[BFG] Armiger84's Drydock

[Armiger84]

Well, it's been a little while since I've added to the thread, so I figured I'd update it on what I've completed in the past few weeks in between numerous road trips and otherwise.  Ignore the barely-painted base & the fact that I can't seem to properly position a starfield (t-shirt) to black out the photo area properly:



And here's a top-down with all of the lightning bolt patterns visible.  Freehanding them was fun (once in a light blue, not that you can see it really, and again over that with white.  I may try to thin some of them down a bit more, but I'm not the one with surgeon's hands in this household, so...)



This post is also important because I've finally discovered the thumbnail option in Photobucket!  I will no longer be publishing single posts that occupy 2-3 screens!

I'm not quite done yet.  I need to get that base painted (going to scrub off my foolish attempt at hand-painting it and base-coat spray it tomorrow when a bunch of my epic stuff goes under the primer can), still have some touch-ups to do... and I'm trying to find the link, but there's someone whose Chaos fleet I was looking at yesterday who very carefully and artfully added damage scars to his vessels (given the wide, flat surfaces on a Chaos cruiser it displays nicely), and I'm considering very, very carefully applying some battle damage to the ship to try to represent a few thousand years of combat and extremely limited drydock time.  Since I want the ship's story to have been that she started as a full 12-hit battleship but damage and neglect has rendered her much more fragile over time (to fit the Blasphemer rules), I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea.

Also, I know she's pretty bright, certainly in the photos, but if I hadn't gone back and highlighted the metals and reds after my washes, she'd just have been a dull, colorless lump on the table.  Now she looks loud up close but looks good at gaming/table distance, and I'll take that split, personally.

Edit:  Credit where credit's due.  Zenithfleet's on WargamerAU is my inspiration for adding some lasting battle damage.  Finally remembered his name.  Now if only I could find the right thread to link to...
Edit 2:  Here we go:  http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=143481

[afterimagedan]

Wow, that looks awesome! I would love to see it in action.

[Blindhorizon]

This thing is a monster very well executed!

[Wizz]

Very well-done conversion! And a good paintjob as well.

[Markconz]

Lovely, great work!

[Hrothgar]

Yes, very inspiring.

[Jimmy Zimms]

Wow that thing is a beast! Perfect flagship for a Legion! So what's next?

[Armiger84]

Thanks guys : )

Funny you should ask that, Jimmy...

I'm still on the fence over whether I'm going to go back over the Nostramo's Lament and add some battle scars and damage.  I don't plan on doing that to all my ships, so I'm wondering if it'll stand out too much.  I'm still debating over whether or not to dull the metallics back down a little more too.

SO, something to work on in the meantime!

My order from Plastruct came in today!  Basically, they're a competitor to Evergreen, with a wonderfully quaintly user-unfriendly online store and a shipping system that might not have been upgraded since 1992... BUT if you're based in the US, their catalog (download it, go through that first before making an order so you know exactly which codes you're looking for, saves you a lot of time) is quite comprehensive, and shipping, CA to Boston, took... 3 business days?  Can't complain.  I'm linking my loot as a thumbnail since it's not all that exciting.  Everything to the left is plastic strip running from .5x.5mm square to 1x2mm rectangular for trim work, and everything to the right is large square rod for building those wonderfully distinctive Imperial macro batteries in a variety of sizes.



So, "real work"!  Below you'll find my WIP Vengeance prow alternative.  I based her off of the Repulsive's prow with some modifications.  She's .75 inches wide at her base, .5 inches wide at the top, and .25 inches deep.  I built out a framework on Monday, filled her in with putty on Tuesday, and then with a hobby knife I trimmed the excess out and sanded it down to get my dagger shape when I got home tonight (the alternative was to repeat my hour of playing with obscure angles and plasticard lengths from Monday, which honestly, was not getting me anywhere.  At all.)  So far tonight, I've started adding the trim (so you can actually see her lines), and shaped the spine that I'll be using as a guide on the top to get that acute sloping Chaos prow effect.



The next photo will show you what it looks like at this stage, plugged into the Retaliator's prow slot.  I plan to bring the prow up from the upper trim in a pair of shallow angles, which will reach that upper metal bit and stop, and in this ship's case, I plan on using some more plastic strip to drape the arms of a massive chaos star over that area a la BFG core rulebook artwork.  the long sloping prow sections I will in this case finish smoothing and then drill to fit numerous antennae into in order to represent the +1 Ld sensor probe upgrade (although I may not use it in every game).



This is mainly a proof of concept build.  If it works, well, I have a few more hulls to do something similar with, although I think I might try for a differently-shaped prow for my Imperial Vengeance hulls.

Next steps:
1) build up the upper surface of the prow to a pointed edge;
2) start on the superstructure beneath the prow (bring it down similar to the Vengeance and Repulsive prows, add a couple of close defense turrets, bring the keel slightly forward onto it)
3) upper deck trim work (Chaos star), drill and mount antennae and sensor probes, add some gribbly squares and bits similar to Imperial ship prows to help hybridize the design
4) fill in that square gap between the prow and the hull, add some plating, and gribbly it up so it looks legit

[Wizz]

Looks good so far!

[Armiger84]

Yeah, I've been moving slowly on this.  My current difficulty is getting a good, clean, shallow set of angles for the upper part of the prow design.  This has proven harder than I thought.  My first attempt with thicker modelling putty was too difficult to cut/shave down, and I ended up gouging too much out of it while attempting to remove the excess.  For round two, I'm building it up, trimming and sanding, building up, etc. gradually with green stuff to better control the process.

Here's where I am so far:



In retrospect, I should have held off on adding the trim there between the two angled sections until I had the upper portion of the prow trued up, but I'm working around that for now.  A few more layers and adjustments, and I'll have it where I want it all, and be able to add the final plastic trim bits.  After that, I'll be building out the portion of the keel that meets beneath the prow, add a few close defense turrets to the underside, and add the part that fills in the keyhole between the Vengeance hull's upper and lower portions where they meet the prow.  After that, it'll be a matter of seeing if I can get a few of these cast up for my Imperial and Chaos Vengeances, and then add faction-specific decoration (and torpedo tubes, prow sensors, etc. as needed) to those for their respective ships.

As a side project, since I had some leftover greenstuff, I'm playing around with a Voss-pattern cruiser prow for another project.



This will eventually replace the standard "gothic" prow on a Mars-pattern hull.  I plan on using her as the flagship for a small Armageddon-list Imperial patrol fleet, and while I love the eagles the original designer built onto these pieces (visible in the background), I wanted to put an aquila over the bridge to mark this as a command vessel, and that got me to thinking.  As a consequence, the St. Macharius will have a winged lion's head (Macharius' personal heraldry was a lion) instead of an eagle head as a means of honoring the hero of the Imperium.  I plan on doing a winged angel swap too for an Armageddon-class in honor of St. Jowen as well, but one step at a time.  For the feline head, I cut up a plastic Knights Panther helm I had lying around in the bits box, and I'm working on building up the mane sufficiently to suit the cat.  Once that's done, swap in a pair of forward-facing rounded ears, and the figurehead swap will be all done.

[fracas]

Impressive work

[Armiger84]

Some more progress to post.  It may not look like a lot, but I've reached a good place on the Vengeance hull prow.  My liquid greenstuff finally came in, and I was able to smooth out my rough cuts from back when I first shaped this.  I've got the prow socketed to fit around the tongue part from the hull.  I might add 1-2 more sets of bracings to the tapering sides of the prow, but I'm going to wait on that and similar finishing touches until I have the lower portion built.  Speaking of which, that's next!  (I might even have this finished sometime this summer!)



And remember that lionshead prow I was working previously?  Well, I got some interest in a game or two of BFG for a specialist games event I'm attending this weekend, so that means it's time to finish enough of my Imperial fleet so it can square off against my existing Chaos ships for some demo games...



Say hello to Adamant Squadron.  I originally painted these guys back in college and I'd always meant to make them part of an Armageddon Sector list, but it wasn't until recently that I managed to get my hands on the perfect conversion bits to make that a reality.  After a little bit of careful sawing, I mounted and painted these Voss-styled prows for my existing cruisers.  They need an ink wash (especially the gold and the silver), and I need to black-line the gaps in the prow armor, plus I'm considering knocking together some tiny turrets to mount on top of the prows for the Tyrant & Gothic (these guys might do double duty for a Bakka list), but at least they're table-ready for Saturday.  From left to right you have the Lord Nevsky, the Sanctus Macharius Victor, and the Aloysius Helmawr IX.  I plan to add another Tyrant and a pair of Armageddons to this, along with eventually a few Voss-pattern light cruisers in the future (escorts are next on the project list for Saturday) to round out the fleet (oh, and there's an Apocalypse, but she needs a little bit of touching-up; travel and storage wasn't as kind to her as I'd like).

The link should give you a close-up of the lionshead for the St. Macharius.  I plan on similarly modifying the prows of my Armageddons with gothic angels (Sts. Sebastian Thor & Jowen respectively), but that's for next week.  I plan on referring to my eventual squadron of nova cannon-toting CBs as "The Holy Rollers."

[Wizz]

Good work - keep it coming. :-)
I enjoy watching your work, even if I don't comment. ;-)

[Armiger84]

@Wizz:  Thanks, I appreciate it, even as a small mention : )

Aaaand, in under the wire!  I managed to finish converting my Voss-pattern Imperial fleet in time for tomorrow's Specialist Games event at Time Machine in Manchester, CT, and just barely.  I had four of these cruisers fully painted from... erm... a decade ago? >_>  This week's project was carefully sawing off and replacing their prows with those Voss-styled alternatives, painting, and touch-ups.  If you're wondering, the high-flying Tyrant and the Armageddon with the laurel-wreathed skull figurehead were the two I finished to the old fleet's standard, along with the Falchions.  I didn't get the other three Falchions I have planned painted up, but I'll only need these three for my lists tomorrow, so I'll call it a job well done.



From left to right, that's the Aloysius Helmawr IX (Tyrant), the St. Drusus (Armageddon), the Lord Nevsky (Gothic), the Sanctus Macharius Victor (Mars, task force command vessel), the A. von Wallenstein (Tyrant), and the St. Jowen (Armageddon), with Pugnus Squadron mixed in amongst the larger vessels.  I'm working off the Armageddon Sector list, and when I can finish repairing the Ferox Ultor (Apocalypse), who didn't survive storage as well as the cruisers did.  I also hope to add some of the Voss Trio light cruiser hulls to the fleet sometime in the near future, but that might take a little work.  I might also add a Dictator, I'm not sure yet.  Here's a close-up of the three Saints, the task force's battlecruisers advancing in tight formation:



Note:  nobody's painted to the Nostramo's Lament's standard, they're more to my tabletop-acceptable level.  When I have more time, I'll probably be giving them all a brown ink wash, some more highlighting, and I might swap out the bright silver for a darker gunmetal color.  When I have the time, the line cruisers will get tiny turrets mounted on top of the prow where the battle cruisers have sensor masts, mostly because I might also use these ships to represent a Bakka fleet from time to time too.  I'm also considering chopping off their port and starboard stabilizer fins just after the sensor probe arrays, and replacing them with big vertically-mounted rectangular armor plates, like the limited production GW Endeavor/Endurance/Defiant light cruiser hulls came with.  It would even further distinguish these cruisers from anything I build for a Bastion Fleets list, but it would require a lot of careful surgery on a bunch of already-painted ships, so I'm not quite committing to it just yet...

[fracas]

great looking fleet

and good luck with your event