Battlefleet Gothic: Imperial Fleet

OK, time for something a little different. I'll be putting a game display into the local public library this November, and I want to get some space ships into it. I'm a big fan of Battlefleet Gothic, and have a sizeable Chaos fleet. However, I have a ton of Imperial ship models I've never built. Now is the time!

I dug into the mountain of unopened boxes of I have down in the basement. Here are the 33 Imperial ships I put together over the course of two evenings. Many of them are one-piece resin or metal models...but the battleship and cruisers took a little time to assemble. This is the entire fleet, with several cruisers mounted on a painting stick just before I start priming.

I want to get a lot of ships done quickly, so this is prime airbrush territory. I start with the ship completely sprayed with black primer.

Then an overspray of dark sea blue-grey.

Then a quick down-spray of light grey.

And a final dusting of white. The airbrushing went very quickly and was the least labor-intensive step of the painting process. The multiple over-sprays give the model depth while popping out all the great molded-in detail.

The final painting passes consisted of putting on a red prow with gold highlights, a set of weathered bronze engine exhausts, silver highlights on the guns, rams and antennas and orange-yellow running lights.

Before you know it...an Imperial fleet appears. Just over a week from start to finish.

All the support vessels, which consist of freighters, tankers, escort carriers and so on, were painted with the same process, but using sets of different colors.

I hope this might inspire you to get a project out of storage, bear down and knock it out.

'Til next time!