It’s time to look at some Resistance Frigates!
With the Resistance Starter Fleet on pre-order right now, we thought we’d have a look at what can be done with the ships inside. Turns out it’s quite a lot!
With thousands of possible combinations of ship (even before conversions), it’s an understatement to say that there’s a lot of flexibility in these new plastic kits.
The Sprue
We’ll go through them in colour:
Orange: Hulls. There are four designs of hull on the sprue, and each of them has space for a prow and engine, along with one hard point on the bottom.
Red: Prows. There are six different prows, from fairly standard armoured heads to the crazy hammerhead design.
Green: Engines. With four engines on four hulls, you get 16 designs of ship immediately. But the engines can go either way up, and both the prows and engines have the same locators, so you can actually put the Frigate hull’s forwards or backwards!
Light Blue: Guns. The best bit of building a space ship is putting guns on it, we all know that. There are three types of gun to choose from, and four of each, so your Frigates can be armed identically. These guns go on that bottom hard point we mentioned on the hull.
Yellow: Armour. If you want more hard points, go for the Heavy Frigate option. These come with Ablative Armour as standard, which fit right on top of the Frigates. There are four designs (both can be put on two ways) which can drastically alter the look of your ship. Also each armour panel comes with either one or two extra hard points, since Heavy Frigates can take two weapons!
Dark Blue: Strike Carriers. If you don’t fancy extra weapons, why not go for a Strike Carrier? These fit on top of the Frigates instead of the armour plates, giving your Frigate some drop capacity.
Purple: Sensor Dome. It’s not just guns that can go on hard points, the Sensor Dome is an upgrade that gives your Frigates the Detector special rule.
Pink: Gubbinz. Of course, you’ve got to have space gubbinz. These two little bits can be put over any empty hard points, covering them with little antennae.
With all those bits, we’ve all been clamouring to put some together. So a few of us in the office got a Starter Fleet to see what we could make.
Mat’s Frigates
Mat decided to go for a bit of a scrap theme, trying to make some cool looking ships. From top to bottom:
By far the biggest Frigate, Mat’s Heavy Frigate uses the longest prow and engine, and he’s given it twin Missile Turrets. He’s also added a couple of spare bits from his Cruisers on the sides to give a sleek appearance.
His second Heavy Frigate is a lot smaller, yet no less beefy! With twin Hybrid Gun Turrets, it’s a formidable ship!
His third Heavy Frigate (lots of heavies here) has gone for twin Light Vent Cannon Turrets.
Finally Mat has a single Strike Carrier with a Sensor Dome – this one is so dinky!
Mat will need to add another set of Frigates to his fleet since Heavy Frigates are Group of 2-4, and they have to be armed identically. Saying that, I think he’s already stacked two boxes on his desk waiting for release day!
Scott’s Frigates
Scott is usually a staunch PHR player, and has decided that his post-humans wouldn’t be seen dead alongside such scrap. So he’s gone for a more organised military look for his. Again, from top to bottom:
The top two Strike Carriers both have Sensor Domes (giving them the ability to always Active Scan is pretty handy). Scott’s used the larger chin prows for these as he says “they look a little heavier” so they can carry their cargo in a sturdy container!
The bottom two Heavy Frigates have mixed weaponry, both with a Hybrid Gun Turret and a Light Vent Cannon Turret. Scott’s cleverly used the long prow on one and the long engine on the other, meaning they sit next to each other really nicely. Unlike the Strike Carriers they are heavier at the front, really looking like heavy duty military vessels.
Lewis’ Frigates
My Frigates! I’m on a mission to make my fleet look as cobbled together as possible. There’s a Command Card called “Duct Tape and Bubblegum”, which I think describes how my entire fleet holds together! I’ve used a few bits from the Cruiser sprue to convert mine.
I’ve actually made 1 Group of Frigates and a Strike Carrier out of the set, so three are armed identically.
The top Frigate I call The White Whale. I’ve used engines and a spare Sensor Array part (here just as decoration) from the Cruiser sprue. The White Whale is made from whatever the crew can get their hands on, and its debatable whether any of the ship is still original at this point! I’ve also chopped up the Missile Turret to be a bit more streamlined.
The middle Frigate LeChuck’s Revenge has a cockpit sticking down that I took from the Cruiser sprue. It kind of looks like it could stand up when it lands!
The bottom Frigate My Name Is Alex (don’t ask) is a bit of a mash of parts. The head has a Missile Turret chopped apart and stuck in place on each “cheek”, and the engine block is something else! I used the hammerhead prow on top of the four-way engine block, both turned sideways. And because I didn’t think it had enough engines, I added another one from the Cruiser sprue, attached to the bottom of the Frigate.
So there we go! Just a few of the many thousands of ways you can build the Resistance Frigates!
We’ll be back tomorrow to see what everyone has done with their Cruisers. Until then, if you fancy picking up some Frigates of your own, check them out on the TTCombat webstore.