Because You Can Never Have Too Much Lego

In preparation for doing bigger and more complicated builds, I've done a couple warmups with (probably) a couple more on the way. This way I can justify my many trips to the Lego store. For whatever reason, blogspot isn't letting me directly link my pictures (lame) so if you want the full effect, hit my Flickr account which is right here. The backgrounds notes for ship classes etc. are for an ongoing project.

When I build these, I generally have a rough idea of what I want but not a lot of details. Sometimes I doodle some rough ideas on notecards, almost always in pen (so I'm not tempted to erase & rework). I try to keep the general idea to a couple of phrases.

Andraghi Jackal class destroyer

An Andraghi destroyer built out of bits of a Terran battlecruiser. Originally I wanted to build the entire battlecruiser but dropped the idea pretty quickly for the Andraghi warship which I thought was way more interesting.

The general idea was a "golden age of space" kind of style with no obvious symmetry. I also wanted to mess more with with n-sided wall constructions (in this case, 5). The engines and con boom didn't really come through in the pictures and the build was a little fragile. I'll probably do another hermit-crab like Andraghi ship in the near future because it was hella fun.

Kestrel class light cruiser

When I think "battlecruiser" the image that my mind conjures up is almost invariably either the Space Battlecruiser Yamato or an Imperial Star Destroyer. The Terran Confederation is the benefactor of those associations for better or worse. For this model, I wanted to work at a smaller scale and since I've always envisioned the Terran Confederation to use tri-turrets, that meant I had to build some teeny-tiny gun batteries. I'd be happier with them if they elevated and were a little less fiddly, but they look OK.

The benefit of building at that scale is that I can take advantage of the nice angled pieces I've been picking up. The down side is that most of the nice angled pieces I've got are now white and maroon which aren't my first choices (grey with blue highlights would be much more appropriate). So, um, it must be ceremonial colors then, right? Riiight....

The conning tower and windowed areas are unconvincing but I didn't have blue or grey transparent slopes. The nose isn't secured properly either, but the overall feel of the ship is what I was after: a symmetric and clean hull with a stark and angular engine section.