This is Credo Eternus, a Desolator-class Battleship that served as Zarek Thal’s flagship during the Horus Heresy.
More pictures of it, and a couple more capital ships from the Covenant Battlefleet, below the fold.
This is Credo Eternus, a Desolator-class Battleship that served as Zarek Thal’s flagship during the Horus Heresy.
More pictures of it, and a couple more capital ships from the Covenant Battlefleet, below the fold.
Battlefleet Gothic: Remastered includes rules for the Ramilies Class Star Fort, which can be used as an orbital defence or as a replacement for a planet in some scenarios, and for fortress-monasteries, which can be taken in Space Marine crusade fleets.
This 3D-printed proxy will work nicely as a Ramilies or as Aegida, the fortress-monastery of the Scythes of the Emperor.
More pictures below the fold.
This is the first wave of ships for my Heresy-era Word Bearers fleet, which have helped me refine the paint scheme and technique. I have a few more still to come so stay tuned!
More below the fold.
Here is a collection of high orbit defences for use in games where they’re allowed (for example, planetary assaults).
The first two were lightly kitbashed from the remnants of a resin re-cast of an Imperator titan (no sacred relics were harmed in their making). The other two are from Scourge Scenics, purchased with the voucher I was awarded for having the best painted fleet at Damn The Torpedoes!!.
More pics below the fold.
Here is the flagship of my Scythes of the Emperor fleet, the battle-barge Vengeance of Sotha.
I am pretty close to “finishing” Battlefleet Sotha (although obviously no collection is ever truly finished). Expect a group photo soon!
Having said that, I am having crisis about strike cruisers: I am not super-keen on the design that I’ve used, and am considering swapping them out for a design that’s closer to the original models. We shall see.
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Grand cruisers are relics of a bygone age. Having been common in the Armada Imperialis during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy, they were superseded by battlecruisers; however many sector fleets retain grand cruisers as second-line units, or mothballed as war reserves.
Resolute Blade is just such a ship. Her hull was laid down in the Jovian orbital shipyards in late M30. She then served in the 965th Expeditionary Fleet with the IV Legion, and particpated in the Solar War. After the Heresy, she was captured as a prize by the Imperial Fists during the Great Scouring, and presented to the Imperial Navy by Rogal Dorn himself.
Resolute Blade was assigned to the Vastus Sector in M33, as part of reinforcements sent from Kar Duniash during the first Ork incursion. She served on the front-line fleet in the Vastus sector from then until M37. She was then reassigned to the reserve fleet (based at Aquilius Prime), seeing sporadic action over the next four millenia, until the entire reserve fleet was activated in response to the disruption caused by the Great Rift.
Now, this ancient vessel prowls the Void once again, in service of the God Emperor, smiting His foes and defending His subjects as part of Battlefleet Vastus.
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A few people have reached out recently asking how I paint my Word Bearers.
My paint scheme is based on the one I created for my 28mm-scale Word Bearers army (that I ended up selling, back when the Horus Heresy game was in the lull between the 1st and 2nd editions). That scheme used an airbrush to apply a metallic red over a black base, but in the intervening period I disposed of my airbrush setup, and GW released contrast paints, which are so good for Epic-scale miniatures I’m not sure they weren’t designed for them specifically, so that’s why I used when I began painting my LI army back in 2024.
So here is the recipe:
I also use transfers from the old Forge World transfer sheet for the Word Bearers, and custom ones from ImpatientTabletop. Follow my guide to perfect decals!
For the bases, follow this recipe:
So here is a round-up of what did happen in the last couple of months!
First, I attended the “Damn The Torpedoes!!” Battlefleet Gothic event hosted by Tnavah Cluster Events in Havant. This was a fun, casual event, and I’m proud to have won the “Shipwright” trophy for the best painted fleet for Battlefleet Vastus! Mark will be running more BFG (and LI) events in the coming year and I will be going to them if I can make them. Some photos from the event are below.
I did get some painting done in the hot weather, finishing two lots of Saturnine dreadnoughts, and some Javelins:
But the LI highlight of the summer was the all-day, 5,000 point al-fresco game we played in my back garden. The Covenant of Ruin supported by Legio Crassus faced off against the Sons of Horus and Legio Mortis on an expanded 8’x4’ table with both urban and desert terrain (including the excellent Retro Space Dwarf Fortress by Doctor Spork).
We played a custom mission where (in the style of second-edition Epic Space Marine/NetEpic) victory points were scored for breaking/destroying enemy formations, as well as capturing objectives. It was a brutal, fun, close game and I hope I will be able to host another big game like this next year!
Feeling rather unmotivated to paint more BFG ships or LI minis (I have a big pile of Saturnine dreadnoughts and Scimitar jet-bikes that are half-done) and needing a palate-cleanser, I fished a couple of 40K minuatures out of my pile of unfinished minis, and finished them off, just so I wasn’t completely idle over the summer. As usual, my ability to paint faces has not improved (no matter how many YouTube tutorials I watch) in the last 40 years. Oh well!
Now that summer is almost over, hopefully I will be getting a bit more hobby done! Battlefleet Sotha needs some reinforcements, and there may be some void warfare in the Age of Darkness in my future. I will be participating in The Siege of Ardent Reach Legions Imperialis doubles event next month; plus those Saturnine dreadnoughts and Scimitar jet-bikes won’t paint themselves…
Stay tuned!
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In the last few games of Legions Imperialis that I’ve played, I’ve gone up against armies that have used Termites quite effectively. In many ways they are superior to drop pods as you get 5in of movement once the termite has emerged, and an extra dice of Point Defence. So naturally I decided to add some to the Covenant.
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It’s Christmas, 1990. The two halves of the Channel Tunnel (one British, one French) have just been connected to each other 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first land connection between Great Britain and the mainland of Europe for around 8,000 years. The Soviet Union is in the process of collapsing. At CERN in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee completes the test for the first webpage, and a 13-year old me receives a copy of Advanced Space Crusade from his parents as his main present that year.
Advanced Space Crusade featured squads of Space Marine scouts assaulting Tyranid hive ships. Prior to this game (and the Space Marine novel), Tyranids were a background species, briefly mentioned in Rogue Trader (and completely unrelated to genestealers). It was ASC which launched Tyranids as a playable faction in Warhammer 40,000.
Advanced Space Crusade was a weird mess of a game, not really related to the original Space Crusade at all, with overly complex rules, and a body-horror style inspired by the late, great Ian Watson novel Space Marine (in which Biff Tundrish, of the Imperial Fists, excitedly announces, “we’re going in through the anus!”, just as the boarding torpedo he’s aboard penetrates its target hive ship).
The ASC rulebook featured two different chapters, both devastated by the arrival of Hive Fleet Kraken. Those two chapters were the Lamenters (an already established chapter at that point), and the Scythes of the Emperor.
It was the latter of these two chapters that I fell in love with.
And yet, until this year, apart from some of the scouts from Advanced Space Crusade and a squad of RTB-01 beakies, somehow it had never occurred to me to build and paint a Scythes army, in any of the 40K game systems I’ve played.
Finally I am putting that right, and have started building a Scythes of the Emperor army for Battlefleet Gothic. Here you can see the first batch of ships: a couple of strike cruisers and some escorts
More pictures below the fold.
