Monday 31 August 2015

Seeking Retribution

I've still been working on my BFG fleet - Battlefleet Valkyrie - as and when I've found myself with spare time. My initial goal was to get up to 2,000 points and I've finally done that with the addition of a Retribution Class Battleship, the Indomitable Will, and another three Sword Class Escorts.

Common wisdom is that Imperial fleets are always best served by an Emperor, but the Retribution is just so intimating! It has an imposing, dangerous-looking sleekness to it, with the weapon batteries set flush against her hull. In comparison the Emperor just looks slow and ponderous.

It does mean that I'll need to work on adding some more carrier support from cruiser sized ships later, but that's a small price to pay for such a marvellous craft.

Indomitable Will (Retribution Class Battleship) - held aloft by 3mm brass rod.

This model sat half-finished on my painting desk for a long time. I find painting large figures quite intimidating especially in this case because of the amount of preparation time that went into it. The model was originally put together incredibly badly and needed disassembling and all the glue removing. It hadn't had any of the flash or mould lines taken off either. I just wanted to make sure that I did the model justice.

I slightly regret not using more white trim, although you can see significantly more of it from above as originally intended. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it.

Being backed up on my painting hasn't stopped me from buying more stuff though, as I'm sure many of you can understand. In particular I'm very happy with my purchase of an Orbital Dock.

Another recent trade (thanks William!) snagged me a pair of Strike Cruisers, both with a variety of missing parts. They only shared one 'fin' between the pair of them and one was missing the prow outright. If only there was some ship in BFG that was made from a Strike Cruiser without a prow...

Picture form the Additional Ships Compendium.

Huh, you mean there is? How convenient.

It even has a pretty fun set of rules. The ship costs a whopping 180 points for what is effectively an up-gunned light cruiser, but the combination of fighters, bombardment cannons and torpedoes makes it a ferocious fighter. Two turrets and 6+ front armour gives it decent survivability as well, especially if kept back from the front lines.

Rules from the Additional Ships Compendium.

I can imagine keeping it in reserve with a Dauntless or two and having it dart forward to deal a crippling blow to an enemy capital ship.

Overall, the Punisher Class will make a great addition to the fleet, brining a few extra launch bays on a moderately tough hull as well as some mighty front-arc firepower. I couldn't resist attempting my own version of it.

Currently unnamed Punisher Class Strike Cruiser

So, I'm sure you're now wondering "hey, where did that guy get a spare Imperial prow from, aren't they normally attached to Cruisers?" You'd be right to ask such a question, because a Cruiser was indeed mutilated in order to allow for this conversion.

A while back, I showed off my custom Exorcist Class Grand Cruiser assembled from a hacked up Chaos and Imperial cruiser. When I shared it on the BFG Facebook group a lot of people weren't keen on the upside-down Imperial prow though so this time I think I could do better.

A Vengeance Class Grand Cruiser currently in prodiction

Ignore the shoddy green-stuffing, you won't be able to tell once it's painted, honest!

This version has a slightly longer profile with the Imperial hull set further back and it retains the complete Chaos prow. The Imperial hull is capped off with a bridge from the same vessel to stop the ship from ending too abruptly. She isn't yet complete as I'll have the lances repositioned to be perpendicular to the hull and the antennae need to be reattached, but the basic form is there.

This is hopefully going to be the first of a pair of identical Vengeances which will form a long-ranged firebase together or with the Retribution, or can be used singly as a flagship in smaller games. Both are being made out of cruiser that have, frankly, seen better days and were acquired second hand.

Is this an improvement over the previous design? Let me know what you think.

7 comments:

  1. The Indomitable Will looks awesome! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers, I think I will cave in and do an Emperor class as well in the end. They are just too good unfortunately!

      Delete
  2. Assuming you still have it in a modifiable state, I would recommend cutting off the chaos crusier portion of the Vengeance's prow at the narrowest cross-section and lowering it so that the top is in line with the seam between the chaos and imperial weapon batteries...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe put the cut-down Imperial cruiser bridge on top as an observation deck...

      Delete
    2. Thanks for the suggestions but unfortunately she's finished and painted so no more chopping her up! I'm definitely going to play around with these ideas for the next one though as I still don't have an Avenger!

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Send me some pictures when you find it! I love seeing what people have managed to cobble together. It's always great inspiration. :)

      Delete