Armada: Mixed Fleet

The last ships I had to paint up for Armada are the 3D printed ones from BIG, these are to be used as neutral ships in some of the scenarios. 

First up we have the Orc XL ship Ripper Hulk, as you would expect from an XL it's a massive bit of resin and no doubt a real terror to face in a proper game. I've not had 3D resin prints to work with before and this was very easy with no washing required. The only thing I did was leave it out in the sun whilst it was in the painting queue to help ensure the resin was fully cured. 

Next we have the War Galley, which is an Empire of Dust large ship. With the EoD having an Egyptian theme this ship has some nice detailing nods to that period.

Lastly we have a pair of medium Gur Panther ships from Basilea. Again lots of nice little Basilean and panther details are included on the model.

The models did have the odd breakage here and there but overall for the price ( around 2/3 of a model from Mantic) I'm very impressed. The ability to also buy the models as individuals is a real bonus as many are only available as part of large packs. I'm sure more factions will have their 3D models released in the future so no doubt I will be picking up some more Armada stuff to paint.

The latest Armada book also includes rules for forming a Pirate fleet allowing you to use ships from any nation, so these models could be used together though I'm not sure how balanced a fleet it would be.

Armada: Battleship in my Pocket

Continuing the Abyssal Dwarf theme of ships having the stats of one size above what other fleets get we have the final ship in the fleet. The Hellfane / Arbiter of Pain is a proper pocket battleship and is in the same cost range as other fleet's XL's. This means it packs a powerful punch and can take a massive amount of punishment before being defeated.

It comes in two variants with the Hellfane being the standard version and boasts a nice little re-roll effect for boarding actions for itself and nearby friendly ships. Both versions have a good number of close range guns so will do their best work up close.

The model provided by Mantic comes with the central towers as separate parts that drop into a bay in the main hull so you can easily swap between the two versions without needing to resort to magnets or buying an extra model. Given the cost of both variants you would need to be playing a really big game to fit two in.

The Arbiter of Pain in the unique version of the ship and again wants to get in close, especially with it's Ram (4) rule and it's combat strength of 10, I have noticed that the unit entry on the Mantic app is slightly incorrect as the AoP has 4 close guns up front on it's unit card from the box rather than the 3 shown.

As the ultimate ship in the Abyssal Dwarf fleet I went in a bit more on the bling front when painting her up and despite not being an XL in actual size I think she should stand out on the table.

Lastly we have the two flyers to accompany the fleet, the flying sphincter was originally planned to be a Dwarf release but after a bit of a community outcry over it not fitting the theme is was moved to the evil Dwarf list instead. The Abyssal Dwarfs also share the Gargoyle Swarm with the Twilight Kin so I painted these ones with Abyssal red bodies instead.

So that's the entire fleet for the Abyssal Dwarfs completed, due to the high cost of individual ships the points for contents of the Starter + Expansion + Flyer box's is much higher than that for the same Twilight Kin boxes. I do have another Butcher to paint for the TK and then the extra scenario ships I had 3D printed, so I'm not entirely done with ships yet. 

Armada: Don't Call me Short!

 The second fleet I'm painting up for Armada are the Abyssal Dwarfs, these will be for Mr T to play and will pair nicely with the Ambush force already completed if/when we decide to do a land and see campaign.

In general the Abyssal Dwarf navy has a nice mixture of long range indirect fire and boarding focused ships. Whilst not the fastest fleet overall they do have the Hellforged Engines special which allows them to balance greater manoeuvrability against the chance to cause self-inflicted damage by pushing their engines over the safe limit. The Abyssal Dwarfs don't field any Tiny or XL ships so everything is every Small, Medium, or Large.

First up we have a pair of Angkor, named after a KoW mortar unit it is no surprise these boast a large indirect weapon up front and decent broadsides. One thing that is noticeable for the AD is the cost of their ships tends to be comparable to one size up of most other fleets. They are also generally tougher than comparable sized ships in other navies, so can take a real beating.

The studio paint-jobs depicted all the skulls in bone colour but I fancied something a bit more bling for the AD so broke out the gold. This is the first outing for the Army Painter speedpaint metallics, which I really liked. I wasn't getting much of a contrast but the paint really flows nicely onto the models.

The Infernox boasts a mighty CS 7 for boarding actions along with it's massive gold skull so absolutely wants to get in close and mix it up in boarding actions. I think we could have some bloody actions with my Twilight Kin also looking to get in close and initiate boarding.

The Decimator also wants to get in close but rather than boarding it wants to set the enemy ablaze. I've not really checked out the fire rules yet but my expectation is that being on a wooden ship that's burning is probably a bad thing that you want to avoid. It also has a good CS for boarding actions so certainly isn't a one trick sea-pony.

The cheapest and fastest ships in the AD fleet the Blacksouls are useful for filling out the last few points and chucking in the way of enemy ships to run interference. I think their speed could also be useful in scenario play for seizing objectives.

The last ship (for the moment) is the Katsuchan and this again concentrates on the long range indirect fire support. This has two forward firing IDW's and the chance to cause extra damage on the enemy when rolling doubles to hit at the expense of setting itself ablaze.

That's all the ships painted thus far, it's certainly much more straight forwards painting up ships without sails so perhaps the next fleet will be Trident Realm's.

Armada: Small Ships

Having worked through almost all the larger ships I now moved onto the small ships and flyers.

Needlefangs are Tiny ships fitting on 30mm squares and their main benefit seems to be the Attrition special which adds 1 point of damage onto a friendly ships shooting damage whilst within 6". This benefit stacks for each Needlefang within 6" of the shooting ship. For reference a Light cannon does 1 point of damage normally and a Heavy 2.

The models are supplied to go two on a base but they are pretty big and one works fine and gives you twice the options.

The Banshee is a Small support ship and whilst not tough itself it's main purpose is to hinder an opponent in boarding melees. It's Banshee's Wail special incurs a -1 to hit in boarding actions for any ship it's grappled with. So the idea would be to get it into combat with a big hitting enemy and hope it lives long enough for support to arrive.

Lastly (for the moment) we have the two flying units available to the Twilight Kin. Flyers are slightly unusual in that they can only attack enemies they directly fly over and can only be attacked by those same enemy units. 

The general opinion is they are best suited to picking off weakened enemies that have seperated from the main fleet.

This is the entire fleet painted up so far, I have one more Butcher to paint but I'm going to work on some of the Abyssal Dwarfs first as a change before coming back to that one.