The new Resistance Coloniser Dreadnought is coming to pre-order today! But how to build it?

The Coloniser is the most modular spaceship kit we (or probably anyone else) have ever made! It comes in a whole load of parts. How many? This many:

That’s a whole pile of parts! There’s 68 parts included in the set, as well as some MDF spacer pieces that help connect the main hull together (more surface area = fewer dreads falling apart).

For the stats-minded of you, in there you get:

• 4 hull pieces
• 2 “twisted” hull pieces
• 4 of each turret
• 6 of each broadside (although they come in pairs, so 3 of each really)
• 4 sets of torps
• loads of sides, wings, botanical style sections, extra gubbinz etc
• 2 large Dropfleet bases (you should be able to build 2 Pathfinders in one set)

That’s a lot of pieces! In fact, it’s literally as many pieces as we could fit in the box.

Of course, building one of these kits is going to be a mammoth task. You have to figure out what size you want, what weapons you want, and how you want it to look. We recommend cleaning up all the pieces and then doing a lot of dry-fitting first.

What’s This Bit??

With so many pieces, it’s worth having a little primer on the parts.

For the three sizes of dread (Pathfinder, Explorer, Coloniser – see yesterday’s post for details!) you’ll want to use an assortment of different parts. While the construction is entirely up to you, we’d recommend:

• Pathfinder: 3 hull sections, either regular or twisted
• Explorer: 5 hull sections
• Coloniser: 6 hull sections

Although those are only recommendations, and you can make any sort of ship with all the extras as well. There are enough side pieces to make a whole ship on their own, although it would be very thin!

But what about the weapons? Well we’ve gone for some Resistance classics, but it’s still worth identifying them, and showing exactly how many hardpoints there are around.

The Pathfinder here has 4 Hardpoints to use, and has used them all on guns! With 2 Mass Driver turrets and 2 Hybrid Gun broadsides, it’s ready for anything. Good Lock values and high rates of fire will see this through. Don’t forget that when you buy a single broadside, you’re actually getting a left and a right for double firepower. You just have to line up the shots well.

The studio Explorer class has 6 Hardpoints to choose from, and has gone with a bit of a mix. It’s mostly attack power with a crazy 4 Mass Driver array at the front (there are two more on the back).

The sides have Bulk Landers & Fire Ships for 1 more Hardpoint. Although the launch can technically go on any “open” rail mount (the detail is already sculpted on), it’s worth distinguishing them with an obvious paint scheme like these hazard stripes.

Finally this one also has a Scanner Array on the back. There are a few parts that are useful for this upgrade – the long antennae and also the large scanner pieces that are on the “wings” of this ship.

Finally we have the Coloniser. With a massive 8 Hardpoints, this ship can have a lot of upgrades. We’ve gone for an all-out attack ship, although some extra launch is always handy – you could potentially max out your Launch cap on one ship!

On this one we went nuts with 4 Heavy Vent Cannons. These are really powerful, but this Coloniser is going to be taking a lot of self-inflicted damage. It has a lot of Hull, but that’ll go down quickly.

We added 2 sets of Torpedoes, which comes in pairs. And for when they’re gone, we’ve put on 2 pairs of NC-16 Missiles on the broadsides. That’s a lot of Close Action firepower once this trundling ship gets close enough.

Options, Options, Options

Those are just a few options though! You can make basically infinite space ships out of these, so we gave some to the TTCombat staff around the warehouse to see what they came up with. We’ll hand it over to them to have a word about their ships.

Matt W – Arceus (Explorer class)

I wanted to design a ship that was more focused on travelling across the stars and exploring rather than just all in for a fight. Of course the ship is able to hold its own if needs be.

I had a lot of fun putting the Acreus together, I found that building the middle first really helped bring the shape together to what it is and I’m really pleased with the result.

Laura – Gorhel Efander (Coloniser+ class)

“Gorhel Efander” is Cornish (Kernewek) for “spaceship”. I’m not that fussed on the rules of the ship (there’s no Cornish for WYSIWYG), so I decided to build whatever came to mind, and used as many parts as I could! The possibilities really are endless, so it took a while to settle on the final design.

This kit is a lot of fun and I look forward to painting it in Cornish colours – it’ll get there dreckly!

David & Gene – Scorpio Ray X1 (Coloniser class) & The Pike (Explorer class)

Me and my son decided to build a ship each, using just the one kit. There was a lot of choice! Gene decided to build a ship that looked like a scorpion, splitting the nose pieces apart to make a pincer shape, and building the ship around that. He named it Scorpio Ray X1.

With the other parts I figured out that I can make a ship that resembled a fish. It’s long and thin, and that’s how the Pike was born!

Matt G – S-Kicker (Coloniser class)

I want to start off by saying that I had so much fun making this ship, I felt like I was a kid again playing with lego and making some super mega ultra spaceship.

I spent along time just laying out the pieces and coming up with different styles before settling on the final design, usually when making a minature you have to follow a picture or guide in order to make a specific ship but with this thing I was able to have the freedom to create something that feels totally unique which was a refreshing change of pace.

Lewis – Sweet Pea (Pathfinder class)

I made this ship a little while ago to take to Salute, and now it’s going to be joining my own fleet. Sweet Pea is a tiny little Pathfinder, sent out to mine valuable materials out of larger asteroids.

It’s equipped with a Scanner Array (for detecting minerals), a Missile Battery (for blowing up large asteroids to get into the juicy middles), Fighters & Bombers (for extracting) and finally a Heavy Vent Cannons turret for protection – mining minerals is a dangerous game, and pirates are always after this Pathfinder!

I wanted to make a sleek looking craft, using just a few pieces. It’s amazing how purposeful this new kit can look when assembled carefully – I really think this one ended up looking like it was straight off the rack.

Hopefully that gives everyone a bit of inspiration for building your own dreadnoughts! These kits are so flexible and we’re really excited to see what everyone builds!

The Coloniser Dreadnought will be going up for pre-order later today on the TTCombat webstore, so stop back then when we’ll have all the details on how to pick up your box of parts and get building.