Twilight Imperium: Let's Paint the Blue Fleet

Now that the Yin Brotherhood won our second game of Twilight Imperium, Enlightenment is a Function of Willpower, it's time to paint the blue fleet.

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Drawing on my experience with the red miniatures, I decided to start with the infantry and cruisers.

For the infantry, I did the same thing as I had with the reds: Gunmetal Grey and Black Glaze, with the colored parts of the base in Dark Prussian Blue and Dark Blue, and the flag in Dark Blue.

I feel it's a little borderline whether that's too dark a blue, but I like it so much better on the flags than a lighter one. We'll have to see how it goes.

The cruisers got to be the testbed for my starship color scheme again. I liked the basic idea of what I did with the red cruisers, but this time I decided to up the contrast and make Deep Sky Blue the lightest color.

I feel like it works, and it means that my blues are Dark Prussian Blue, Blue, Dark Blue and Deep Sky Blue. Armed with that decision, I tackled the war suns.

Because Deep Sky Blue is also the color I use for the trans pride flag, it was easy to conclude that the war suns are trans. They're quite easy to paint. The fighters, on the other hand, are the fiddliest miniatures and therefore the most annoying. So I got them out of the way.

The space docks are also trans.

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In our first game, I don't really recall getting much use out of my flagship. Last time, though, it was a key to my success. The Yin Brotherhood flagship, the van Halen, was the perfect counter to the Muaat death star: if the Eddie van Halen is destroyed, it takes every ship in the system with it. This deterrent value both kept me feeling secure against the Muaat juggernaut, and also let me grab Quann off them in the climactic last turn, which ended up stopping them from winning!

For such sterling service in the cause of the Yin, the van Halen deserves to be remembered. I therefore decided to give the blue flagship a paint scheme based on the Frankenstrat.

I'm actually kinda happy with it! Then it was time to finish the cruisers.

I kept the carriers simple.

The destroyers got a similar paint job to the cruisers.

And finally, here are the dreadnoughts.

Here's a badly lit picture of the whole fleet in my display cabinet.

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So they're done! I still find painting board game miniatures very rewarding. Now, if we could only find the time for another game...