OSJClatchfords bfg stuff.

[osjclatchford]

thanks Malika, those escorts are my favourites too!

more stuff:

no not a giant plumb! its a new (well new to me anyhow) idea I had of doing planets: simply a beechwood orb that has been sanded and polished to a decent satin finish and has been inked with magenta ink (30/70 ink to water). no special painting skill or swirls, just one even coat all over. this way the grain and natural form of the wood creates the gas giant/atmosphere effect for you as it dries. or in this case at only just over 2.5" a not so giant gas planet... also, if you try this yourselves, remember that it lightens up exponentially as it dries out... I used beech as thats what i had knocking about but i'd suggest pine truth be told.

and some more for battlefleet armageddon:

the "eternal vigilance" dominator class (as seen on my wip thread) gets a new prow and a paint job


and this very classic looking endeavour light cruiser the 'excelsior" is actually a shapeways wsf 3d print from the mind of admgr. the texture is horrid but as it was bought as a gift I shan't complain too much. a difference of nigh on £40 when comparing wsf to fud mediums is to expect a drop in quality too... still its a nice piece of bfg history (where else would you get one of these original style ships eh?) but doesn't hold a candle to the zeus in my opinion...

here's a (blurry) groupshot for comparisons...

*edit*
oh and here is a new side project:

worth pursuing more? (finally finding the macro setting on the damn camera, plus a space shot on a magazine as agood backdrop makes all the difference eh? LOL)

[mangozac]

[Islacrusez]

Loving that planet personally. Good scenery isn't seen too often. Pun may have been intended.

[osjclatchford]

[osjclatchford]

A bit more stuff from shapeways again this time. this time by the talented Junith. with his take on the voss escort 'falchion', the 'schimitar' frigate. very faithful to the original technical drawings and as such superior to the similar but short-lived gw white metal falchions which were rather wobbly and full of technical errors. these are clean crisp and detailed print and go well with plastic, metal and resin models.
I have seen first hand in both wsf and then fud. wsf is ok for those not as bothered by the level of detail that we all crave here, mind. I strongly recomend fud. as the pictures (sporting battlegroup Armageddon livery) show.


the detail is pretty good actually...

'kin expensive for what it is though. you'd have to really want something specific to go for it. I also should mention that the frosted ultra detail (fud) medium is sometimes filled with an oily by-product that can be a bast to get rid of it is leaking from anywhere on the model as one of these were from the stand entry hole. cowson to sort out...

[osjclatchford]

OK. finally got round to finishing (and as such even starting!) my zeus lunar class:
the aggamemnon.
the detail of this model is simply a dream to paint. Zac's work with Armand is combined in such a way that compliments the skill and design elements of both designers in a way that looks cohesive and neat. I especially love the ball and socket variation on the lance turrets (a logical design evolution no?) an overlooked feature that gw would kick themselves for missing (if they even had the sense or inclination to continue and appreciate the merits of the bfg range).
I was rather pleased with the final job and decided to give it a black prow with a stripe on the area that looks a bit like a shield. very knightly

anyhow. with this done I decided to add more to my Battlegroup Armageddon fleet. so far we have the dominator, three endeavours and a defiant (I swapped the weapons out for launch bays on the shapeways light cruiser, needed some carrier support and I felt I had enough gunboat light cruisers with the three endeavours) a bunch of varying escorts and now a lunar. I wanted something big and chunky as a flagship but didn't fancy a battleship. yeah they are great to paint and model but I just don't feel they match my play-style I'm much more in favour of the cruiser and reams of escorts type scenarios that allow me to keep up with eldar fleets ( as well as I can anyhow) plus trying to get hold of one that I can afford without getting out a mortgage is like trying to find rockin-horse-sh*t these days.
I was going to do a mars class but found I was finally actually out of cruiser sprues (very sad). Instead I decided to recommission and old ship of mine that I created way back in the first days of bfg. a gothic class called the d'sparilius.
I had originally converted its prow to feature the old metal "master of the ravenwing" winged hooded angel (a suitable D'sparil if ever I saw one) it did NOT look good and as such had to go. however I simply recreated the effect of this with a voss/zeus prow and a recast of the little d'sparil in p38 (minus its wings) and put that on the prow in place of the eaglehead:

further additons included comms relay stations on the dorsal (made of those aerial thingys from battle for maccragge set) and battlebarge engines for extra chunkyness. yes its just a gothic class in game but on the table it certainly has some gravitas. here it is next to the aggamemnon:


I added the red to denote its flagship status and simply because variety is nice!

Its not all I've been up to. the observant among you may have noticed that the images now feaure a rather lovely space backdrop. this is actually a 2' x 1' mousepad ()

perfect excuse to grab some nice shots of other things bfg I've done or been doing recently:
here is a new ship added to my rogue trader flotilla. the ardias. this zeus based endurance class has a p38 kar-dunaish prow that makes it fit in a treat with my previous kar dunaish conversion the kashmir.
this niccassar dhow is also a part of that fleet. note the tau-installed railguns are picked out in yellow. yes even telekinetic space-bears are tolerated by my roguetrader!

the thunderchild. the astartes strike cruiser has had a strip and a repaint in red (blood angels livery) as the previous yellow job was piss poor to my honest opinion. much better now and the first red ship I've ever actually painted!



I also repainted the astartes escort from yellow to fit in with my custom mars class inquisitorial blackship: the twighlight blade. that deserved a better image too so here they both are!
the blackship is also a rcommission of an old ship of mine the draconis (sadly destroyed in fleet-action against and old adversary of mine; henreticus the dark chaos lord aka crash commander) this conversion was an obvious attempt to blend aspects of the chaos, astartes and imperial cruisers together to create something that looked greater than the sum of its parts. others have claimed that I have simply stolen the idea from the chaos/imperial grand cruiser released bw gw some time ago but as I'm fond of reminding them, I made the core of this conversion back before those were even released! my later work was simply the new bridge and prow to denote its inquisitorial status. the ship works better thusly as the combination of imperial and chaotic parts give the ship a real impression of menace. a dark ship of unknown origin, bristling with weaponry and a suggestion of possible divided loyalties...
this is also a great method of adding a mars class to whatever imperial fleet I choose to play with without having to worry about matching colourschemes! LOL

a heavily mined asteroid field, heavily inspired by bfg rulebook art (chaos spikeysprue chains to the rescue!)

oh and here are some dirty old transports from the yellow-line trucking company coming into orbit around a small planet.

hope you enjoyed these. more soon(ish)
c and c welcome but please nothing to do with the quality (or lack of it) of the photography I'm aware I'm no photographer and have no intention of becoming so.

oh and for those in the wonder of who or what the hell a D'sparil is when its at home: yes I was (and still am) obsessed with doom heretic hexen quake and all things nineties fps! LOL

oh and those unclear on the references to p38: great cheap alternative to most resins when casting from silicon molds... probably considered heresy by those who do proffesional casting I know but its just my preferred medium when it comes to casting...

[osjclatchford]

I decided to repaint the helion ship to match the 'sacred duty' (voss lunar class) I di previously: I think its much nicer now, showing off the details of the model more. this colourscheme just seems to suit it more...
You cant see it here but the engine decks (the bits that look like a huge air intake) are done in bronze with verdigris effect. maybe a better shot including the escorts soon.

what say you?

[osjclatchford]

maybe it was the damp in the fireplace, the mould on the bread in the kitchen or the nasty virus's going around but I have felt the filthy touch of grandfather nurgle prodding at my with a dirty rotten skeletal digit and I've not even bothered to resist!



behold 'the scumnatus' a murder class nurgle cruiser and the first of my descent into chaos.
as you can see its rather heavily converted with a battleship bridge, horned prow and added filth rot and decay modeled on. a suitable filthy colourscheme of greeny browns and lots of weathering including drill damage to create a woodworm/decay effect, flock, varnishes and copious washes to create the look I was going for.
I hoped this would satisfy the great unclean one and that I could recant from such heresy and return to the imperium before I started to rot away...
but I immediately craved more. and more of a design challenge too.
I fancied a daemonship conversion coming on. it needed to look nasty. like it was made of flesh, bone, steel, corruption and death. I chose a styx class as the base as the one I had got hold of had been constructed wrong with missmatched launch bay configuration, making it look all wonky and lopsided. perfect for a filthy child of nurgles touch...
let the conversion begin:


It features a lot of the same effects as the murder class above but also includes tentacles and bits from a carnifex. and also the ribcage and spinal parts from and old undead horse. the idea behind this was not to show a ship with deamon bits on it. I wanted this to show that this is the deamon inside the ship, bursting its way out of the very hull itself. the front end also has an odd beak/spike ram made from a tyranid shoulder pad. this to me has created a great effect. it looks like an odd symbiosis of an undead carrion-corvid skull and also a lot like an old fashioned plague mask. both visions ideal for nurgle plague ships!
heres the two together. I can just imagine hoards of fighters and dreadclaws swarming out of the styx class like bloated flies around a rotting carcass... lovely imigary eh?

and before I got labeled excommunicatus I had a thorough shower and got to work on this:


the lumos astra - greyknights strikecruiser from admgr on shapeways. a very faithful 3dprint is it not?

more nurgle soon I feel though

[osjclatchford]

ok gave the moon a second go:

why? well the first attempt looked daft. too many craters not enough surface. just silly. this is much better imho and at an inch and a half (as opposed to the usual 2" that moons tend to be in bfg) It doesn't look too big against smaller planets either. again, as before, this was miliput on a plastic cat toy ball as a base...

talking of planets I reworked another 3.5" wooden ball (last one this size was the crater planetoid/large moon on page 1) into a watery looking venus-esque sorta vibe world:
and here it is with some models:

a good excuse to show off the helion escorts I had recently repainted...

then its time to bring out the big-boy!

sorry if it appears sideways, mediafire is doing that for some reason...
a jupiter inspired green gas giant. this is pretty big, 8" actually, and as such is not wooden but is a plastic light fitting globe. here it is with one of my converted sword class frigates for an easier size comparison:


this was fun. fyi sponges make great tools for the cloud (on the blue planet) and an 1/2" brush was used to make the rings on the gas giant...

[horizon]

Some serious good stuff in this thread. Keep it up!

[osjclatchford]

many thanks horizon! heres some more:

I finally got round to getting a passable group/montage shot of my fleet as-is at present...
its bound to get bigger...

[osjclatchford]

see, told you there'd be more:


known as 'Ex Libre Imperialis' a dictator class cruiser and a vital missing component to my ever growing fleet; a carrier...
as you can see she's based on a metal ad-mech cruiser with zeus prow and 'fittings'. As such it matches in a treat with both the classic stuff and the zeus gear too!
I went for a grey prow this time as its obviously a fair compromise between white and black and its a bit different to the others... gives a nice no-frills standard naval issue look to it though...

Also I decided to make up a decent bearing compass template as I seemed not to own one...
as you can see its made of steel, aluminium and copper. heavy but nice...

[osjclatchford]

ok time for some little tiny yaddat-ships now!

first up some custom torpedo markers made of the old '95 gw slotta base (easier to cut down) and some aerials.

I did two variants. one straight on the base and one on 'stalks'


these custom made lightnings are based on the standard imperial fighter models with plasticard wings added and other alterations...

I got hold of some plastic (FUD) thunderhawks from grim-dark-bits on shapeways. quite expensive but the quality is great!


I started with two frames of the wee-ships in greyknights colours to match the 'lumos astra' strikecruiser I had done previously. however these are even bigger than the original fw casts (so are even more hideously out of scale) I feel they look a little cumbersome with even three on a base but they're done now so, so-be-it I guess...


this is the first one I tried out on a single copper base in (yawn) ultramarine colours.

in the end I've elected to do the rest on the single stem bases as the are =/- the same size as the ordnance marker and this way I'll get more markers for my money. easier to paint this way too and look less clunky...


so these are the pair of blood angel thunderhawks to go with the 'thunderchild' astartes cruiser I own

and not wanting to leave my children of nurgle without attack craft I've done some for the styx class.

some swithdeaths

and as I don't own any doomfire's, I've done a couple of death-guard thunderhawks to fill the same role.

[osjclatchford]

I present to you, the Prejudice Exremis an armageddon class battlecruiser:

as you can see she uses one of AdmGR's 3d printed prows and to rather nice effect If I do say so myself.

I kept the rest of the weapons loadout as 'out-of-the-box' as I could to keep the standard issue look as much as I could.

here is the back as I often forget to take an 'ass-end' shot of the engines so here it is.

also, I made sure I kept the extra lavishes and detail to a minimum to again reinforce the standard-issue/no nonsense look of this ship. looking at this shot its like it burst its way straight out of pages of the armada rulebook itself!

for those that remember the prow I originally had planned for this (in the wip thread) you'll likely see that on an upcoming overlord class in the future...

[osjclatchford]

nurgle reinforcements are in:


the 'foetid claw' escort squadron.
some simple conversion on these. I have never really liked the look of the chaos escort vessels much. aside from the iconoclast that is. the others just seem a little odd looking. I know this is a purposeful design choice to show that the vessels are based on hybrid human/xeno technological elements and the disparate and 'spikey' forms are very obviously chaotic.
however I like my escorts to be more or less baby versions of the cruisers in essence. as such my chaos escorts feature a more streamlined aesthetic (using parts from the imperial sword escorts and my trademark domes) that ditches the excessively spikey bits and points it all forward, giving a greater sense of forward momentum.

also here are my prototypes for a nurgle specific 'blight' torpedo.

in rules terms either a boarding or regular torpedo but, in truth, simply an excuse to create a torpedo that looks like ginormous maggot with an engine grown out of its posterior that rides across the void to chow-down on imperial-lackey ships...
yes... Rank.
(made from the engine vents off a Valkyrie with bits from imperial aerials as engines)

and before the foetidity of the chaotic forces soil my eyes and or brain any further, I've gone for a gentler kind of heresy, here is the latest addition to my rogue trader flotilla:


the tau are coming to tea...