Cheers folks, more for you now!
*a few combined posts in one big drop today*
Today I
finally got that aforementioned Dominator repainted.
The "Eternal Vigiliance"
This conversion uses the obvious addition of the zeus novacannon prow, instantly tying it in with the zeus lunar and zeus endeavour, already in the fleet.
To take it further, the wings were swapped out with tiny ones from an ad mech cruiser and a chaos bridge added to both tie into the voss cruiser style but also to account for the bulk of the wings, now lost from the horizontal, and put in onto the vertical axis of the ship.
The midships Aquilla comes from an astartes bannerpole and was an obvious reference to the old artwork of ships from the old codex's
The missing engine decks were restored using plasticard tubing, this being a nice reference to the 'razor' voss light cruiser mini, the simple sleek lines of the tubing mirroring those visuals nicely.
The most overt changes comes in the form of the broadsides themselves.
The domminator has always been a ill-favoured class of cruiser; Its long range novacannon utterly at odds with its incredibly short range battery armaments.
To show this on the model I built a set of batteries from plasicard 'barrels' mounted onto plates from the venerable dreadnought kit, for the extra gothic details the arches bring to the mini.
These were simply spaced in threes with platicard rod columns seperating the bays either side.
A simple, if not fiddly, solution that gave a very slimline look to the the cruiser and, hopefully suggests at a mass of smaller, shorter range weapons...
I feel the smaller weapons are very reminiscent of a dauntless's broadsides in looks, thus looking appropriately BFG in design yet are different enough to make the mini more than "just another cruiser"
Here she is alongside the Aggamemnon and the Sinclair, allowing you to see what I mean about the references to both designs she has...
Well, if nothing else, I'm glad I got at least one plastic cruiser based build in there.
Next up? the GC?
Alas, most likely not as its not arrived from the printers yet.
TBH, I don't feel in the mood to start the astartes one yet either...
I think a revisit to another conversion I did few years back might be in order next...
to tease I'll say its one that was good in premise but the way I did it bugs me to this day...
now, where's that exacto-saw and the Nitromoors gone...
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So, here's that revisit to an old mini I teased last post.
The "Spitehawk"
Based off of the talented Malika's Novan Elite's Panthera Heavy Frigate (vanguard), this mini uses a Defence Monitor's prow and imperial lances as well as a section of gsc laser weapon (for the underslung lance) in its conversion...
The way I had originally built this mini had more of the original Panthera prow showing creating a rather gawky looking mini.
It also had additional aerials etc, making it seem rather cluttered too.
With it's cut down sleeker profile I'm much happier with it now.
Although originally intended as a Defence Monitor proxy, the Panthera hull sizes in +/- around the size of a strike cruiser, meaning it could just as easily pass as a strike cruiser or dauntless light cruiser as well as a defence monitor, depending on the mood or scenareo I find myself in.
anyway, classification aside, its a great addition to battlegroup Artemis, nonetheless...
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SO. here is the astartes themed grand cruiser
Glorious Purpose - Crimson Fists battlebargeBased on the zeus grand cruiser mini; featuring fist prow from Lord Borak's battleship conversion kit, plasma batteries (from admgr?), the pods, cannons, church-bridge and domes from battlefleet galaxy, a few beads for extra domes and some hand sculpted fist icons.
the torpedo launchers on the prow come from primaris agressors and the prow launch bay is fashioned from a rhino front-light.
I decided on using the prow-rams as decorational towers as they lined up nicely with the dome I added.
The front bombardment canon is from the vanguard panthera kit.
I went for the crimson fists scheme as on my beakies. because, well yeah...
tbh not 100% happy with how this turned out.
one of the droppod units had a rung-bit snap off it half way and I didnt notice till the final highlights, (yes the droppods are absurdly out of scale but I love the look, so sue me, perhaps they are titan pods?)
The torpedo things look more like giant speakers which is fun I suppose, perhaps they are blasting devotional tunes to terrify the enemy!
and worst of all the paintjob is, trutfully, a bit messy.
I had problems with this right from the get go.
this one was sadly a bit badly cast, terrible moldlines (unexpected from vanguard), some bits from battlefleet galaxy I wanted to use I couldn't, because they wouldn't fit (launch bays), and dispite how much I scrubbed it in soapy water beforehand the model was so greasy the paint didn't stick and kept coming off. not at the prime stage but at the basecoat stage... gah all the bottom is in a terible state with bare resin showing in the recesses.
you know what its like, once its like that after priming, its too late...
I haven't had trouble like this with painting since I cant remember.
I stopped and left it a couple of days to harden up a bit and to cool my jets some and came at it again today.
But this shitty experiance has left me somewhat jaded and in the end, I wanted it finished more than I wanted to do it.
I knew I'd feel the same if I came back to it yet later again so I just busted it out and this is the result...
shame but you've all been there I'm sure. once you're done with something, or moved on to better or different things that take your interest, its hard to go back to it...
hopefully I'll get my mojo back to paint the last two ships of Artemis I have planned...
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oday I did a couple of classic mars pattern cobras (recasts) for Battlegroup Artemis.
Gifted by a kind soul, the engines were totalled in the recasting method, nothing some clippers and some styrene rod couldn't fix...
The colourscheme fits just as well on these as it does the zeus cobras!
It also makes me realise just how sleek the original cobras are, well against the apparrent chonk of the zeus ones anyway!
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So, I figured, I've got two cruisers and two light cruisers in Artemis so far.
I've already picked an Exorcist Grand cruiser for an upcoming addition, but I've still the option to pick either another Grand or a battlecruiser...
Overlord says I!
The 'Nemesis III' Built from the hulk of the 'Ultimus Umbra' a prior Overlord class from battlegroup Devastatus who's foolhardy and ever gung-ho captain neglected the range of the batteries and lances, taking her into a suicidal death charge into the heart of the enemy in a fit of pique, resulting in the absoulte destruction of all engineering decks and engines, the bridge was anihilated by bombing runs and the prow reduced to a smoking crater... chump...
still, never ones to waste anything, the Imperium's techpriests gathered the hulk and rebuilt the ship around the surprisingly resilienent and therefore fully intact weapons decks.
once completed she was sent to reinforce battlegroup Artemis' patrols and aptly named; the 'Nemesis III', after a sister overlord from battlegroup 'classico' that itself bears the name of its predecessor, thus continuing the illustrious legacy of the Overlord class.
Look, anyone who knows me knows I love an overlord class. This one is indeed made from my old "Ultimus Umbra" from my other voss fleet.
This time around, She's sporting engines from a battleship, rear plates are from battlefleet galaxy, mounted on inverted and cut down lance decks. (you cant see those, but they're there).
The resultant gap from not having regular wings was filled either side with the eagles cut from bolt-rifles.
The bridge is chaos battleship and, I felt, matched the zeus/armageddon no-nonsense style nicely and for a bit of 'chonk' I chose the vanguard panthera lances. I feel this better reflects the power of them in game.
As mentioned, the batteries were recovered from the other overlord mini, these were the MangoZac blackship conversion kit batteries. A suitable peice to sell the power and range the overlord can bring to bear. Just as my dominator has many smaller guns to suggest shot range but high power, these suggest at both range AND power! If I had them I would have used battlebarge batteries, however, these fit the bill just as well. They're clearly based on them, right?
The prow is a simple voss from the zeus line, however Its 'blended' to the hull with a couple of strips of plasticard rod (also a nice visual refence to the dominator) for a bit of extra chunk.
To take the conversion to the end, I chose to carve out the original eagle head and replace it with the old marneus calgar backpack eagle, green-stuffing the resultant joins.
This was chosen for twofold reasons, its a nice reference to the jes goodwin concept prows he made (see chris smart's battleship conversion in the rulebook), and the second reason is that the first ever 'Nemesis' overlord I did had a converted plastic imperial prow with this eagle modelled on it! (that ship now has a converted kardunaish prow and battlebarge batteries and is thusly called nemesis II)
All in all, I'm dead happy with this ship. It has all the chunk a battlecruiser should have.
I've used more blue on this ship too, around the bridge and the dorsal lances, to help mark its status some more.
I've also tried to tie in elements of all the other cruisers using the colours too, the blue steel and black on the rudderplates for example.
I like my battlecruisers to be oviously bigger and chunkier where possible. Absolutely no ambiguity here. The massive weapons, standout lances and massive engines make it look like a pocket battleship, which I suppose it is; baby retribution!
Its scary looking, and will probably get a lot of hits right off the bat because of it, but the rule of cool comes first, right?
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bit of a deviation from the usual ships you've seen in battlegroup Artemis so far, consider it a practice run for an upcoming vessel...
"Crius" - carnage class reserve ship.
Dragged out of mothballs to join the ranks of battlegtoup Artemis, Crius was previously stuck on escort duty of transport and supply details, operating out of the local systems.
However, needs must and all available vessels are now being called for active service in the sector to repel the foe...
Yeah, I wanted to see what a regular chaos ship would look like in Artemis colours...
Compared to modern prints/casts, the details are a little soft, making what I wanted to achive a little, lets say; "fuzzy".
This was never an issue with my nurgle fleet because they were deliberately scummy.
Lives and learns I guess...
Added details are the half-bead dome on the bridge to represent the Imperial bridge design and the midships domes where the lances/aerials would go.
The rearmost being a battlefleet galaxy component, the fore another half-bead.
Just a little something to make it feel more imperial and less chaotic...
nothing special by any means.
Just an old ship past retirement, begrudgingly back in the thick of it...
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Some fighters today...
thanks to malika for the stl/designs and LordBorak for printing them for me.
I got me some 20mm square bases, drilled them and fitted the squadron, properly.
Not sure if I'll do more marker sized bases or do them induvidually on the copper stands, you know, the way I normally do?
