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TauAdmiral and I are starting BFG so I was looking for some Imperial advice. I need to split what I have into two relatively equal fleets so we can practice together. Also, what are typical sized games, and what real fleets can I make with what I have at those costs? What can I do with this:
6 Falchon Light Cruisers
2 Space Marine Strike Cruisers
10 Cruisers (2 Tyrant?, 5 Lunar, 2 Dictator?, 1 Retribution)

Go here: Port Maw and Here: Tactical Command: GothiComms

You do not want Falchions, they will make you sad.
You do not want a Retribution, it will make you $35.00 (+tax) sadder.

You do want a Mars.
You do want a pair of Dictators for a large fleet (they have 3 turret hotness).
You do want Tyrants (better than Dominators in my opinion, some would disagree)
You want to pair a Tyrant with a Gothic (as opposed to set of two Lunars)
You want Dauntless(ies) for your light cruisers, they operate well in pairs
Avoid escorts, as Imperial. A good chaos player will just assault-boat them to death.

I own those. I came upon them at a slow-cheap price. I am willing to expand, but I was hoping to do something with these in the meanwhile.

Start by thinking about 1000pts.

Port Maw is good, so is *gasp* Warseer. I have never been to Tactical Command so I can't say anything about it.

If you wanted, you could easily convert a Retribution into an Apocalypse with some extra lances, or with more work and some bits, an Emperor. But then again, it doesn't seem like you have a lot of bits as a result of getting the ships on the used market. Hmmmmm.

Don't bother with the escorts, the Falchions aren't so great. Better off with just the cruisers.

You could make two perfectly playable fleets with what you've got there TBH. I'd say screw it, split the ships in half as equitably as possible, and go from there.

Falchions are the suk.

Now that that's out of my system - Are the cruisers already built? or still on sprues?

If they're already built, like the man said, just split them down the middle and play. Or design whatever fleet you want and use individual cruisers as proxies.

If they are yet to be glued together, Lunars, Dictators, and Tyrants are good, Gothic is a necessity when you build anything with two battery palettes, and I'm not a fan of the Dominator. All the BCs are good.

I'm of the opinion that some escorts, esp Swords, are useful in small quantities, for picketing the flanks and protecting the tailpipes.

Its all already built. But I do have a couple sprues of BFG thingies(?) that I could convert with. My biggest problem right now is (unlike "These guys have lasguns, these guys have meltas and this guy has bp/ccw") I really cannot tell what is what as far as BFG weapons go. Same with whats on the sprues.

The flat-ish piece with the four, square protrusions is a weapons battery. The piece with the jagged shape and two rows of openings is a launch bay. The piece that juts out and has a pair of turrets set on it is a lance battery.

Check the pdf fleetlist at the GW site, and the pictures will let you know what kind of ship looks like what.

Tyrants can be made a Dominator with a nova cannon slapped on.

Five Lunars is a bit overkill, but you got a theme there!