by Chad Fopma

Towards the end of the Thousand Yahren War, there were a number of fierce engagements between the Colonials and the Cylons. One of the worst was the battle of Libran. The Cylons had launched a series of feints that drew off Colonial Military resources and left the Colony of Libran open to attack. A single Basestar moved into the gap in the Colonial defenses and launched one of the deadliest attacks to occur before the false peace and destruction of the twelve colonies.

Despite the massive damage inflicted by the Cylon attack, most Colonials agreed that things would have been much worse had the Libran defense force Vipers not fought so valiantly. Terribly outgunned and outnumbered, the Viper squadron under Captain Tyr undertook a risky strategy to fight off the invading Basestar. The Colonials came at the top half of the Basestar in a series of strafing runs. Once each attack run was complete, the Vipers would come around in a circular pattern and begin another attack. This would inflict some damage to the Basestar and force it to divert some of its laser batteries from the planetary attack to point defense. The secondary goal of this maneuver was to pull the defending Cylon Raiders into a flight pattern that would keep their own attacks aimed at the Basestar as much as possible. Most importantly though, the strafing attacks would keep the Cylon defenses from noticing Captain Tyr and his escorts coming in low and making a run at the ships mega-pulsar cannons. With those disabled, the Basestar would be unable to completely wipe out the Colony before help could arrive.

This scene depicts the moment just before Tyr and his wingmen attack the mega-pulsar cannon. Unknown to his men, Tyr had already realized that they would be unable to take the cannon in a single pass and once the Cylons realized what they were doing, they would be unlikely to get a second. Captain Tyr hit his turbo booster and went in guns blazing, ramming his Viper into the cannon and disabling it as his wingmen screamed for him to pull up. Ten minutes latter, the Battlestar Acropolis arrived and destroyed the damaged Basestar.

This diorama was built with the reissued Revell Basestar kit built stock and several sets of resin fighters purchased from Ravenstar Studios. The fighters were cast onto a resin hex base that had to be removed with some careful work with my dremmel. After they were cleaned, the fighters were then carefully painted and set aside while I cut the wood for the base and painted it black. The Basestar was secured to the wooden base with a short length of brass tube and the fighters were then placed with lengths of thin brass rods. Finally, I went back over the Basestar and fighters with a black pastel to dirty everything up a bit and give the impression of some damage.

I went and looked at a lot of footage from the original series space battles to get a feel for how the fighters should be placed. The fighters all move mostly like they are operating in atmosphere. Kind of like when you watch the trench run in the original Star Wars. It is based on WW2 footage. Also, while the Colonials tend to stay in a familiar leader/wingman formation, the Cylons are always in groups of three fighters in a delta formation. Also, they are fighting with energy weapons and as such do not need to close in on each other much. There wasn't the crazy maneuvering fur-balls like in the new series. I wanted to keep that feel of the original show as much as I could.

Image: Around the side

Image: Damaged Raider

Image: Colonial diamond

Image: Dog fight

Image: Far side

Image: Over the top

Image: Raiders launching