Wednesday 21 June 2017

Rounding out the Ragnarok

It's been a sweltering few days lately, but on the upside it means there has been lots of sunshine and little else to do but paint!

As such, I've been working on the third instalment of my Armageddon fleet, Battlefleet Ragnarok. This time I've taken the opportunity to further boost my carrier capacity, fill out my light cruiser options and escort squadrons, and add in a half dozen transports.

Wave three of Battlefleet Ragnarok


As this is my second Imperial fleet, I knew I wanted to deviate away from some of the standard ship choices in order to avoid excess duplication. To that end, I trawled Armada, the magazines and the FAQ for interesting ship types to add. This led me to the Dominion class battlecruiser from the Bakka fleet list.

With the firepower of a Gothic (albeit with longer ranges!) and the ordnance capacity of a Dictator, the Dominion is a scary battlecruiser. It fills a similar niche to the Mars, but comes with 3 turrets as standard, isn't penalised for firing over 30cm and is missing the no-fun-gun.

The battlecruiser Sovereign (Domnion)

I could happily see myself pairing it up with a Dictator and putting it in the frontlines, or an Apocalypse so I can pump out 10 firepower of lances at 45cm whilst providing fighter cover!

This ship was very much scavenged from leftover parts and, in keeping with the idea that it is a reserve ship of an out of vogue design, is marked with a distinctive blue prow just like the Dominator. It also is sporting a 'chaos' bridge instead of an Imperial one, which I think actually looks pretty nice!

The light cruisers Hawk (Endeavour) and Fortune (Endurance)

Next up is another pair of light cruisers. The Endeavour is just a straight-up, reliable ship that pairs nicely with Lunars or Gothics and the Endurance matches particularly well with Lunars as well.

I don't think I'd squadron light cruisers with each other very often though, except in low point games, as I think they benefit from having a 'big brother' soak up damage for them.

The Endurance was. for some weird reason, a nightmare to assemble despite being nominally identical to the other light cruisers. Everything I touched bent, snapped, broke or just didn't line up. I think I must just have been very tired when doing it....

Falchions - Daring, Dexterous and Discovery from Delta squadron plus Arrogant and Spiteful.

I've also added five more Falchions to the fleet. There is one each for Alpha and Sigma squadrons to bump them up to five ships and a new Delta squadron of three ships.

One ship from each squadron has been converted with a cruiser antenna to denote it as being the lead ship of the squadron. This has no practical purpose other than from a fluff perspective.

That's probably enough for now as I'm not even sure how much I like Falchions! They are just like worse Swords, right? I guess their meagre torpedo volleys could be useful if combined with assault craft waves.

Transports - Envoy, Lark, Limpet, Reward, Gull and Lantern

Last up is a half dozen transports for various scenarios. I decided to paint them in the same colours as the rest of the fleet to show that they are still military vessels, as opposed to the ragtag band of merchant ships that make up the transports of Battlefleet Valkyrie.

With that the 'core' of the fleet is complete. I'm sitting pretty on around 3,000 points of ships and am swiftly running out of plastic cruisers! There's still a lot I'd like to add though including Strike cruisers and marine escorts, AdMech ships, a Rogue Trader cruiser, some assault craft stands and a grand cruiser. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to work on next but will be rummaging through my ships for inspiration. I've even got a bunch of Tyranid ships and even Spacefleet minis that will all need work at some point!

My eventual goal is to get to around 10,000 points of Imperial ships of various types and then have a massive dust up with a few other players in a big scenario of some kind. At this rate, it might even happen this year!

4 comments:

  1. I do love them, never get tired of seeing these beauties.

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    1. Cheers! I've managed to dig out a half dozen Resin Addict escorts and am gluing them together now so I think they'll be in the next update. :)

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  2. That sounds like a huge fleet! Lovely paint jobs - 10,000 points would amazing!

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