UNSC Full Thrust fleet, review and photos.

I’ve had a small UNSC for since I started playing around 2005 or so, maybe a couple of years before that. During a move they all got packed up and put into an attic never to be seen again until the next move. When I moved in with my now-wife I came across the case and it’s been on my mind for a couple years until this pandemic hit and I started painting more and pulled the case out wanting to paint something different in between batches of 25mm and 15mm figures.

As with most of my minis from that era the needed to be stripped, reassembled and re-painted. This did give me a chance to give them a unified paint scheme, and to fill out the fleet of course. Thankfully right at that moment Jon at GZG was running a pandemic special on the Full Thrust ranges so I stuck while the iron was hot!

I put in a larger order to Jon, filling out my UNSC fleet, picking up a starter fleet for the Crustys, and grabbing some odds and ends. There’s only a couple of ships I don’t have from the fleet now, and I may pick them up just to be a complete-ist but I’m not in a great rush.

I have a decent selection of escorts, despite their dubious usefulness in the game my friends and I are committed to not min-max the system and will be using ships from the fleet books in a campaign so smaller ships will have their uses.

I certainly have enough cruiser sized ships. I probably bought too many escort cruisers, and I prefer the escort carrier to the dreadnought sized light carrier so I’ll most likely pick up a couple more on my next order. Of course you need a survey vessel for a UNSC fleet too!

I only have the two dreadnoughts though, the extended range dreadnought that Jon threw into my order and the heavy carrier I originally had. Not only do I not think I’ll need any more but frankly they’re a pain in the ass to assemble with so many pieces. Keeping them straight is almost impossible and with the weight pinning is required.

I grabbed a couple of the UNSC fleet tenders too, these and the civilian ships will poses as targets for pirates but will be needed for the long range surveys and patrols.

Like all of Jon’s work the castings are clean with minimal flash or casting errors. I had to drill out some weapon ‘barrels’, clean out some of the connection points, scrape a little bit of flash, etc… nothing even a novice mini painter wouldn’t expect to have to handle during prep. Delivery was good, with the only issues being pandemic related. Jon has been watching delivery statuses during this and has been exceptional with his communications.

My only complaint is how difficult the modular nature of the minis makes the assembly. Getting the ships to be straight takes patience and effort, sometimes requiring you to break a piece apart and try again. For most of my ships I’ve had to settle for ‘straight enough’, if it looks straight from the top I haven’t busted it apart and tried again. Thankfully the cruisers and everything smaller aren’t heavy enough to require pinning. I’ll be glad to be done with these and move on to Jon’s more modern scuplts that assemble far easier.

The painting scheme I’ve settled on is based on the real world UN forces. White with a light blue stripe. UN vehicles are generally white, and the troops wear blue helmets. It’s a nice contrast.

I’ve used white, dark grey, green, and red to pick out details, weapons, and random greebles and give some character as well as a black ink wash. I’ve tried to keep a uniform painting scheme, painting the cylindrical bumps all the same, all weapons the same etc…

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I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to base them. So far every removable base I’ve designed has broken at some point. I’m loosing hope and think I’ll just have to mount them to bases using only brass ford and just be careful not to break them…