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

Rounding off the the corners

   This is going to be the last Imperial Navy Battlefleet Gothic post for quite some time as I have a hankering to get on with some other projects. I spent an evening last week sitting in front of the tv staring at my painting tray with a complete lack of inspiration while I decided what to paint next, until the obvious answer dawned on me, finish the one you are currently blogging about and be Mike's Focused Coherent Wargames Blog for at least a few posts. So I went through my lead mountain and pulled out all the remaining ships for my Imperial BFG fleets, no matter how much work they needed.

First up is my second Emperor class battleship. I picked this up really cheaply on eBay as she was in one hell of a state and I had been joking a lot, recently, about having a squadron of battleships. I doubt she will see the table all that much, but I like the threat just having her can give me when I play. I named her Universa in homage to Battlestar Galactica as she relies on her squadrons as much as her main guns.

As part of my plan to make my fleet as punchy as I could make it, I decided I had to bulk up my escorts to better sized squadrons. My cobras were all painted in one go, but finding a pair of Firestorms for a sensible price meant they were picked up after the rest of the squadron had already been painted, but better late than never.

Sword class escorts are pretty much the most over looked escorts in the Imperial fleet, and for good reason, but I knew I had to have a squadron for sheer flexibility if nothing else.

If my painting desk at the sec is anything to go by, Mike's Focused Coherent Wargames Blog should carry on for the foreseeable future, but with the welcome return of another project I just can't seem to finish.

Thanks for reading

Tactical flexibility

   Carrying on from the last painting post, there is a second part to the fleet which hasn't seen the table quite as much yet. These ships are either much newer or more recently painted, so with no further ado. While I got slightly distracted by new toys at Broadside I am carrying on trying to get projects finished and this fleet is an easy one to get to that point with.

Lunar Cruiser.
The all round cruiser of the fleet, give it a job and it will be able to do it.

Dauntless Light Cruiser.
This was more of an experiment for me. With the way you build fleets relying on having a set amount of basic cruisers before you can buy the next ship, a light cruiser was a cheap way to fill one of these slots in points sensitive space. So far my opponent has used his twice and had more success by squadroning it with some escorts for extra punch.

Cobra Destroyers.
Like the Firestorms, these are the same ones from my Space Marine fleet repainted and bulked up with extra numbers.

 Transports and a system ship.
Just about making it on this post are a batch of transports that I picked up so we can, theoretically, play any mission from the core rules. I added in a single system defence ship in the hope that my opponent doesn't spot it early enough and I can get a cheeky surprise attack.

Thanks for reading

Assemble the fleet, Admiral!

   I was organising my normal Monday night game last week and it dawned on me that I had done quite a lot of work on my Space Marine Battlefleet Gothic fleet and had painted up a Navy fleet too but hadn't blogged about any of it*.
   First up is my Imperial Navy fleet as it is the one I am using the most at the moment. Again, like my Space Marine fleet, I have been buying whatever was cheap on eBay, rather than planning a fleet and paying full whack to get them, this has led to my fleet being a bit of a mix of things.

* I assume this is due to the models being painted and packed

 into foam straight after varnishing ready for an immediate game.

Emperor Battleship.
This is the one big ship that was not planned at all. I had something a lot more 'shooty' on my shopping list, maybe a Retribution or an Apocalypse, but this was the ship that was cheap. While unplanned, it has turned out to be one hell of a ship, she has just about dealt with whatever situation I have put her in and (mostly) come out fighting.

Overlord Battlecruiser

The 3 cruisers were a sorry looking job lot that were so badly looked after that I couldn't tell what ships they actually were from the photos, but a bit of time spent tidying them and a new paint job can do wonders.

Dictator Cruiser

Gothic Cruiser

Firestorm Escorts
These Firestorms should be pretty familiar as they are the ones I used for my Space Marine fleet, stripped and repainted, they look much happier in the grey of my Imperial Navy. I am currently in the process of bulking up all my escort squadrons to 5-6.

Thanks for reading

A long promised game

      The same conversation that reminded me to finish painting a couple of units I had put aside for Dragon's Rampant, also reminded the same mate and me that we had promised to have a game of Battlefleet Gothic after I finished my fleet way back in this post: Space Marines for BFG.

       To keep it simple we both picked the same faction for our fleets, Space Marines in this case, and put together our lists. I went with more capital ships, while he went with more of an emphasis on escorts, this making our core fleets really similar; we both had a Battlebarge, 2 Strike cruisers and a unit of Cobras, but I had an extra Strike cruiser to his unit of Nova Class ships.
       The other big difference were our tactics, I went as a solid block in the middle hoping to smash straight through his lines, while he tried to be a bit cleverer, with a flanking move on each side.

      Keeping with my hammer approach to tactics, my first move was straight forward firing all my torpedoes at the closest targets, there was no way these would hit but I wanted to make him have to start thinking from his very first turn.

      The first salvo or two we both fired brought home just how brutal this game can be, both of us losing a Strike cruiser early on and him losing one of his Nova class ships. We learned at this point just how much firepower a Battlebarge can put out and the answer is staggering.

       After the initial straight line jousting, we both had to think about coming about, I had the upper hand at this point but in our struggles to turn our capital ships quickly enough his escorts came into play taking out nearly all of my escort squadron and taking out another of my Strike cruisers.

        I am missing a few photos at this point, but our Battlebarges danced around each other for a handful of turns, just out of effective range before he decided to send his off across the board to turn around in peace. This left my Battlebarge and last cruiser to deal with his remaining escorts which it managed easily, losing the already damaged Strike cruiser in the process. It was now Battlebarge on Battlebarge, both having taken the exact same damage. We both reloaded our ordnance and went around the planet that was in the way and got ready to unload everything we had. When the two ships finally met, it was close range and his turn, a full broadside into the prow of my ship later, and his Battlebarge was the last remaining ship on the board. A close run game and a proper laugh.

We have loads more plans for this so expect to see a lot more random snippets on this blog in the future.

Thanks for reading

Rapid deployment strategy

     A few years back while I was getting back into wargaming properly after finishing uni, I found myself building a space marine army and wanting a fleet to go with it. Instead, I got distracted, joined a gaming club and left most of my GW stuff in the rear view mirror, as new projects were so much more interesting. Then I decided at the start of this year to pick up the idea again to make a properly slow burn project out of it, buying a ship every month of so whenever I saw one cheap enough, putting them into storage until I had enough to get going with. 

    So here is my space marine battlefleet gothic fleet for the Aurora Knights chapter. A Battlebarge, three Strike Cruisers, a squadron of Firestorm Frigates and a squadron of Cobra Destroyers. That should keep me going for a while. . . .

 The battlebarge, the big beast of the fleet. As it's the only one the chapter has (I have fluff and everything for this chaper) I figured it would be best to upgun it with extra turrets from a sprue I'd picked up somewhere or other.

  One of the Strike Cruisers. The work horses of the fleet

The Firestorm frigates. I'm really hoping these ae going to have a real pumch.

Now to get a game in. Thanks for reading.