Small Lamenters fleet

[Backfire]

So last year I did a last-minute panic buying spree, and after sorting them up, I found out I have few ships surplus to my Imperial Fleet requirements. So I thought, hey why not paint them as Space Marines, and to my favourite Chapter, the Lamenters. Goal is to have tiny, handy flotilla for small actions or multiplayer games. What I got is:
-1 Chaos Cruiser (as Venerable Battle Barge)
-1 Dauntless (Strike cruiser)
-3 Novas
-some Cobras

So any tips? Thought about making chaos cruiser as Styx, that will give me 4 launch bays. Altho it is quite expensive point-wise. I guess I'll playing them as Crusade fleet as that suits Lamenters background, or is Dominion fleet inherently superior?

Also, about painting...Lamenters colours are yellow and black-white checkerboard. Everybody keeps saying how difficult yellow is to get to look good. Should I paint them with my usual method (base, wash, highlight/drybrush), or with what some people use - paint white, highlight, then yellow glaze all over.

[Jimmy Zimms]

I hear great things about Army Painter yellow primer. Kyuss has a pretty large Imperial Fists epic army and he's had great results with it.

[horizon]

Yeah, get a good yellow base colour. And if you have another basecoat: make sure it is not black.

[Backfire]

So after awhile (eh), I dug out the models and began painting them up:



Still work in progress, need to work on some things: finish the bows of the strike cruiser and the Cobras. Maybe think up some red element for Novas. Alas the Styx has almost no place to which paint the checkerboard pattern and it kinda sticks out. Any ideas for those?

Yellow turned out fairly bad in 2 out of 3 Novas but I don't want to redo them again and fortunately nobody ever looks escorts up closely...

[Stormwind]

Nice!

[Bozeman]

Checkerboard near the top of the launch bays, in that rectangular area.

[Backfire]

Hmm, I think I'll try making some checkerboard pattern there. It's a small area but it should work...I also thought about top of the bridge, but it'd probably look silly.

Down side is that if I run it as Acheron, then there won't be checkerboard but I think I'll manage.

[Backfire]

Well it's more or less done, some small retouching might be needed. I think it turned out quite well given how sucky I am painting things like checkerboard. Not 100% happy with the Novas though, two of them look bit messy and I didn't manage to think up good red element for them. I'd need another Strike Cruiser for it to be really useful fleet but shrug...

(If someone thinks Cobras look weird, they are counterfeit, made from real Cobra models with Instamold and some pieces of plastic. I do have four unpainted Cobras left but dunno if I paint them as Lamenters, maybe I'll give them Anaar colours.)

[Ole]

I like it!

Cheers

Ole

[Stormwind]

I've always wanted Epic Lamenters, but I feel faint thinking about me painting all those checkerboard markers!

[Backfire]

It's not actually too bad in small quantities. Doing them for the fleet proved workable even for my very limited skills (it helped that the pattern didn't have to be too small). However, thinking what it would be to paint an entire Lamenters army, checkerboard like 50 pauldrons... 

As for the yellow, I basecoated them white, then sepia wash (in some places black), drybrush them with white, and finally Lamenters Yellow glaze all over. So I didn't use any actual yellow paint. Turned out fairly well, at least for the cruisers.