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I finally knocked out a decent paint job on my first metal home drop-cast spaceship.  I've never been a great painter and the camera flash seems to bring out every imperfection, but the ship looks pretty good to the naked eye.  It may not win any painting contests, but it definitely adds to the illusion of a spacegoing vessel cruising to a fight with other ships.  I primed the ship with cheap Walmart Gray Primer (less than a dollar US), then painted a base coat which was two parts white, one part black, one part blue, one part yellow.  This gave the ship a dull green military look.  I then added quite a bit of white to the base color on the palette in order to get a lighter shade, and then dry-brushed the exposed areas with that.  I then painted various stripes, shapes, and insignia for details.  Finally, I used a "magic wash" consisting of 4 parts water, 1 part Future floor cleaner, and 1 part Black illustration Ink.

In orbit around a moon

   

In addition to the three basic action types: attack, defense and movement, spaceship captains in War In Space may elect to perform Damage Control.  Players announce their intent to use Damage Control during Energy Allocation, so the bulk of the procedure actually occurs during that phase, with the repairs finally taking affect in the Damage Control phase.  

A player using Damage Control for a ship announces it during Energy Allocation while playing a card of any suit.  If the Energy Allocation Card is an Ace through 10, then the highest die score is allocated to the Damage Control Action, the next highest score to the Primary Action Type, and the last die score to the Secondary action type; the remaining basic action type receives no energy.  The SDS lists which Action types are Primary and Secondary, based on the suit of the Energy Allocation Card played.  For example, if the ship in Figure 1 played a 4 of diamonds during Energy Allocation, the highest die rolled would be dedicated to Damage Control, the next highest die would be used for Attack actions, and the remaining die would be spent on Defense, leaving 0 energy for movement actions.

If a face card is played, the sum of the highest two dice scores is used for Damage Control and the remaining die score is used for the Primary Action Type.  The two remaining basic action types receive no energy.   Players may announce "Damage Control" when a Joker is revealed as the Energy Allocation Card.  The sum of all three dice is then allocated to Damage Control; all three basic actions receive 0 Energy Points.

Repairs do not take place until the Damage Control phase after movement.  By spending 4 energy points a ship may repair one system box, erasing the mark through the box.  The system will again produce more energy, allowing the ship's player to roll one die type higher on the respective system die during Energy Allocation.  By spending 8 energy points a ship may repair one critical hit, allowing it to once again play cards from a particular suit, having lost the ability to do so after taking damage.  There is no limit to the amount of systems boxes and critical hits a ship may repair, other than energy available.  Ships may not "repair" themselves to perform at higher than their original, undamaged capabilities!

Tonight I cast another spaceship; my original sculpt shown below.  Although I don't like this ship design as well as the first one I cast, the final product turned out better.  I learned a lot from that first casting experience, particularly in mold design, and by applying those lessons I got a much better miniature this second time around.  The only defects I can find in the metal copies are from errors in the water-putty master itself; no deformation or air bubbles on the metal miniatures, even on the first cast in a cold mold!  Pictured below is one of my metal casts next to a commercially available spaceship miniature.  I won't name the game company that produces this miniature, but it may be in my opinion the lamest miniature in the history of wargaming.  The commercial mini came as one of 24 ships in a set that cost me about US$80.00, or about US$3.33 a figure.  That's a reasonable price for well-sculpted, exciting miniatures with lots of detail (which there were in the aforementioned set), but for a simple cylinder with two tiny featureless engine pods?  No, I feel cheated.  So I decided to get my money's worth and threw the commercial miniature into my ladle.  It melted just fine but the liquid metal turned a funny purple color... I don't know if it reacted with the remnants of the metal I normally use (Dunken Company's Model Metal) or if I simply overheated it.  Either way I poured the melted commercial figure into my mold and got an extra copy of my scratchbuild, so it all worked out.  In all I cast three copies.  Now I'm off to trim flash and base, prime and paint.

Water-putty prototype sculpt

Top: cast of my scratchbuild; bottom: oooo, a cylinder, whoopee

SDS for my game War In Space