Something New: Battlefleet Gothic

Carrion Squadron, ready to harry the lapdogs of the false emperor

 One of the many Games Workshop Specialist Games I dallied with in my youth was Battlefleet Gothic, the game of heavily armed gothic space cathedrals in the grimdark future. I recently got in touch with someone online who re-ignited my interest in the game and agreed to make a pilgrimage to Warhammer World in Nottingham to get some action in. Watch this space...

As part of preparations, I've spent an amount of money that I will not be revealing on buying some second hand escorts and a battleship which have all been repainted to augment the plastic cruisers from the Boxed Set I got back in the halcyon days of youth.

Some of the original squadron, a pair of Slaughter-class cruisers

Towards the end of my wargaming phase (and when my painting skills were at least acceptable) I gave all the ships, and a few extra escorts and transports, a nice lick of paint which makes such a difference over the bare plastic.

The carrier division: (Left) Styx-class battlecruiser, the squadron flagship (Right) Devastation-class cruiser

I've thought about repainting the old flotilla with such new-fangled techniques as highlighting and washes, but I decided it wasn't really worth the effort. I did do a few touch-ups to cover up the more obvious painting mistakes, but that's it.

Infadel raiders, named in the bad old days when I took things very seriously

So, moving on to the new stuff, what I'm most proud of is the Despoiler-class Battleship. I've painted it as a Night Lords Legion battlebarge, so dark blue with lighting patterns and gold trim. It took a while to get the whole thing done, but the advantage of such a busy model is that it's MUCH easier to drybrush.

The Unholy Taint, ready to give those slaves of the corpse god a good seeing-to

Keen-eyed viewers may note the unusual configuration of the side-modules. I've used two rather than one pair of launch bays and reduced the number of weapon batteries correspondingly. This is because the game stats imply more launch capacity and fewer weapon batteries than modelled. Also, I'm already using my spare chaos weapon batteries to scratch-build orbital defences (some below). The model also came without dorsal lance turrets so I had to furnish replacements out of my bitz box.

Detail of the rear. I wouldn't normally put red on a blue ship, but the red arrows are a nod to the red wings on the skull on the Night Lords badge 

Like all classic GW metal models, this one features bits that will definitely fall off both in transit and in game at the slightest touch. The one concession I have to this is that the antennae are attached with short lengths of rod slotted into prupose-drilled holes and can be taken out for storage.

Front has been painted as a sort of landing area in more utilitarian grey with landing lights

The thing I am most happy with on this ship is the lighting patterns on the front hull. I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to manage fine brushwork over a very busy surface, but it turned out really well. It actually helped, I think, as lightning tends to have a jagged shape and the ups-and-downs made this easier to paint. 

Iconoclast-class destroyers, named (of course) after famous Byzantimne iconoclastic emperors

The models above all comfortably add up to 1500 points in BFG which is enough for a fleet engagement so I'll be ready to go in a couple of weeks. The greatest difficulty will be packing it all up for travel in a way that won't result in everything breaking and getting chipped beyond recognition.

Orbital defence platforms: Lances (Left) and weapon batteries (Right)

I have also finished some scratch-built asteroid defence platforms I first bashed together in my initial period of hobbying. They're based around expanded polystyrene roughly shaped into a rock shape, then with spare plastic cruiser bits stuck on. Before I painted them I glued sand to the rock parts to hide the obvious shape of all the polystyrene balls. They are a bit wonky, certainly not aligned very well with the stand, but I'm proud of them. There's another one on the painting table so I'm sure that will be posted eventually. 

The Dread Lurgie in all her pustulant glory

As well as all the official Games Workshop ships I've found second hand, I also bought a squadron of 3D-printed ships from Scourge Scenics, which are very faithful to the originals, and in some cases an improvement. The Murder class cruiser is the best in this regard, it has dropped the prow weapon batteries in favour of something that actually looks like a lance.

I think I will be renaming this one to "Tainted Love" after the Soft Cell song

The two cruisers are a departure from the generic colour scheme of my old fleet, and were lightly converted with milliput to add a dome to the Slaanesh cruiser, and patches of rusted, creeping growth over the hull to the Nurgle ship. I think  the results are pretty good, although being colourblind the orange of the rust patches is very similar to the green hull. Please let me know in the comments how it looks.

Supernumerary destroyers which I painted to test out the colour schemes for other ships

While I'm very happy with the 3D printed cruisers, the escorts have been a bit of a mixed bag. The iconoclasts are also pretty good, but the Idolator raiders were very disappointing. I'm not really sure what to make of the model, although I'm not all that knocked out by the vessel's in-game stats in the first place so that might be a factor. It just seems a little overpriced for what it does. Ah well, perhaps once I take them into action I'll see what they can do.

Idolator raiders awaiting naming