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Pew pew pew my Silent Death ships, a dozen so far in a wide variety of totally not matching paint schemes. I like the one off paint schemes and simplicity of flat surfaces and relatively few details though, it's a nice change from painting humans and aliens and so on.

Anyways I figure we all like spaceships, so I thought I'd share. If you haven't heard of Silent Death that's because the company that owns it is barely hanging on. Still the game is perfect for dog fighting scale spaceship battles. Simple to learn and fast to play, so I'm happy I could get a copy when I did.

Nice job! After all these years, the SD plastic ships are still great sculpts and they show off your paintjobs well!

It's also worth noting that these are still some of the most affordable spaceship models ever made.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html
Scroll to bottom. 12 spaceships and bases for less than 5 bucks!

I like the Red Baron one!

I haven't seen SD ships in a while. Nice work!

I still love the way the little Pit Viper looks, too.

Thanks for the comments

The Nighthawk and Death Wind are actually metal casts (I bought them way way back for a different game, and then when I started SD I was like "Hey those ships are from this game!"). But yeah the plastic are pretty nice, but a little hard to paint. Mainly because the plastic used seems lower quality so the base coat takes a few layers to look smooth.

bosky wrote:Thanks for the comments

The Nighthawk and Death Wind are actually metal casts (I bought them way way back for a different game, and then when I started SD I was like "Hey those ships are from this game!"). But yeah the plastic are pretty nice, but a little hard to paint. Mainly because the plastic used seems lower quality so the base coat takes a few layers to look smooth.

They are probably actually vinyl, not plastic. A lot of companies in the late 80's and all the way to the mid 90's used vinyl instead of plastic. I know the Battletech 3rd Edition box set 'Mechs were all vinyl. They had to be seriously washed to get paint to stick.

I still have my Silent Death, played the game so much I needed to strip the miniatures for repainting they were that worn.

I am a Spirit Rider fan. Pit Vipers looked cool but sadly couldn't damage anything, I needed to get three high dice to do any damage, often I would be let down by a 1 or a 2 on an overall high hit and do absolutely no damage.

@Mattlov: That makes total sense actually, as I had some of those plastic BTech mechs and the texture and unpaintability is the same. Interesting to know that vinyl is the problem. They feel pretty durable at least, but it sure would be nice if they were a bit easier to paint. I might even have to start priming them from a spraycan.

@Orlanth: Totally just did a 2vs2 Spirit Rider + Salamander II match yesterday. The Spirit Rider look a little blah on paper (mainly the low Drive for such a light craft), until we realized how hard 14 Defensive Value is to hit on 3D6 (and even 2D8+1D6 with my horrible rolling during the match).

Thats not all, Spirit Riders are dirt cheap and have good guns. Medium +2 is very good damage. Taking Spirit Riders normally allows a numerical advantage which can be exploited.
I find 14 is not that hard to hit, and if you aren't using pulse lasers a hitting shot will normally do a lot of damage. However the armour of 3 really helps take the edge off the damage, and don't forget your torpedo.

We were playing with semi-crummy pilots on the Salamanders, so 2D6 (base) + 1D6 (pilot) vs 14 ends up being pretty steep.
But yeah, fun little ship for the points, and it's always interesting to play more and learn the strengths and weaknesses of each vessel.

Hate to be that guy, but...

The figures mentioned above are not made of vinyl. They, and the old battletech box set (from the 90's) figs, and a few other figure lines I've purchased were not molded in vinyl, but rather a soft plastic similar to the plastic used for toy army men. Vinyl, is similarly hard to paint, but is even easier to cut than the soft plastic in question. Vinyl is also easier to glue.

If anyone has any figures in this material, I highly recommend Krylon "Fusion" spraypaint for plastics as an effective undercoat that will actually cling to the plastic. As was mentioned, it helps to wash the figures thoughoughly.

As to folks who may be considering the EM4 run of these ships:
I don't have the EM4 run of these ships, but I have the EM4 run of the mechs which also -like the SD ships and the "Space Rangers"- were formerly distributed by ICE and molded in a softer plastic. The current run of EM4 mechs are molded in a harder plastic that seems to be of a higher quality than the softer plastic than the 90's ICE Space Ranger figs that I have.

bosky wrote:We were playing with semi-crummy pilots on the Salamanders, so 2D6 (base) + 1D6 (pilot) vs 14 ends up being pretty steep.
But yeah, fun little ship for the points, and it's always interesting to play more and learn the strengths and weaknesses of each vessel.

Well Salamanders are also a firm favourite, Though impulse guns are a bit of a gimic, the rules being as they are Medium damage is very similar to High. the wide arc rear guns and a good torpedo spread for a low price of 30pts is pretty good frankly. Furthermore with the expendable pulse laser turret mount you wont lose a decent weapon system until the second row of the damage track.. The only real downsides to the Salamander is an early critical a nasty critical table for the design and a defensive value of 12. I am also partial to the Seraph. The Revenge, Night Hawk and Pharsii being too 'easy' a choice to make. In our games we used to take turns choosing a design until all designs were accounted for, then make a 100 or 150 pt squadron. when playing I allow opponents to trade in for those designs, many players plumped straight for the Night Hawk, and its easy to see why, yet a Spirit Rider can take one if you are careful.

All the fighters are workable except the Pit Viper, though the Teal Hawk has problems unless you play the optional rule accounting Target Speed Restriction as an additional incremental penalty to hit rather than a disabler. ICE themselves realised the pit Viper had problems which is why later variants had three pulse lasers giving a crucial +2 to the damage roll. We tried a house rule by which Low damage was pinpoint damage and ignored damage reduction if rerad from the results of one die. This made pulse lasers acceptible if still poor performers, and there are a lot of designs with single pulse lasers.

Yeah Salamanders are definitely a first choice for new players (something about having a 360 degree arc...). I tend to like using the same ship(s) against each other, but that might be because I'm normally teaching the game instead of playing with an opponent who has the capacity to design their own fleet. New players seem to like learning 1 design instead of theirs and the opponents, plus then a win/loss can't be blamed on ship choice.

Do you still play SD at all Orlanth, or did you just play it a bunch in the past? You certainly seem to know the system well. I'd be interested in seeing any old game photos or anything, since the SD community isn't exactly lively or full of updates in general

Deep in the past. Though it was by far our most played game system, Renegade Legion being unnecessarily complicated and unplayable.

Nevertheless I painted up my Silent Death boxset minis, bought a pair of everything not included in the boxset, plus some more Night Hawks and played them until the minis were worn.

Several years ago I paint stripped them for repainting, leaving them in nail polish remover for the best part of six months. They are shiny and new, but sadly never repainted. I would have been better off leaving them as they are because I did a good job the first time around.

I bought Overkill, never got to get Black Guard and was actually disappointed with the rules extensions I saw. ICE tried to mimic their formulaic system for ship design as well as they could, which didn't work because Space Master/Star Strike was inherently unbalanced. Later designs like the Drakar, and I hear the Betafortress were unplayable.

Also new rules meant new weapons, the general effect of which being to muddy up the simple and elegant ship stat sheets while ading nothign to gameplay.
Autocannon with ammo were promising, but the ammo was not offset by any notable advantage to make them anything other than a liability.

They never did fix the useless Low Damage weapons.

I would take up Silent Death again no problem, it is at its core a solid system.