Imperial Battleship Spotted Above Farpoint!

Hi!

Following on from my Imperial lander from last week, I felt the need to crack out the cardboard once again and build something a bit different in the form of an Imperial warship!

The Dauntless, Imperial Tyrant Class Cruiser

Governor General van Dorn has been supplied with a small fleet to aid in the pacification of the Farpoint sector and the flagship of the fleet is the Dauntless, an Imperial Tyrant Class Cruiser under the command of Admiral Ludo Sterne.

The Dauntless has seen quite a bit of action in the last century and bears quite a few scars from its previous deployment against the Eldar raider fleet of the Serpent Brotherhood. Despite the scarred appearance, the Dauntless is a powerful force to be reckoned with in the sector.

Armed with a powerful broadside and destructive Nova Cannon, the Dauntless should be more than a match for most of the pirate flotillas that have plagued the sector in the last few years but rumours of a traitorous Rebellion warship in the region has the admiral keeping his crew battle drilled and ready for any engagement.

Constructed from a mixture of foamcore, cardboard and some plasticard, I must admit it was quite a long term sculpt but I am rather pleased with how it turned out. While it doesn't sport the gothic elements of the traditional sculpts, it didn't cost me anything and was quite fun to build.

I hope to add a few smaller escort and merchant vessels to the mix which will hopefully give me a small flotilla to play some skirmishes using Battlefleet Gothic.

Now I have a battleship to pootle about the sector, I think I will also have to procure a complement of naval types to add some interesting scenarios for 15mm scale skirmishes too and may have to represent the curmudgeonly Admiral Ludo Sterne too!

In my version of The Imperium, technology has moved on a bit from the dark ages and the ships are more bulky armoured boxes with guns than flying cathedrals as I wouldn't know where to start with building such a monstrosity!

I doubt I will be playing any vast fleet action style games (and if I was I would have made the ship scale considerably smaller!) but I can imagine half a dozen ships of varying sizes blowing each other up in the aether above a frontier world!

I've got the crazy idea of sculpting some tiny fighters and landers as well as other small ships too so watch this space!

All the best!

Specialist Games You Say?!

Hi!

Well I'm back from work and having survived the torrential rain and driving wind, I find the interwebs ablaze with apparently confirmed rumours that Specialist Games is being relaunched by Games Workshop.

While there seems to be rather a lot of skepticism floating around there, I quite like the idea of classics like Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic and Epic making a comeback.

Epic Goodness!

Looking at the rather scarce information floating around, it does look like GW is concentrating initially on the more 40k elements of the specialist games range (with the exception of Bloodbowl) but how will the new games, if indeed there are, differ from the classic 90's and early 00's classics?

Well one would suspect that the quality of the miniatures, scenery and books will be far higher than of old with Forgeworld taking over design and production. One also suspects that this will result in prices going up rather a lot from the golden days of yore which will no doubt result in lots of frothing but is hardly surprising as GW looks like it's aiming at a boutique and specialist section of the market.

I have my suspicions that some of the games may well change beyond recognition from their predecessors. Just taking a brief glance over the style of the artwork and setting gives some indication that the games are going to be more gothic (possibly GRIMDARK) than before and I even suspect that GW may take the leap from 6mm to 10mm scale for Epic.

Before the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins, just take a look at the likes of Dropzone Commander and the quality of the sculpts they produce. Could GW do something similar? I have my suspicions that they can indeed, especially if it gives them the opportunity to go for some really impressively detailed vehicles and war engines.

Similarly, I foresee interesting changes and developments happening in their other games with rumours of Battlefleet Gothic being ported back to 30k and the Horus Heresy and instead of lots of releases, is it more likely that GW will go for everything in one box like their new game (whose name escapes me now!) and Dreadfleet is anything to go by. It would be nice to think of a more fleshed out range but I do have memories of rumours from a couple of years back with regards to something similar.

Needless to say it's far too early to get too excited or enraged about the whole business but it does sound like we are in for an interesting time in the hobby.

All the best!