Just in case you don’t know what Battlefleet Gothic is i am going to shortly describe it to you: a tabletop game with huge spaceships fighting in a galaxy torn by war, set in the 40k universe. And if you still don’t get it, you are lucky! A video game will finally be released this year: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.
Truly a gaming masterpiece, this game system suffered by being dropped by the company that produced it. Having a lot of models sudenly going Out of Production (or OOP in case you always wondered what those Ebay descriptions meant) drove the price of said models to – sometimes – absurd heights.
Today the Imperial/Chaos cruisers fetch an easy 8-10 pounds a piece and they are considered the most basic ships out there. Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Necrons and Tyranids (not talking about special ships which are uber rare) are higher priced by default since they were never meant to be the main release of the game (as in Imperial and Chaos were the most successful). Luckily the community is driven by folks that are so inventive that they actually reversed engineered Games Workshop’s ship design.
Take for example the Imperial Grand Cruiser. An average model goes out to at the very least 40 pounds on Ebay. But Guillermo López found a way to replicate this ship using standard plastic cruisers. In this way this ship will burn only 20 pounds maximum on your pocket (even less with a good deal) and you get some spare parts also!
Creating the Imperial Grand Cruiser
We start by using both an Imperial Cruiser and a Chaos Cruiser. What we are going to do seems barbaric, but it’s the best way to get closer to the ship we want.
We will actually use only the pieces here. Basically we are left with the Chaos Cruiser lower hull unused (and more about that in another article).
Next we will remove the upper deck and the armored prow of the Imperial Cruiser (don’t worry, we will re-use it later). I know, i cringe also when i follow the tutorial.
Next we will assemble the Imperial Cruiser body (without the armored prow) and attach it to the Chaos Cruiser upper hull. Yes, you heard that right.
Now only adding the weapons to the Chaos hull is needed. Assemble after taste.
And finally, we will add the armored prow to the ship, but upside down and re-glue the nova cannon. Do you see it now?
This is how it actually looks near a genuine model. Not bad, not bad at all Guillermo! Nice job!
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