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Hello there !

I am coming to reach out to the Battlefleet Gothic veterans for help on my Imperial list.

Ok so for 1500 pts,

Apocalypse BS
with admiral

Mars with arrays.

Lunar Cruiser
Lunar Cruiser

Gothic Cruiser

6 Sword escorts.

The aim is to have the Apocalypse and gothic cruiser to be the big hitters with their lances. the lunars are there to lead ships into the kill zones with their torpedoes and get stuck into the middle and use their batteries to take the shields off leaving the ships open to a lot of lance fire.
The mars will be a long range support ship, and be the ordinance support.
The sword escorts will be there to get behind the enemy ships and harass them again getting rid of the shields opening the way for the lances.

The 2 nova cannons will be there to try deal some damage whilst closing with the enemy.

What are your thoughts ?

Cheers
Wolf

I'd run more ordnance if I were you, replace one of the cruisers with a Dominator and possibly run Cobras in place of some of the Swords.

You do realise a dominator has no ordinance ? Were you reffering to the Dictator cruiser?

Also how mnay cobras would you suggest, say replace 3 swords for 3 cobras or ?

Alright, I'll try to help out with my (limited) experience of designing a fleet around an apocalypse. The problem is that most people would advise you to go for an emperor class. It does seem to be a very good ship but I really didn't want to have a battleship that had to attack side on as it had no armoured prow.

So, my current 1500 looks something like this:

Apocalypse,
Mars (Extra turret, targetting matrix),
Dictator,
Lunar,
Lunar,
5x Swords,
Fleet-Admiral,
Extra Reroll.

This gets a total of 8 launch bays and 2 nova cannons. I hear (and agree) that around 4 bays and a nova for every 750 is a good guide. I also find that the cheaper admiral with a reroll is better than the +1 ld the better admiral gives. It improves the fleet overall instead of just the one ship, and is 25pts cheaper.

I hate cobras. They seem to do little more than annoy the opponent with some long range fire. If you do go for them you should get a fair few, more of them will have a greater effect.

I am currently wondering if a gothic/tyrant combo would be better than the two lunars. I find that lunars are a bit hard to use, as getting both of them within 15cm for improved fire can be a pain. The tyrant gets a lot of bad press and many people see the dominator as better in every way. However, the dominator can't use all ahead full and shoot its nova, so has to stay near the back. The tyrant can get up close and personal.

Just as a heads up, make sure to have a look at the 2010 faq. It isn't official yet but I have yet to meet someone who hasn't thought it was a good thing to use. Some of the points costs and upgrades have changed, as well as the apocalypse's lock on rule gettting a major boost.

Anyway, I'm glad to help out a new admiral. I recently started the game myself and have learned a lot by asking around.

Brilliant thanks for the help, I was actually considering a tyrant gothic combo having looked at the stats, it does look liek a favourable choice.

Where could one find this FAQ ?

Dominator Gothic is much better.

If you do not want nova cannon on the assault take 2 Lunars (squadroned) instead.

2 Lunars vs 1 Dominator/1 Gothic
is exact same broadsides.

Tyrant has range but is weaker and shoots in the IN 'null' zone of 45cm.

The Dominator has a pro as it only pays 10pts for a Nova Cannon instead of 20pts.

You can find the faq here:
http://tinyurl.com/23nul8q

So Horizon are you suggesting that I drop the gothic and replace it with Dictator or ?


And thanks for the faq location, it clears so much up it's unreal !

I'd go with your original list.

It is almost identical like my Imperial Navy (latest fleet in my collection, have yet to play with them).

Here it is:

Apocalypse
Dictator
2x Lunar
Dominator (reserve)
2xSword+1xFirestorm
3x Cobra
3x Cobra
fleet admiral + rr

The fleet was dictated by the fact it was a great deal to buy. Thus I needed a place for all escorts. The battleship I decided as I prefer gunnery, the Retribution is too common (lol, 3 players in this thread with an Apocalypse haha).

That's a very nice looking list you have there I would love to see battle reports or performance reports once it gets put into action

I prefer the aesthetics of the Apocalypse as well as it'#s weapons load outs, sure they're only range 30cm byt with most other cruisers in that range it becomes a deadly force to be reconned with.

And I'll tick to my original then ! I'm very excitred to give it a try and see how it performs !

Well, Lock-On and your Apoclypse shoots as far as 60cm.
Read faq2010 closely, the Apoclypse will only take the thrusters critical hit above 45cm and no hit from it.

Make sure to talk about faq2010/drafts with your opponents beforehand to make sure they'll accept it.

My Apoclypse is in base the Retribution model. So a sleep prow. Looks good.

Yeah I noticed that, that seems a balance alternative to just taking a point of damage regardless.

Do you happen to have any pitures of this conversion ? I have yet to see one with lance batteries fitted.

horizon wrote:My Apoclypse is in base the Retribution model. So a sleep prow. Looks good.

I did the exact same thing, it does look good. A bit of greenstuff for the torpedo tubes and replace half of the prow ram with a nova cannon and it is an easy conversion.

The problem that I have with the dominator is it really wants to be going all ahead full to use the broadsides but then it can't use the nova. I would probably pay 190pts for a dominator with torpedoes, I feel that it would work very well. Two lunars has the same firepower as a dom/goth but it is harder to get both lunars within 15cm for the column shift.

Trickstick would it be possible for you to get me a photo ? I'm trying to decide if I want to do that or not.

Cheers

Unfortunately I can't take pictures at the moment. However, I did find a picture similar to my ship on the net:



I used the other winged statue it came with (the saintly one) and did the nova cannon slightly differently, as I merged it with the retribution's ram to make it look a bit beefier. I also angled the lance turrets forward a bit to make it look a bit less static.

I would say that it is a good conversion idea. The apocalypse model is nice but I feel that the top side of the prow is too big and flat. Also, I believe that it lacks the huge winged statue, which makes the ship really stand out when painted gold. In fact, you get two in the retribution kit and I gave the other one to a mars class that is often my flagship.

Ah thanks ! Hm I'm not sure if I prefer the original model or this one.

The battleships can be a bit of a pain to assemble compared to the smaller ships. Plastic cruisers are easy and the escorts and light cruisers are fine. The battleships are not so bad once you get the two main hull sections and the wing together, but getting those straight can take some effort. There is a join behind the 3rd weapon bay that is important to get right, or the model can look bent.

The original model is very nice and it really just comes down to personal preference. I would find some alternate pictures of both models before deciding, the ones on the GW site are good but some parts of their design are not readily apparent. This image show the front from a different angle, although they have added an extra antenna and a ram:

I like the voss prows. As a matter of fact the conversion prize in this years gothicomp are 5 voss prows for Imperial cruiser.