Yes they did,
IMHO the only one worth looking at is the Apocalypse battleship.
Not only does it look good but it works too, and the rule by which you can boost the range but drain the engines by doing so is a workable trade off which makes the vessel interesting.
The light cruisers are fugly and largely redundant, in order to make a form of cruiser that took only one pallet a side they made a wafer thin ship with a huge plate for a pallet with an eagle motif behind. This looks stupid as the ship becomes noticably more massive if it had the lances, about tripled its width
IIRC. Also the idea of having a weapons mount jammed full of shooty goodness, then a thin decorative plate immediately aft it just didn't work, it also looked stupid.
However whether it looks good is eye of the beholder and all that so let me tell you about what they can do.
The three ships of the class are slower than a Dauntless, moving at 20cm they are no faster, though admittedly more agile than standard cruisers, this is a problem, while they have one more turret they also cost 10pts more base than the Dauntless. So far a fair enough trade of 5cm speed and 10pts for a turret. I can see that turret being useful. However Dauntless are fast, Dauntless are very good at covering the weakpoint of an Imperial line, massed frontal firepower. They are designed to fire on the attack run, not turn broadside. The Endeavour class however is a broadside line fighter, sure that is more survivable than a prow on light cruiser but its no different from what Lunars do, and at a cost of three for two Lunars do it better.
The default is the Endeavour class it has a dribble of prow firepower, two short range wide arc batteries and two torpedos. Two torpedoes is not going to frighten anyone, unless they are boarding trops, which they cannot get or can conceivably be massed into attack swarms which is not feasible either. The only upside is that the wide arcs mean you can have a side firing battery 8, but for 120pts that is not impressive. Give me back my three lances.
Now the Endurance, the lance pallet variant is a better ship. Having an array of lance broadsides on a small package can be useful indeed, but for every Endurance you take you must take at least one Endeavour, so its back to Lunars again.
The third option the Defiant has attack craft pay pallets, this costs 130pts and would be worthwhile even though it loses the torpedoes into the bargain, but its no faster than any other carrier, so it is no better suited as support for an escort flottilla than a Dictator, the Dictator is also a very good design, being one of the only ships capable of challenging in its own weight class alone as the combination of torpedoes and bombers bypasses shields and overloads defences. Sorry Dictator every time.
I might have given the ships a chance if they were less fugly, but the combination of fugly and worthless robs them of any value.
GW was selling them, but dont anymore and Forgeworld has not taken them up.
The AdMech fleet did a much better job of designing up one pallet light cruisers:
You could buy some of those for Endeavour class, file off the Mechanicus symbols and use them as is, but for the same money you could buy plastic cruiser pairs or a Dauntless for less. Both cut out the nonsense.
One bastard stepchild of the Armagedon fleet designs remains, the Falchion escort:
You can buy them from
GW if you like, but Swords and Cobras are the same price. Note I did notice that Cobras are now sold in threes not fours. Falchions are fugly little ships, the side profile is all you see because they are ridiculously flat when compared to other Imperial escorts, it looks to me the model was made from a one up master made of plasticard with as bit of green stuff on each side.
Well in case you still like them lets look at what they do. They cost 35pts and have the same defensive profile as a standard Imperial frigate, except they have one turret rather than two, thus so far they are just flat Swords excepting the increased vulnerability to ordnance, which is not good. Now they have three batteries for the Swords four and a torpedo. Now a torpedo is worth more thn a battery point but not here it is not.
Let us ignore the turret for the moment, if it was just the exchange of the torpedo for the firepower battery I would still say no. You have not enough firepower to be worth thinking about reload ordnance, even en-masse Falchions will not shoot out anything worth bothering installing the launch tubes for. Swords on the other hand are focused, and the extra point of firepower mounts up. Sorry buy Swords and Cobras seperately, both are good ships, avoid the hybrid.
Finally we come to the Grand Cruisers, these appered before Armageddon list and while in the list are not proper armageddon fleet ships. Still I will describe thme for you. By and large they are not bad being points efficient powerhouses, imperials get three classes Chaos get three, this includes the Vengeance class which they both share. Of the three available to you the Vengeance itself is the best, as it has a long range firepower which is much needed. The Avenger has 16 firepower but only 30 range, this is a poor trade off alowing for the lack of an armoured prow and torpedoes. The Exorcist is a good challenger to the Dictator, but price and overall firepower is largely comperable and the Dictator profits massively from the inclusion of the armoured prow and both torpedo and attack craft ordnance.
As to whether you like ther looks, that is up to you, but it will cost as much to buy as an imperial battleship, and any of the three battleships available will be a better model and a better ship.
