writes:I love a bargain. I can't resist the discount bin. Saving money makes me smile.
Which is how I stumbled into possession of 15 (fifteen!) Dindrenzi Hammer-class frigates from Firestorm Armada. I don't play these rules. I don't have any other Dindrenzi ships. I don't know what I'll ever do with so many of them. 
To make matters worse – or perhaps, better, depending on your point of view – these models came in blister packs that had an unfortunate habit of opening spontaneously and dumping their parts out.
Which means I actually have twelve Hammer-class frigates, three more hulls missing the engine pods, and I'm missing a few flight stands.
Resolution: Inventory new purchases, and store the models/parts in storage more robust than whatever they were packaged in for sale.
Assembling the models was a bit tricky. The hull is metal, and needs file work on both ends. The engine pods are resin. The resin parts need some file work to fit properly, and didn't always line up properly with each other. Was it the model, or the modeler?
As for painting the models, I did some internet 'research', and the most common scheme was black hulls with red accents. Well, that's easy enough – seems like I've been painting a lot of black/gray models lately!
So I followed my usual technique: prime black, drybrush three shades of progressively lighter grays, apply a black ink wash, and lightly drybrush gray again to restore the highlights. (I should probably simplify this, but why mess with success?)
The red markings were done in my favorite new technique: Sharpie! That was easy.
There are some tiny gun turrets on the hull (top and bottom), with even tinier gun barrels. I did the gun barrels by lightly touching them with the tip of a silver marker, then cleaning up any mistakes with gray.
I painted the thrusters yellow, then edged them with the silver marker again.
So now I have a dozen finished Hammer-class frigates. I'll find something to do with them…
As for the leftover hulls… maybe I'll find the lost parts someday. Or, since the design is so boxy, I could scratch-build some engines and say it's a new frigate class.