Friday 15 May 2009

Friday Gothic Blogging: The Great Devourer

Hive Fleet Tengu enters the Carpet Nebula.

Hand on heart, this is not the fleet of which I am most fond (you saw that one a fortnight ago). The problem with Tengu is that I needed to tie it in with the ground forces I’d already painted. And by “already painted”, I mean “already painted fifteen years ago”. Well, most of it, at least, some of the miniatures are more recent (we’ll get into that when I finally find time to photograph the army), but the basic colour scheme matches that of the studio army before and immediately after the arrival of the ‘Nids very first codex , back when all the bugs were red and cream (unless they could reproduce in which case they were pink and blue), and you could finish off a Hive Tyrant with a combination of a personal warp generator and a vortex grenade. Simpler times. Anyway, I thought about a whole new scheme, but ultimately my OCD tendencies kicked in and I was forced to ensure cohesion. Hence the rather simplistic paint job.

It’s also worth noting that I cannot get the hang of the Tyranid fleet at all, which is somewhat upsetting considering that I’m using Tengu in my current 40K/Gothic campaign, “The Isoka Corridor”. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of it before all my fleets are gone, though given my current record (two out of ten, with one of those on a technicality and the other through sheer force of numbers) I’m not too optimistic. Especially since C is my chief rival at this stage, a man that could outfight a Genestealer, provided he persuaded it to sit down and play Yahtzee. [1]

Still, lots of spiky bits and claws. Gotta love those. Case in point: the Razorfiend.

I’m never sure which way round these things are supposed to go; neither one seems entirely right. Are those long tubes engines or weapons? That, my friends, is the enduring mystery of murderous extragalactic horrors.

A close up of some Escort drones, which have an embarrassing tendency to explode almost immediately upon contact with the enemy, which makes them less of an effective escort, and more tracer rounds for whomever is planning to blow up my Hive Ships. Speaking of which:

One of Tengu’s Hive Ships, being escorted by Vanguard drones. They aren’t really any more use than the Escort variant, but at least they’re somewhat faster, allowing them to die ahead of the main slaughter, and make me feel like my humiliation is lessened, at least in terms of maximum number of ships lost per turn.

I’ve run out of Gothic models to showcase (until I finish my Dark Angel fleet, hopefully sometime in June), so from next week it may be time to start running through some proper, honest to God armies. Try not to get too excited.

[1] And even that wouldn’t be easy. More arms means more dice; that is maths.

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