The MARK III will be the the largest of my Huge Ship in all of my Epic Fleets. I am undecided as to what to do about a Nebulon B Frigate or the rest of my EPIC Huge Ship Collection, but for now getting back to work on this baby is good enough.

Time to get busy!

PROJECT OVERVIEW

PROJECT PREVIEW

Boss out!