Battlefleet Gothic – Chaos Fleet
Welcome back to the grim dark space battles, with Battlefleet Gothic. I did an intro post on this dual fleet project, and we have to start somewhere, so let us do that with the Chaos Fleet.
I'll be using the fleet lists from the Battlefleet Gothic Remastered (I have the v.033 of the fleet lists at hand) and going for a roughly 2.000 points amount of miniatures as a starting ground, to know what to print and have a small collection for smaller to above medium sized battles.
Battlefleet Gothic – Terrain Building
While I'm still deciding on which STLs to use for my Battlefleet Gothic Fleets, I already got my hands on some upcoming terrain pieces. You can use flat terrain with BFG, it works fine, especially as line of sight is measured from pin to pin of the bases, and you don't actually need the height of the terrain pieces.
Yet, I prefer some three dimensional pieces, with the huge question going for domes or spheres on bases. I went for a mixture, the large planet would be a dome, as it would simply be too big to store and to handle on the table, and the others would be spheres on bases. I got myself a set of mixed sized and a large sphere made from two halves.
I actually split the set, as I wouldn't need that many planets and could share the remainder with a wargaming buddy. The two sets I got, set me back 15 EURs, for a two halves 20 cm (8 inch), two 6 cm (~2,5 inch), four 5 cm (2 inch), six 4 cm (~1,6 inch) and eight 3 cm (~1,2 inch) spheres. You probably can get these at your local art store, just make sure you're not overcharged. As you can see, I did a spread of the pieces I keep, along with a brief scale comparison with one of the Chaos Cruisers by Italian Moose.
Necromunda – 1995s House Orlock Gang
I have finished a Middlehammer Chaos warband, I have finished a 90s Blood Bowl Chaos team and now it is time to jump into Sci-Fi. And what better miniature stock to do so by taking a look at Necromunda?
Necromunda has roots in the Rogue Trader era as well. Not entirely unlike Blood Bowl, it had a predecessor. In this case called Confrontation (not to be confused with the game by Rackham), which wasn't released as a boxed game but as published across multiple issues of the White Dwarf Magazine in 1990 and 1991 (Mordheim initially went for a similar approach and was published across multiple issues in White Dwarf until it was released as a boxed game). Confrontation shared a lot of similarities with Necromunda, like the gang warfare setting in a Hive City, yet had a different design approach, as you can see from the artwork and miniatures.
Imperial Fists – A beginning into the Horus Heresy with EpicAU
First of all - don't be irritated, you'll see Imperial Fists in different scales on here. In 28mm for the Warhammer 40k 2nd Edition retro project as recently introduced, and in 6/8mm for EpicAU, as introduced in the Horus Heresy article. For "easier" differentiation, the 28mm on is the 3rd Company of the Imperial Fists, and the epic scaled one the Imperial Fists of the Third Sphere.
And we have to start somewhere, we will do that today with a first draft of a 2,000 point list build with Departmento Munitorum. I am aware that about 4,000 points is a common size, but as said, you have to start somewhere and according to some battle reports I found on YouTube (Tabletop Standard for example) it seems like a reasonable choice to begin with.
Necromunda – Outlanders Stock
I went over my Necromunda Underhive stock and did an update to the 2021 article, as I managed to complete large part of the collection, extending into the Outlanders supplement as well as beyond. From the core collection, I'm only missing a single Goliath ganger and I'd like to share the status quo of the extended Underhive collection.
Just to bring you up to date, a brief repetition from the last article: What is Necromunda about? It is a 28mm skirmish between the street gangs of the bigger Houses on the planet Necromunda, fighting over supply contracts, mines and facilities. And all that in the underground of a megacity (so very 2000 AD) in the Warhammer 40.000 universe. With the character / gang development it even included a narrative part, to tell the story of your own gang, with all the ups and downs that belong to it. And that narrative part is simply the cherry on top of that old school goodness.
Blood Bowl – Mordheim Marauders Part 5
And now it is time for decals! I chose the white numbers from the Nurgle Rotters and grabbed my decal set from Vallejo to get started.
Imperial Fists – Supremacy Force
With the last puzzle piece added to the collection, I have the core of what I "need" to recreate the Imperial Fists Supremacy Force from the very last moments of the 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40k.
This bundle was 65 GBP / 249 DM back in the day (that massiv uppricing in Germany, as the 65 GBP were only about 190 DM - anyhow the German price was EUR 127,31, or EUR 179,39 with inflation) when it was released in August 1998 and introduced in White Dwarf issue 224.
Horus Heresy – On an epic scale
We're leaving the realms of 28mm and moving on to a more Epic scale of 6 - 8 mm, basically the new one Games Workshop set for some of their side games like Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis.
Where to start?
Well, I do own some of the old rule books of Epic, yet these are Epic 40,000 books from the 3rd edition, from 1997. The final edition of the "official" Epic was Epic Armageddon, often abbreviated with EA, the fourth edition of the game. Since then the game went a way, that many of the Specialist Games went through, having a living rulebook and being kept alive by the community. Nowadays the fan serviced rules are mostly NetEpic (based upon the 2nd edition of the game) as well as NetEA (using Epic Armageddon and added errate / updates on that). The rules for both systems can be downloaded for free:
Horus Heresy – Xiphon Interceptor Squadron
The forces in Epic 30k give you the option for air support, and as I already some Aeronautica Imperialis miniatures around, I saw the opion to use the Xiphon Interceptors. Initially, those didn't really fancy for AI, but as you can field them as an attack wing in a of pair two, I thought they might be a good addition.
The kit offered by Games Workshop for the Aeronautica Imperialis range covers six of them, so more than enough. So I picked them up along with some painting material at my go-to store, Radaddel.
Moors of Iberia – Camel Cavalry
With the majority of the moors being ordered from the Outremer Kickstarter, it is time to look at what I am missing. As I mentioned in the article, I wanted a cavalry unit to stand out, and of my ideas was to use camels instead of horses.
Why camels? Well, obviously something different than regular horses. As the Moors in Iberia, especially the ones in the set time frame of this project (Almoravids and Almohads) were Berber Dynasties. And as an old time Age of Empires fan, Berber Camel riders. Yet, there are only a few miniatures out there, and to put it mildly, they are not the best looking. As camel riders weren't part of the Kickstarter I had to look elsewhere and so I did.
As the majority of my Crusader miniatures are Perry sculpts, I looked up their store. Unfortunately their Crusader Arabs didn't cover camels either ... but other ranges did. For example the Sudan range, had these interesting looking Beja warriors on camels.
The Sudan range even had interesting riders to replace the Beja, the Baggara in different variants, with long robes and fitting head gear. But I went for the MA15 Bedouin Command and MA16 Bedouin Cavalry. The miniatures come with separate mounts and riders, so good baseline for a conversion.