"Sourcing a Space Bug Fleet" Topic

Hello, I am currently playing and collecting a fleet for Firestorm Armada (FSA) and I would like to build a second fleet that is very space buggy ala Starship Troopers, Aliens or Tyranids and proxy them for the Relthoza faction. While the FSA ships are very nice none of them are quite buggy enough for what I am looking for and old Battlefleet Gothic Tyranids ships are hard to come by or very expensive. I was hoping for some suggestions for where I could source such a fleet that is similar size and quality as the FSA ships. I also don't mind doing some converting using 40K bits.

Thanks in advance.

Reviresco? Nothing screams Bug Space Junk/Minimalist design like Dreenoi (Bugs) stuff.

Define what you call "Buggy" and it might help.

That's odd – I don't see them on the Reviresco pages…

Drenoi ships:

link

How about the Valiant Alien ships?
Scroll down to the green ones.

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They paint up buggy, but I'm think bashing from GW 'nids 40K would be better. Helps to have a store where bits-and-bobs get left on thrown out sprue.

eBay has some 'bitz' sellers that have parts that could be assembled to make the monsters so beloved by FSA players.

For smaller craft, I'd suggest Silent Death Night Brood.

Doug

Edit:

How about the Valiant Alien ships?

Stardate 3000 Aliens! Very buggy, but, again, rather thin and spindly compared to FSA.

GZG's Sa'Vasku?

Doug

Studio Bergstroms Hive Empire

link

I'd second Bergstrom. I've ordered a bunch of minis from him and they are top-notch quality--ready to paint right out of the box.

The above suggestions are great.

Most lines of minis are smaller than the FA line so you will have to deal with that.

The Galaktic Knights line from Monday Knight Productions are larger and more in line with the FA size of minis and maybe their Entomailian (bugs!) fleet will work.
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Some other buggy options but to a smaller scale are the Organic Pirates from Kallistra:
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The Cimexians from Brigade Models:
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Winter's Bioforge has some Space Bugs that look cool. What they have now may be too small for you but their WIP page shows that a larger ship or two are in the works:
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The Cimexians are smaller than the FA models. The Galactic Knights ships would fit right in:

To give you a sense of scale, those bases on the smaller GK ships in the picture above are one inch in diameter.

How do you buy those Winter Bioforge? That's the best looking space bug set I've ever seen.

Look for the "CATALOGUE" button at the top of the page.

Doug

Winter Bioforge is only selling a few of the smaller models, I have already contacted them. I think Studio Bergstroms is the closest to what I am looking for, thanks all for the tips.

Glad it worked out for you, and Drew's a heck of nice guy.

However, do copy-and-paste "space ships made from tyranids" into a Google image search.

Doug

I forgot the GZG Phalon ships until I saw a bunch of ebay auctions. auction

What is nice is that they are large enough to be compatible with FA

There are a few bug-like ships on the Irregular Miniatures website in their "Bionaught" range, including a 'not-Lexx', and dragonfly fighters!

link

They may be a bit small compared to the FA ships, but they're defenitely bug-like!

Why would bug ships necessarily look that much different from anyone else? Presumably the bugs in Starship Troopers had ships that were built according to normal engineering principles.

There are the ships from Ender's Game. You can apparently print them yourself if you buy the 3D form.

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"Why would bug ships necessarily look that much different from anyone else? Presumably the bugs in Starship Troopers had ships that were built according to normal engineering principles. "

Apart from being built out of flesh, bone, and chitin plate.

One issue I see here is that certain suggestions seem to come from molluscs and other marine creatures that aren't really arthropoid.
You could use seashells and scratch something, but it will look more cephalopod than bug. Maybe there are craft seed pods?

Apart from being built out of flesh, bone, and chitin plate.

Well, you have to leave out the bone for bugs… ;->=

As for the 'marine' connection, pretty much either take a toy insect, say a staghorn beetle, and put engines on it, or accept you'll have to go with 'bio-tech' and look for things close.

Is that the ship from the Roughnecks series? Of course, technically, arachnids are not bugs, nor vice versa, but un-technically, they are all 'bugs'.

Common usage trumps the scientific. I call it the 'whatever factor', from a common response to my pointing such out.

Doug

Sculpey, seed-pods, and wire? etc….

Many years ago I glued some gun barrels, a radome and some engine nozzles onto a walnut (still in its shell). It actually looked pretty cool!

Yeah, but Leland claims you could scoop up some doggy do-do and make a perfectly usable craft.

Wait…

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?

;->=

Doug

Why would bug ships necessarily look that much different from anyone else?

Because we want them to?

To be (slightly) serious, unless the ships themselves are living organisms (which I believe I recall the GZG Phalons are supposed to be), there would be no reason for them to look like the species that built them.

Piper, in several of his books, has pretty much every interplanetary or interstellar ship in the form of a sphere, which makes a lot of sense. Those are all human ships, though – I don't recall, in the stories which include space-faring alien species, any descriptions of their ships.

Doug

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?

Too late! That particular *armada* is already on its way to you via FTL Express…. they should be arriving on your doorstep any second now (just stomp on the external wrapping to put the flames out that were caused by the friction from rapid reentry)…. Mwahahahahaaaaa!!!!!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Thanks for all of the suggestions, I am going to do a combination of DIY from Tyranid bits and kitbashing from various manufacturers including Bergstrom and the GZG Sa'Vasku and Babylon 5 miniatures if I can find them. I found the GZG Phalons too phalic for my tastes.

If we are talking about the engineering principles of ships, well first it's sci fi, secondly it is possible that certain species could have evolved to conduct interplanetary travel as a surival mechanism, and thirdly there is sci-fi canon (in particular Babylon 5 Vorlons) for living bio-tech ships.

Beast: 1 That depends on your definition of a "bug", an alien "bug" might well contain bone, as it may not be in any way related to a Terran arthropod, which need a certain acceptance level of fantasy in your SF, as the square-cube law causes certain difficulties with an arthropod growing to human sizes, even if they don't stand up, as with a coconut crab. It is easier to say that the aliens are simply roughly bug-shaped, with a hard exoskeleton, but are not properly invertebrates (or almost not, if they are based on an endoskeleton that isn't based on a spine.)
A "bug" big enough to be a bio-ship is rather pushing this.

2 Yes, it's the bug transport ship.

Fair dinkum, though the 'bone' comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek for that very reason.

Definitely agree about bio-ship that transits to space; now, if it could be grown in space…

There may be something in the 'mostly hollow' bug for the heat issues for skin-to-bulk ratio. Structural issues will take cogitation by those more learned than moi.

Doug