Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Ziru Sirka Battleship

 
This is a scratch built Zirukaruna (Vilani for "Grand Emperor") Imperial battleship for playing the old GDW game Imperium with miniatures, using a combination of Full Thrust and/or Power Projection: Fleet. This ship represents the BB1 Battleship that becomes available in the game by successful petition to the Shadow
Emperor.



I'm trying to keep to the rough outline of the Imperial counters from the Imperium board game. Bits assembled from a table tennis/ping pong ball, with the lens ring of an old toy flashlight, plus particle batteries from the bits box. The aperture from the CPAWS spinal mount is a small drinking straw/coffee stick.


My design sequence is, admittedly, rather Byzantine - I try to keep to the original ratio of beams, missiles and shields as laid out in Imperium. The ship is designed using the MegaTraveller sequence, then converted to Power Projection.


As far as performance goes, this TL 11 brute masses 22,000 dt, lumbers along at Manoeuvre 2, has Jump 2 and is armed with a 1.75 gigawatt CPAWS spinal mount, two 100 ton CPAW bays, eight 50 ton missile bays, and a plethora of  lasers and sandcasters.

Being only partially streamlined, the Zirukaruna relies on support tankers for refueling; though it is possible to undertake wilderness refueling, the Vilani find it difficult to envision a battleship operating in wilderness conditions....Ω


7 comments:

Don M said...

I haven't seen those counters in years but, from what I recall you've captured the right look and feel....Well done!

kmfrye2001 said...

Thanks Don - I'm a slave to Tradition.

Anonymous said...

I don't really have anything substantive to add, but can only exclaim, "SO COOL!"

Nicely done, sir.

kmfrye2001 said...

LOL! You're alright, Arkie!

I'm looking forward to seeing how you'll paint the new Red Guard Command/Solomani minis from Rebel.

BlackWidowPilot said...

Stylistically you've nailed this one to the proverbial barn door. I remember playing Imperium obsessively back in high school so long ago. Excellent game, and an excellent little model you've got there! :)

clifford said...

I would love to know its USP from High Guard.... and re do some of the Interstellar Wars battles. Do you have it: or at least the specs for it other than what was given briefly? If you have the Power Projection card for it that would be great as well? Thanks.

Eli Arndt said...

A real masterpiece. So simple but totally in the spirit of those old counters. I had the game, but was a bit too young to really play it right. My friends and I worked out a light set of rules for it and played those instead.

I'd love to see any more pics of these ships and maybe even some how-to on their construction.

-Eli