From the darkness they came

   I have been playing in a Battlefleet Gothic campaign most Mondays for the last 5 or 6 months, using my Eldar fleet (which hasn't yet made it onto this blog) but some heavy losses early on and because of the way the campaign system adds ships to your fleet, I have been unable to expand my fleet back to a sensible size and be a good opponent (I would need to literally set up and fly off the board for 4-5 games in a row which isn't fair if you have made someone drive half hour to do that), so the decision was made that my craftworld had achieved whatever it had set out to do and had vanished back into the darkness of space.
   This left me without a fleet in the campaign. The other three fleets are Orks, Tyranids and Imperial Navy, which left me playing with either my unpainted Chaos or my Space Marines. So to get me painting, I chose my Chaos fleet.

   In the novels Chaos fleets are always described completely differently to their Imperial counterparts. The Navy is described as a well oiled (if overstretched), disciplined force comprised of ships of similar designs and in a uniformed colour, Chaos on the other hand are described as a riot of colours, with next to no discipline and always on the verge of self imploding. Each ship is controlled by it's own warlord with it's own warband, uniting either for a common cause or out of fear of a more powerful warlord, so this is what I wanted to do with my fleet.

   The fleet has been bought in my normal style (for BFG fleets), which is the odd ship or two whenever they are well below the normal asking price. This has meant that I have had little choice in which ships I have picked up and I have had to drill new flying base holes in nearly all of them.
   In conjunction with buying the ships slowly I have also been painting them slowly, whenever the inspiration struck - which I will go over on each ship below.

My Nurgle ship - Cradle of Corruption - was converted and painted when the 8th edition of Warhammer 40k was released. Seeing the Deathguard colour scheme in the starter box gave me an idea, so I hunted down the painting video on the GW website and converted a ship to fit. The conversion was pretty simple, I swapped a couple of the guns out for missile launcher looking parts (that I got in a mixed pack on eBay) and cut some OO railway 'apples' in half and stuck on to simulate boils. 

A few 40k novels describe some chaos ships as being so corrupted they aren't even the domain of a warlord and his warband, while not being true daemon ships. These ships attack from nowhere filling all vox channels with their name screamed over and over to break the resolve of their target. This one is named on their theme - Kill! Maim! - and I have painted it with a rusted metal look (I don't see it going to the dry docks that often) but kept a bit on the colour on the prow to make it look less like I haven't finished it. 

 My first battleship is a Sons of Horus ship - Malign Eye - by the time of 40k all SoH warbands have been rolled into the Black Legion (Abbadon has been quite forceful in this) but I was mid way through my 30k SoH and was enjoying the colour scheme, so I did it anyway. The only conversion was a brass eye of Horus on the prow.

My Emperor's Children cruiser - The Favourite Son - is my most recent conversion. Again, a weapon swap to change the profile and some Dark Angel head wings on the bridge seemed to do the job.

The Nightlord's ship - The Last Breath - was my first conversion while reading The Red Tithe (which features one in the novel). As it was my first conversion I kept it simple, a small skull filled to fit the prow and wings taken from a Nightlord helmet to fit the theme.

The Word Bearer's themed ship - Divine Truth - was my way of breaking out of the constant stream of bronze/gold details on the ships. No conversion but I enjoyed painting it.

The bulk of my fleet is made of a single warband (the colours of my chaos army in 40k) with the ships - Dawn of Khaz'dul, Crimson Glory, The Cloven Hoof and The Black Gate. Again, no conversion work and simple colour schemes but they help unite my fleet a bit more.

 

   Sadly, this fleet isn't doing a whole lot better than my Eldar did in the campaign as I am so far behind now but it has been a good bit of motivation to get paint on ships, however, there are still ships to go!

Thanks for reading