Apocalypse or Oberon class Battleship?

[RunepriestRidcully]

Just got my Apocalypse class battleship, I now have all BFG models I would want for a long while apart from possibly a Vengeance or Avenger battlecruiser.
My problem is I am not sure wherever to make it as an Oberon or Apocalypse, as whilst I prefer the Oberon's rules and the style, I have my Retribution battleship to think about. Yes I know a BFG game is rare enough, let alone one where you could take 2 Battleships :P .
So what would be best? A problem is the list that has the Oberon in it does not have the Exorcist or Dauntless class ships, (and as GW never produced models for the voss light cruisers) I do have Falcions escorts that would be nice to actually use, and if someone ever made decent voss light cruiser models or a good conversion tutorial (I'm thinking of Dauntless with a prow change, sadly I am not confident in my abilities at sculpting.
So what would my best option? Make an Apocalypse to use with my Retribution and Exorcist, or make the Oberon and and use the Armageddon fleet list?

[Vaaish]

I personally like the oberon for the price and what you get. It works well with an exorcist too if you pull one in via reserve rules. However, the limited number of lists available to the oberon usually kill my desire to put one together so I'd probably go with the apocalypse.

If you are looking for a cruiser that works as a voss CL, you can check out these:
http://www.twolandscreative.com/wip/bfg/zeusupdate.jpg

You could check with zac on resinaddict for more about them, he might be willing to part with some.

[RunepriestRidcully]

Those are nice, I may well look them up.
My main problem with the Apocalypse is the Nova cannon, I have never used them and I am not confident on my guessing for the range on it, and it's just when you compare it with the Oberon's weapons, it just seems out classed, and there is just something about the Oberon that is nice.
However, the idea of a Retribution, an Apocalypse and an Exorcist running around forming the core of a fleet (about 2000-2500pts proberbly) is something that makes me grin, especially if an unfortunate enemy ship got into a position to be attacked by both.

[nagash66]

Unless i have missed something the nova cannon has not been a guess weapon for a long while.

[RunepriestRidcully]

It's what it says in my rulebook, is their a FAQ?

[fracas]

Nova cannon scatter based on range now

The download rules state as much


Resin addict also have lovely voss light cruisers

[Vaaish]

You must have a very ancient rulebook. The current one from GW has the NC as scatter rules now

[andrewchristlieb]

Yup you have v 1.0 did you buy your box set a long while ago or off eBay perhaps? At any rate check the gw site for updated rules, there's also an unofficial FAQ you can find by searching on here that has a lot of rule fixes and new material.

[sunnyside]

Maybe a bit off topic except availibility of voss ships plays into how viable the Oberon is. But I'm getting into the game, am considering a rogue trader fleet, and being an Eldar player from back when you had to make your own wave serpents, I couldn't help but notice that the voss light cruiser front looks a lot like a regular cruisers front.

So I was thinking of getting regular cruisers, clipping off some bitz and maybe some length, cutting/buffing down the sides, and then using some plastic working tools to put in the geometric stuff on the now flat sides. Then I'd glue bitz back on to make it look a proper ship.

I'd hope would be obviously voss. What do you guys think?

[andrewchristlieb]

Sounds good, i noticed that one of the guys at adapticon just cut off one weapon bay from a standard cruiser but that looked a bit odd IMO. I picked up some dauntless models (4) from ebay recently and I've been considering converting a pair to magnitized endurances, not voss pattern obviously but then I never cared for that look anyway . Oh and on the question of battleship choice go for both, neodymium magnets are pretty cheap and allow you to swap weapons modules to your hearts content.

[jlmb_123]

I've strategically magnetised my fleet's side weapons, including a couple of cruisers with magnetised nova cannons or rams on the prows, using 50mm x 2mm neodynium magnets and araldite. Perhaps you could do that?

Just to let people know, the cruiser loadouts are:

glued front weapons battery, magnetised rear weapons to build Lunar/Tyrant/Dictator/Overlord;

glued front weapons battery, magnetised rear weapons and magnetised prow ram/Nova Cannon to build Lunar/Tyrant/Dictator/Overlord/Mars;

glued rear lances, magnetised front weapons to build Tyrant/Gothic;

glued rear carrier bays and glued front weapons batteries, magnetised prow nova cannon/ram to build Dominator/Mars.

I'm going to start painting them in the next few weeks, perhaps I'll get pictures up. If you try it, good luck!

[sunnyside]

I plan to do magnets regardless. Even the voss ships are just a swap away from each other.

Actually, that's probably the best answer for the OP. Glue one set of lances, then magnetize the other two broadside options and the nova vs weapons battery prow.

[andrewchristlieb]

If you magnitized all three slots you would have more options, I actually find the idea of having a mix of fixed and mag really odd personally. I'm waiting on some tiny mags to attach the ram and the dorsal weapons on my Retribution so I can swap in a nova to make an apoc or leave off the dorsals to make a victory, of course since all 3 of my side slots are mag I can make an emp or oberon also. Eventually in going to get around to stripping and rebuilding an emperor chassis also....

[afterimagedan]

You can drill straight through the middle part and glue one magnet. A bigger one is strong enough to hold both the outer weapons in. For the weapons, I just drilled into them slightly to make a little cove and I glued a used staple into it. It works just fine and you hardly use any magnets.

[Novrain]

Do the GW Battle ship model kits come with enough sides to have the full range of different sides?

So if I bought the Apocalypse kit, would I get enough sides to magnetise and run it as an Emperor?

[RunepriestRidcully]

That is what I have decided to do with my next apocalypse hull and vengeance hull. Thank you for the feed back everyone, in the end I went for an Apocalypse just because it could fit in the same fleet as the rest of my stuff and my lack of experience with magnets, though I plan to get enough so that when I get anymore ships I can do so.

[andrewchristlieb]

The battleships do come with 3 weapons sprues so yes you get 6 lance 6 weapons batteries and 6 launch bays, those can be used to make any ship.

[sunnyside]

If it's not too late and the issue is that you just don't want to bother with magnets, and option I went with when younger was to use a weak glue, like tacky glue or rubber cement. I've been told spitting in the superglue can work as well. The idea is that at least you can swap stuff out with a little time at home.

[jlmb_123]

You can drill straight through the middle part and glue one magnet. A bigger one is strong enough to hold both the outer weapons in. For the weapons, I just drilled into them slightly to make a little cove and I glued a used staple into it. It works just fine and you hardly use any magnets.

That's a great idea! The main problem I've had is that as the glue sets the magnets to the chassis, they push away from one another. This is the one of two reasons I've gone with part-fixed, part magnetised; the other is that making sure that every magnet on noth ship chassis and weapon are facing the right way is a bugger, plus, I'd not be able to build all that many variants anyway, what with the limitations of the sprues.

To all those who don't know: each plastic ship comes with a sprue with two lances, two weapons batteries and two launch bays (i.e. a pair/set of each). Metal ships should come with a single sprue for each side 'slot': for example, a Retribution class is 'armed' with three sets of weapons batteries, for which you need three sprues, which will also each contain one set of the other weapons.

[andrewchristlieb]

Right the plastic cruiser boxes come with two chassis and two weapon sprues (4 of each weapon) and battleships come with one chassis and three weapon sprues (6 of each weapon type). The cruisers can be a pain when you want any two gothics or tyrant/dominator/overlord etc as you only get the bits for one all weapon battery or all lance ship. It really would have been better thought out as three smaller sprues with four each of the three different types.

My ships also have the straight through magnets with staples on the back side of the weapons, chaos ships are a bit more difficult due to their weapons not being back to back but with 8 small magnets set into the weapon mounts (two per weapon mount) and staples on the back sides of the weapons they work well. I haven't had to hollow any of the weapons out yet although the launch bays on the Imperial cruisers took a bit of creative sprue usage to build up the inside to the point that the staple made contact.