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I'm possibly hanging up my Orks for some time after three showings in a row at Adepticon. I needed a new fleet and was looking to make the hardest Imperial or Chaos list that I could.

I figured I would post a blog here on Dakka to show how easy/cheap/fast it is to get into this awesome game. This blog will include the purchase, construction, and painting of a full 1500 pt fleet. Keep in mind, to really get into playing, you dont even need 1500 pts. Beginners can have some really fun/nice battles at much less then that. 1000pts is SO EASY to come up with both in time and monetarily. If your gaming group doesnt try this game after the ease in which you can get started...you're really robbing yourselves of some fantastic gaming. All of the published rules can of course be found right here for free....
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?community=&catId=cat410008&categoryId=1100014&aId=4300022

...yes, GW will give you for free what I spent tons of money on...back in the day!

With all that out of the way..on to the battlefleet!

After some discussion on Warseer (yea yea, I know "Warseer", Their Gothic section has some pretty great regulars however) I decided to go with a rather hard list posted by one of the regulars there...Volandum. He suggested some really nice lists that would/should do well in a tournement atmosphere rife with eldar players but with a smattering of everything. One of the lists that came up was featuring the battleship that I've always liked due to its lack of actually ever being used. The thread in question is here, its actually a really good read when you consider particular fleets in a tournement atmosphere. http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196900

Here is the fleet:

Chaos Warmaster (ld 8) Mark of Tzeench

Desolator Class Battleship
Ascheron Class Heavy Cruiser
Ascheron Class Heavy Cruiser
Carnage Class Cruiser
Carnage Class Cruiser
Devestation Class Cruiser
Devestation Class Cruiser

=1500pts exactly

Basically, this seems like a traditional take all comers fleet with heavy emphasis on long range firepower. 60cm lances throughout the fleet will be devestating if the fleet is basically abeam of the enemy and "locked on" and long range weapons batteries keep eldar players off of you. A touch of ordinance will keep carrier fleets honest, especially after the prejudicial targetting of their carriers.

Its not an "up in your face" fleet, but a tactical warfleet that poses a very tough problem for just about any enemy. In my opinion, its also a PERFECT example of a fleet that is ready for tournement play. With the proper practice, I see very few weak spots here to exploit.

So, after deciding on this warfleet, I went on to my FLGS to order the fleet. As gothic is rather hard to come by these days, I knew that they would have to order the peices in a special bits order to GW. No problem, this takes my FLGS about a week or two to produce the models.

I would need the battleship at $35 and 3 cruiser packs at $15 apeice. Plastic cruisers come two to a box for 15 bucks and that is what really makes chaos or imperials the fleet of choice for beginners. They are the easiest fleets to get used to the game with, and the cost winds up being something you could do as an afterthought along with your regular 40k or fantasy fix.

80 dollars total for a tournement ready fleet. Figure in a 10 percent discount that I get at my store for being part of the club and you're looking at being fully ready to play the game with no proxies for less than 100 bucks....unusual for a GW game, huh?

Well, the models just came in yesterday. I plan on picking up the entire slew of models on Monday. I'll continue my blog at that time. I'll keep you guys posted!

Awesome. Battlefleet: Gothic is one of my favorite GW games (if not my favorite). I'm looking forward to seeing how this blog goes!

Sweet! I too agree that BFG is amazing for it's ability to get you completely ready to go to a 1000pt game for less than $100. Guess I'll have to get off of my butt and start the BFG blog that I've been meaning to start myself.....

It sounds like you pretty much get all of your stuff straight from GW - nobody else sells SG stuff?

And how big is the BFG scene ATM?

O.k.....and we're off!

Went in on Friday to my FLGS. I was expecting my discount of 10%. However, I failed to remember that any Gothic order from GW is a "bits" order for my FLGS. This makes it harder for me to get a discount. All I was able to manage was a small discount of 5%, still better than nothing.

To make matters worse, in the time between the time I ordered the Fleet, and the time it got to the store, Cruisers got hit with a price increase. Cruisers are now $17.00 per box instead of $15. This upset me a bit, and I was about to start downtalking the store manager, but I realised it was sort of quibbling over nothing (six dollars) and decided it wasnt worth the trouble.

Total cost of the fleet....$86 (or 85 and change). Still, not bad for a fully tournement ready fleet. Easy enough to build up over time if you have to.



Anyway, I thought ahead and brought my toolz with me so that I'd be able to put the fleet together while I hung out at the store for a couple of hours. Shooting the breeze for about 3 hours, then watching a pair of friends of mine play a Tau Vs. Blood Angel 40k game (no batrep sorry, but the Angels whooped that tail) for another 2 hours resulted in this....



All models put together. While this was sitting on the table, it INSTANTLY generated some gothic interest in the store once again. So, if we keep our fingers crossed I may be even able to provide a batrep in the very near future (hopefully this weekend) to my blog here.

I had planned on getting the fleet basecoated this weekend, but the GF rather got in the way with some car troubles and some other *ah-hem* "activities" SO, I havent gotten any more work done. I DID manage to prime them tonight....



....and more importantly, I've figured out a paint scheme for them. I've been wanting to go with a scheme thats a bit more realistic. Not a Khorne fleet with the traditional "red" thats in the rulebook. I also didnt think that a blue/yellow color scheme would go very well due to the fact that only my Battleship is carrying anything with a mark. I decided to go with a realistic look. Originally, I had planned to go with the Haze-Grey look of Navy ships, Starship Enterprise, or even a Star Destroyer. That seemed a little boring and not sinister enough however.

I still didnt have to look much further than Star Trek still however in order to find a paint scheme that would work for my chaos.



....sinister enough? Realistic looking enough? I think so.

Right now the plan is to paint the fore and aft hull areas with a watered down Green Ink over the grey primer. After which I plan on hitting everything else with lighter shades of drybrushed grey highlighting up to white....but still trying to maintain a dark tone. Of course some bits will be boltgun metal...guns, antennae...and then I'll throw some dark orange in there for some good measure.

Any suggestions on a better way to accomplish this color scheme would be greatly appreciated. I'm a fairly good painter but I havent tryed anything like this paint scheme before so I'm in some uncharted territory. In fact, before I've got time to actually do any painting (probably this weekend) I may post that 'Trek picture in the modelling section and get some tips.


....more to come soon.

That's actually an awesome inspiration for a BFG paint scheme. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I haven't really attempted anything like that either on any ships, so I don't really have much advice. :(

Maybe look up some of Malfred's Warmachine models with the verdigris effect on it though, that might be somewhat in a similar direction.

Oh, and do cross-post this stuff in the modeling or P&M blogs section!

When you're done, it might be cool to make it into an army profile article too!

Looking forward to seeing more!

Hordini wrote:
When you're done, it might be cool to make it into an army profile article too!

I was actually thinking that exact thing....I'll prolly have to put it in the 40k armies section however. Far as I know there isnt a Gothic "army" profile section.

You can just make a Battlefleet: Gothic Fleet Profile section!

If you need help, I'm sure the article mods would be willing to help. I'm not really an expert on the article system, but I'm willing to help out too if you need it.

I really ought to make a Flames of War section and put a profile together for some of my stuff. Maybe in the fall I'll try to do a BFG Fleet Profile as well.

It's been a minute since my last update. I've got a pretty good one today I guess.

Tuesday I felt like getting my "Gothic" on, it was rather an off day to try and get someone to play...especially at such short notice. What I decided to do is to take my Chaos fleet and playtest it against my Adepticon winning Ork fleet that took best Admiral this year. It was a serious fight so I'm really glad I did it.

I've gotten a touch of painting done in the time since my last update, before the battle report starts proper, here's my fleet after being basecoated with green ink wash, drybrushed goblin green, with a lighter drybrush of Goblin and some fortress grey equivalant from Vallejo. The tail sections of the battleships were painted with a blasing orange from vallejo, and drybrushed first with fiery orange, then sunburst yellow.

Once all of the tail sections are finished, hopefully this week, I'll get started on the actual 'detail' work.

(note: I've noticed this morning that the pictures are rather poor. Probably due to the poor lighting and flash combo in the LGS, they're still serviceable though)



Again, this fleet consists of:

Tzeench Warlord (ld8)

Desolator Battleship
Ascheron
Ascheron
Carnage
Carnage
Devestation
Devestation
=1500

AND IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE THE THREE TIME CHAMPIONS.....



Waagghh of "Da Notoryus O.R.K."

Warlord-Extra Powerfields (on BB)
Warlord-Mega Armoured Boarding Parties (On KK)
Warlord-Mega Armoured Boarding Parties (On KK)

Dethdeala Battleship (BB)
Kill Kroozer w/Prow Torpedoes
Kill Kroozer w/Prow Torpedoes
Terror Ship w/Prow Torpedoes
Terror Ship w/Prow Torpedoes
Terror Ship w/Prow Torpedoes
Terror Ship w/Prow Torpedoes

The bat-rep will include many pics....I'll be working on it throughout the day for my next post...

TO BE CONTINUED.....

I like the color scheme. The orange is a bit harsh, though that may just be the camera. If not, a little ink should tone it down fine.

Off Topic: I really dislike that Ork battleship model. The Kroozer and escort models look ramshackle and gritty, and the battleship kits just look cartoony.

I decided to run a standard "Victory Points" battle with randomly determined terrain as instructed in the BFG rulebook. The table wound up with a couple of asteroid feilds in the corners on one side, a small planet in the corner on the other and a large long gas cloud in the middle on that side. (represented by the upside-down and white blast markers)

Orks got to choose the side and chose the side with the Asteroids so that the Chaos ships wouldnt be able to hide within them from the Ork assault. They also decided to start in the middle so that the faster Chaos fleet wouldnt be able to take advantage of the long table board.

Chaos was fine with this and deployed to make early game use of the gas cloud as cover from possible long range WB shots by the orks. The plan was for the chaos fleet to hopefully circle the orks and get away from their boarding action....meanwhile blasting away with long range lances and fending off the huge ordinance threat of the orks with their own minor Ordinance ability.

In Hindsight, I realised that both fleets probably should have spread out a bit more. Both fleets so that exploding ships didnt effect closeby neighbors, and the orks so that their torpedo spreads would've been larger. I may try this again soon though, so we'll see if that was a mistake or not at some later date.


Pic of the board before first turn is rolled:


The orks won the roll to go first but defered to the Chaos fleet so that if the game went the distance...they would lose a turn of fire...didnt really matter in the end however.

TURN 1

Chaos fleet moves at minimal speeds in order to take cover behind the dust cloud. No special orders taken due to being out of range of the Ork Fleet. Fighters Launched for defence against ork first wave of ordinance.

Entire Ork fleet moves AAF. Battleship moves furthest easily taking the lead with its 'Soopa-engines' moving 36cm, a motivated KK is close behind at 31 cm. Ork fleet is rather angled to meet with the chaos fleet just on the other side of the dust cloud where the chaos fleet is headed. Orks launch a full spread of ordinance including 4 decent sized (all between 5 and 8) waves of torpedoes, and 18 Fighta-Bommas in several waves. The chaos fighters are actually able to somehow reach a wave of fighta-bommaz and are also able to stop all of the torpedoes.

Turn 1 ends looking like this:


TURN 2

Chaos fleet ALL lock on with the exception of the Devs who reload ordinance. I test the distance with the squadroned Carnages shooting at the lead ship...the battleship. The battleship is just out of the 60cm range of the Carnages. This shows me that my fleet is still out of range. My Chaos armada decides to fire locked on Lances at the waves of fighta-bomma's coming in instead with decent results. 4 waves of 4 are shot down. My devs launch their fighters and the remainder of the ork first wave of bombers moves in.



Ork fleet moves up again AAF except for the Squadron of Terror Ships which successfully reload. BB tear-asses forward again at 37cm extending its lead....however, I'm noticing that I will at this point miss the fleet if it decides to speed up (and of course it will in order to not be boarded) going AAF was fine, but this chaos fleet is designed to fight by circling the enemy, and has the speed to avoid this sort of attack. It's going to be a tough fight for the orks here on out.

Regardless, the fleet launches its ordiance again. Two waves of torpedoes, and 16 more bombers. Chaos fighters intercept. End of ork turn.



TURN 3

FIRE DISRUPTORS...er...LANCES!

Of course the chaos fleet sees what it needs to do in order to avoid the Ork boarding actions. It speeds up its pace...between the distance/angle/dust cloud, the battleship will now miss the fleet...which can stay ahead of the slow behemoth while it changes course. The Mega-Armoured KK's still pose a boarding threat however, time to do something about that.

Fleet locks on again except for the devs which again reload. Battleship and Single Ascheron open up on KK doing 5pts of damage Weapons batteries at oncoming ordinance. KK finally decides to brace after Second Ascheron targets it. 1 more point of damage and Port weapons critical. Fleet changes targets. Carnages take out another wave of ordinance and devs fire at second oncoming KK. 1 pt of damage, but more importantly...a blast marker to slow it down by 5cm.

During ordinance Phase, the remainder of ork ordinance is removed by 4 fighters. 2 fighters escort BB, 1 fighter escort on each Dev.



This is definatly going to be a problem. Dethdeala is indeed going to come up short. Dust Cloud slows it. Uncrippled KK moves AAF but rolls poorly. Deathdeala Reloads, Terrors Reload.

Ork shooting drops the sheilds of the Chaos BB and does a couple points of damage...no criticals

Ork Ordiance phase does 2 more points to the BB, and 3 points to forward devestation. Neither braces for impact. (I'm not afraid to take damage on ships)

In effect, turn 3 wound up being a draw as far as "points inflicted", the orks did a little more against chaos sheilds, but the chaos took out some ordinance with shooting....interesting turn. Its about to get real bloody though...Knife fighting range.



TURN 4

CONCENTRATE ALL FIRE ON THE CARRIERS...DESTROY THEM!!

Time to inflict some pain. This is a good example of why you should take some chances and not brace all the time. The devs and BB were hit with some serious fire and torpedoes....and survived at over 50% hits. They are still free to inflict pain, and the chaos fleet indeed does so this turn.

Entire fleet unleashes into the Terror ship squadron after again, Locking on with the exception of the Devs which reload and launch fighters.

Under the irresistable firepower of the chaos fleet, 1 10hp terror ship explodes dropping the shields and inflicting another couple of points of damage to its neighbor. Remainder of the Chaos fleet continues firing after the explosion dropping the next carrier by 5hp total after the explosion...crippling it and causing a fire. Serious blow to the ork ordinance. The squadron cannot brace due to the fact it will need its ordinance on this next turn.



This is one of the instances if not THE instance that the chaos fleet probably should've been more spread out. They got off REALLY light this turn. The entire ork fleet opens up weapons batteries dropping the sheilds of the BB and doing a point or so...not much else. Some really crap shooting results thanx to poorly rolled WB str and wrong angles. The facing of the chaos fleet is a really nice built in defence. The whole fleet reloaded ordinace though and unleashes all of it on the chaos fleet.

BB decides to use its turrets on the bomber waves that are about to hit it...and braces for impact against the 16-18 torpedoes that slam into it. Nine hits...brace...8 Saved. Awesome luck for the BB. Bombers all hit the BB to destroy it. 14 bombers hit the BB but after Turret fire and bracing only a single point is inflicted. BB is now braced, and Crippled at 8 pts of damage in. Torpedo waves hit other elements of the fleet with negligible results. 2pts to a fresh dev, 2 pts to a Carnage, 2pts to one Acheron and a single point to the other.

Fire fails to be put out on the Ork Terror ship bringing it to 6 pts inflicted.



TURN 5

More shooting at the Carriers. The Chaos fleet has completely escaped the threat of an Ork boarding action. Time to extend the escape and gain air superiority if possible.

Reload ordinance...BB is still braced (and crippled). Ascherons detonate the damaged Terror ships engine core, blowing it up. Resulting explosion damages the neighboring terror ships. Three points to one, Four points to another. They still havent braced good thing too. The two remaining Terrors will have to intercept the bombers that the Devs just launched. Time to take the offensive in the ordinance phase.



Reload Ordinance on BB, KK, and Terror Ships. Chaos Desolator Braces once again, but its useless. Ork firepower, torpedoes and bombers hit the fuel cells and the ship explodes. Resultant explosion and residual torpedoes inflict another 3 pts on one Ascheron and 4 on the other...resulting in both of them being crippled at 5pts dam each and 1 braced. One on fire but fire is put out before any damage is inflicted.

Terror ship fighta-bommas take out the two bomber waves coming in.



TURN 6 (I have to speed it up a bit now because I need to go pick up my GF from work)

Unbraced Ascheron locks on and Devs reload. Fleet's firepower winds up having to be split amongst the two Terror Ships. One is now crippled. Devs launch another two waves of Bombers.

Ork Fleet moves forward, again reloading ordinace and doing its best to defend itself AND inflict damage. Crippled KK moves away from the fight so as not to be destroyed. Two bombers squeak by the defenses of the Terror ships and Cripple the other one. Firepower and torpedoes succeed only in inflicting a point and smashing the bridge of one of the Ascherons....which braces before this happens. One large wave of torpedoes is stopped by blast markers.



...and a RUSHED TURN 7

Just wanting to see if Chaos can close the deal here. They do indeed. Reload ordinance. Shooting inflicts 2 more points of damage to one of the crippled terror ships...hulking it. Devs Launch another two bomber waves. (moving to the point where you see in the next picture.

At this point, the Ork Fleet has used up all 3 RR's and finallyl fails its final Reload ordinance check. No ordinance this turn. Also the Chaos fleet is to far to inflict any damage.

Chaos Bombers start their run....Warp core explosion on the working terror ship after all the damage and bracing. 10 Lance hits against the KK result in it being crippled after adding 4pts to the single it took on turn 3. Terror Hulk also explodes.

...and I've gotta pack it in. Orks concede anyway.



Ork BB Fully operational
KK-crippled
KK-crippled
Terror-destroyed
Terror-destroyed
Terror-destroyed
Terror-destroyed

Chaos BB-destroyed
Ascheron-crippled
Ascheron-crippled
Devestation-Minor damage
Devestation-Minor damage
Carnage-fully operational
Carnage-Minor Damage

That was one heck of a fight! My orks probably should've set up their assault during the first turn instead of diving straight into AAF. Also...as I mentioned, both fleets would've benefitted a bit from spreading out.

I think for the most part I ran this pretty good, bracing only when desperatly needed and good target selection. The Chaos fleet came out on top but only after some REALLY good bracing rolls by the BB. I was really afraid that the Chaos fleet would'nt be able to beat the orks but with the combination of speed and being able to present mainly an "abeam" aspect....well...the only offense the Orks were able to throw out there was in the form of ordinance, and while formidable, it just wasnt enough.

All in all I'm really happy with the way that the Chaos Fleet performed. I'll be trying again in the future to get another game in. Perhaps next time against somebody besides myself.

Hope you enjoyed the first Batrep here on my Chaos fleet blog!

Nice report, thanks for writing it!

You're both not really fans of escorts?

BAWTRM wrote:Nice report, thanks for writing it!

You're both not really fans of escorts?

Both fleets are mine, I was playtesting the Chaos fleet against myself.

...and no, I don't like escorts.

Deadshane1 wrote:...and no, I don't like escorts.

Man after my own heart(unless it's a non-CWE fleet, of course).

++ RISE ++

I didn't catch this when it was new, but cool little blog Shane. I run 2 acherons & 2 carnage @ 1500 myself, though the desolator doesn't come out to play until 2000 ... Big fan of the massed lock-on with lances and carnage power-broadsides as well

Of late I've been playing a lot vs my friend's escort-heavy orks, and actually struggling more than against my other friend's cruiser-heavy greenskins. Those little torpedo escorts just tear me apart, delivering such a huge amount of pain but on a harder to hit, 6+ prowed little hull.

Anyway, I'm totally jonesing for more BFG, shouldn't have decided to turn my buddy down today in favor of reading for class

Have there been more chaos exploits since July??

- Salvage

Both fleets are mine, I was playtesting the Chaos fleet against myself.

Phew ! thought i was the only sad git to play with myself, i mean play games with myself, i mean play with my toys......

Deadshane1 wrote:

AND IN THIS CORNER WE HAVE THE THREE TIME CHAMPIONS.....



Waagghh of "Da Notoryus O.R.K."

Love it

orky orky orky
cant you see
you have da gunz to pulverise me
and I just love your flashy waarghs
bringin deff across da stars.

Looking good!
Massive fan of Battlefleet gothic.

Was the hole price of the fleet $86 from GW? Or a private seller?

Steve

I'm guessing GW.

BFG really isn't that that expensive

Time to reactivate this blog.

The Chaos fleet has been packed away for some time due to a family emergency and some other problems. The chaos fleet missed out on Adepticon this year as a result (I havent been able to make any big tourney's this year for 40k OR Gothic...Adepticon being the only Gothic one)

My life at home has somewhat stabilised however. Tonight I'll be breaking out the fleet and assessing any "damage" done in the hasty packing during a house 'move' that the GF and I made. ( Moovin' on up to a dee-luxe apt! )

Finishing the painting of the fleet is the only thing I will have to do to prepare for MECHANICON. Friday at Mechanicon features a 3 game Gothic RTT and is pretty much the entire reason that I'm going to MAKE SURE that I go. I know it seems sort of silly, but Gothic is my favorite game and the RTT is enough to convince me to make the drive from Chesapeake VA up to PA for this GT. Its funny, I'll drop the 125 bucks to play in the two day 40k GT but I'll be seriously exited about the Friday Gothic Tourney.

So, I've got battle damage to assess, and a painting problem to resolve. The bright orange tails on the fleet were indeed TOO bright, and the ships werent looking as good as I'd hoped, so, I tried a brown wash on one of the ships. Now, I dunno if it was because it was only on one ship but the results looked HORRIBLE. Since then I've been using a dipping technique on some catachan infantry I've been painting. I'm going to see if I can save the models using that technique of painting.

Anyway, this thread is hereby reactivated. Possibly playing a game on Tuesday as well! Will take some pics and get back with a report if possible.

Nice to see this back.


Dark Eldar (of all fleets) won Adepticon this year. I guess the scenarios suited them since usually they are a one trick pony (hit hard first turn then disengage to win).

Yea, and if I wind up winning at Mechanicon, Volandum over on Warseer can say that I won with his list!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

horizon wrote:

Dark Eldar (of all fleets) won Adepticon this year. I guess the scenarios suited them since usually they are a one trick pony (hit hard first turn then disengage to win).

What did that fleet look like by the way?

Yay this makes me happy for getting into BFG

Hi Deadshane,
dunno, haven't seen a post about. Perhaps LordGoober at Warseer knows. But I guess Torture cruisers with launch bays

Neat! This was from before I started posting here at Dakka, so it is fun to catch up on. Good luck with your game tomorrow.