CELS' Battlefleet Gothic log

[CELS]

As you all [should] know, Gothicomp 2008 is coming up and it's an excellent opportunity to see all my BFG conversion-related wet dreams realised. Fortunately, the deadline is well into the summer, giving me plenty of time to absolutely ravage my bitz box. My planned submissions are;

- Ork Space Hulk
- Ork battleship
- Eldar corsair escort squadron
- Imperial super-heavy barge (transport)
- Imperial sprint trader (transport)
- Imperial black ship

And I might just throw a few more in there. I'll start with the space hulk.

Ork space hulk Uzguthork Thrakdakaz
This space hulk will be the backbone of my growing ork fleet for BFG. My ambitions for this conversion is to show my personal view, or interpretation if you will, of the orks and their technology. I am not a big fan of Orks-as-clowns, nor do I like how GW often exaggerates their random and simplistic approach to technology. The idea of orks simply crashing a captured hulk into an asteroid, fusing them together, adding some extra rockets and guns and flying off into the warp just.... makes me want to kill kittens.

So this space hulk will be an example of the absolutely enormous constructions that orks would be able to build "from scratch", without capturing Imperial ships or whatever, by taking a solid construction and just piling on new pieces over aeons of war. I like to see the orks as far more advanced than some other fans and while not as advanced as the Imperium or the Eldar, the fact that they are so many and have been around for so long, gives me a bit freedom in narrative terms.

Not only is the space hulk scratch-built by the orks, without any pieces of Imperial wrecks, but it's also supposed to look quite menacing, like what you'd expect from a huge alien space hulk. The comical look of the orks, where things look bolted together with an enormous nailgrun, as if designed by a small child, is not for me. On the other hand, I will counter the menacing look with some proper ork glyphs, to make the ship recognisably orky. Now, enough talk... on with the pictures:

Step 1 - Humble beginning
Just a piece of thick plasticard with some bulkhead-bitz from Necromunda to have a solid base for this huge construction.



Step 2 - Building the frame
About the size and shape of a small deck of cards. Using two chaos cruiser prows to get a kind of open-mouth prow like the Chaos Desolator battleship. Again, I'm not a big fan of the cartoony ork ships that look like big metal fish. Any ork vehicle or construction with a big mouth with teeth makes me want to stab myself. The metal-piece is from the dark eldar Talos.



Step 3 - Add more bitz
Some more bitz from Imperial and Chaos cruisers, and part of a 40k dozer blade and some more Necromunda bulkheads. The ship has been made longer with more plasticard.



Step 4 - Add more bitz
Even more bitz from Imperial and Chaos cruisers, and also some bitz from the Ork ships. The prow launch bay has been decorated with pieces of Necromunda bulkhead. Can't you just picture swarms of attack craft and torpedoes spewing out? Mmmm...

[CELS]

Step 5 - Add guns... and more bitz

Lots of tiny guns from all kinds of different BFG models, a weapon from the 40k dark eldar range (just for some random orkyness) and a huge orky skull that I'm rather happy with since it's the size of a fingernail. At this stage, the hulk is really coming together and you can appreciate its hulkyness.



Size comparison
In BFG terms, an escort usually costs 30-40 points and has 1 hitpoint. A cruiser usually costs 150-200 points and has 6-8 hitpoints. A battleship costs 300-400 points and has 12 hitpoints. A space hulk costs 600 points and has 40 hitpoints. So obviously... it's supposed to be quite big. On the other hand, you still want the model to be practical in a game, so I've made a compromise that makes the space hulk many times bigger than a Space Marine battle barge in terms of volume, whilst still being a somwhat normal BFG-model size.



Step 6 - What to do?

I was going to give the space hulk some "wings", but now I'm not quite sure how to model them. Alternative 1 is to make them like lateral launch bays, which would be in keeping with the space hulk's rules. Alternative 2 is to add big fins with guns. Of course, the ork philosophy would be to do whatever is bigger and has more guns, but I'm going to do whatever is most pleasing to the eye. However, I'm not sure what would be most pleasing to the eye. What do you think?


Gun-wing (above)

Launch bay (below)

[Marovian]

Mighty impressive old battleship there, good use of bits and bobs from other models.

[malika]

I kinda commented on this at the ASP board too, but yeah...looking good man! I'm curious what the right side of that ship will look like! Oh that and the paintjob, will it be as the rest of your Ork fleet or will it be in totally different colours? By the way...use the second alternative for your wing, so the launch bay!

[Burnthem]

Great to see some BFG love on here for a change! Will be watching this closely. Am tempted to attempt an entry but not sure if i've got the skill/time/energy to do it......

[CaptainSenioris]

Nice Hulk you've got there, it really reminds me of the picture of a space hulk in the old Space Crusade rulebook.

I take it your dislike of toothy ork ships includes my hulk? It's an honest question as you seem to feel really strong about it.

[CELS]

Originally Posted by Marovian

Mighty impressive old battleship there, good use of bits and bobs from other models.

Many thanks!

Originally Posted by malika

I kinda commented on this at the ASP board too, but yeah...looking good man! I'm curious what the right side of that ship will look like! Oh that and the paintjob, will it be as the rest of your Ork fleet or will it be in totally different colours? By the way...use the second alternative for your wing, so the launch bay!

Cheers. I haven't really decided on the right side of the ship yet. It might be symmetrical to the left side, but probably not. And the entire hulk will be painted like the rest of my fleet, brown with ice blue details. The ork skull will be painted ice blue to really mark the hulk as belonging to the Death skulls.

Originally Posted by Burnthem

Great to see some BFG love on here for a change! Will be watching this closely. Am tempted to attempt an entry but not sure if i've got the skill/time/energy to do it......

Well, plenty of time to do it, so go for it!

Originally Posted by CaptainSenioris

Nice Hulk you've got there, it really reminds me of the picture of a space hulk in the old Space Crusade rulebook.
I take it your dislike of toothy ork ships includes my hulk? It's an honest question as you seem to feel really strong about it.

I'd very much like to see pictures of the space hulk from the Space Crusade rulebook. As for your own spacehulk, that's actually not the kind of toothy prow I have a problem with. Your space hulk doesn't look like a big metal fish, and so the head on the prow becomes more of a gargoyle rather than the space hulk's head. In my eyes, anyway. But maybe I'm just cutting you some slack because of that brilliant name
(You should have painted it on with ork glyphs rather than low gothic letters though!)

Onwards...

I've decided to go for launch bays instead of fins on the wings, so it now looks like this;



I've also been working on some other models now, while I debate with myself on how best to finish the space hulk (the finishing touches are always the hardest!)

First up, the Scarlet Harbinger, an Inquisitorial black ship that I think will look really good once I get her painted. Apologies for the crappy picture, by the way. Basically, it's a chaos cruiser with an added "midship section", giving it 3 midship sections instead of 2 (2 x launchbay + 1 converted weapon battery) and thus making it longer than a normal chaos cruiser. I've also used some plasticard to make the ship longer and to fill in the gap between the arrow-head prow and the body of the ship. The angel of death is from a Dark Eldar banner. The two green thingies on top of pillars near its stern are huge torches, like the ones on Malcador's ship. Hopefully, I'll be able to look like big gouts of flame with some crafty painting.



Next, another simple conversion. Not really sure what ship this is, but I just wanted to have a dedicated cruiser carrier, and I love the way the Chaos arrowhead-prow looks on a Imperial cruiser hull. The green stuff has been added to the prow in order to make it less recognisable, and though it looks crap now, I will file it down to make it smooth later. The bridge of the ship has been replaced by an Inquisitor-scale servo-skull to mark it as an Adeptus Mechanicus ship, but I'm not sure if I want to keep it there. I'll have to think about it.

[CELS]

Also, I've almost finished the sprint trader I mentioned in my first post. I'm looking to create a fleet of trading vessels for special BFG scenarios, and this is one of my favourite BFG conversions, I think

Step 1 - Take the bottom bit of an Imperial cruiser and a Defence monitor. Cut the Defence monitor in half.



Step 2 - Jam a piece of plasticard inside the "body of the ship" (if you use the same piece of the Imperial cruser as I did, 2 mm plasticard will fit perfectly)



Step 3 - Since normal weapon batteries or launch bays would be inappropriate for a sprint trader, take the launch bays, cut off the pointy bits and add some plasticard to make them look like cargoholds.



Attach the cargoholds to the ship along with the prow of the Defence monitor.

[CELS]

Step 5 - Chop up a Cadian pattern lasgun and use the two biggest pieces to add some bulk to the ship's engines and fill out some gaps.



Step 6 - Cut the original keel fin of the Imperial cruiser and add a bridge on top of the ship.

Before:


After:


Now all that remains is adding the last few details and maybe trimming down the keel of the ship to make it a bit more sleek, like a proper sprint trader.

[Marshal Augustine]

do ork space hulks really use the small flying base?

I really like the conversions by the way!

[malika]

Wow...and here I was thinking CELS updated his thread or something important was being told. Great...threadmancy...

[Haarken]

Not sure how I missed this first time around. Any update or progress in the works CELS?

Haarken

[IncrediSteve]

Threadomancy may be disappointing for a subscriber, but for those of us who never saw it before, it exposes it to our view. And there is some pretty good stuff here!

To the threadomancer's defense, the last update was "11-5-08", which to us goofy westerners looks like it was posted just 12 days ago on November 5th, when it was actually posted on May 11th, 6+ months ago.

Either way, definitely glad I got to see that sprint trader and black ship, top notch stuff!

[CELS]

Heh, what a coincidence. It's been weeks or months since I last checked this forum, and by some coincidence someone resurrected my thread. The force works in mysterious ways.

Well, I don't want to disappoint my faithful readers, so here we go...

Inquisitorial Black Ship
It's not quite finished, I haven't really decided how to paint its weapons. Maybe a different shade of grey. Metallic paint just seems too vulgar. Also, the flames have far too strong colours, making them look cartoony.




Adeptas Sororitas monastery barge
A refitted Frateris Templar ship. This was the Ad Mech ship posted earlier in this thread, but I wasn't very fond of the skull, so I changed it. A lot. Only this side is painted, otherwise I would show it from different angles. It's got some cool vertical fins like Astartes capital ships.




For the transports, check out Warp Rift issue 19, which includes some detailed images and a conversion guide. Oh, and here's a bonus picture, a salvaged Imperial ship commandeered by Chaos forces.

@ Marshal Augustine; Nope, but I'm out of large bases.

@ Haarken; Beats me. Most of this has been posted on the ASP boards

[Valo]

Fantastic work,just finieshed the first 1000 points of my marine fleet,now I'm onto my IN and choas,and you've deffinetly given me some ideas!

[eltanko]

These look really cool, i have never collected BFG before, but it will definately make me look twice at them next time im in GW

ElTanko

[KaldCB]

Awesome, battlefleet gothic is always welcome.
just too bad almost no one plays it anymore.

[New Cult King]

The Monastery barge is just stunning. Excellent work.

And the flames on the other ship look fine for that scale.

[mcflurry]

You sir, are the epitomy of BFG success. Lovely stuff, I think the Sororitas barge is bloody awesome. As is the sprint trader, i have the arse-end of a cruiser left over from my converted Ret/Emp/whatever crap I fit it with, so you've just given me a brilliant idea to stop it being wasted. Cheers

[darktitan01]

Cool Battlefleet Gothic man nice use of the chaos fleet