Ships Spotted, Sir - BFG Chaos Cruisers

To continue the distinctly nautical theme of recent posts, I thought I'd share a few Battlefleet Gothic ships.

I ordered these just before Christmas for an upcoming Cruiser Clash with Scipio, and set myself the task last night of painting all four of them. I finished at about 11pm, which is unusual for me as I really prefer painting in the morning or early afternoon. As this was meant to be a bit of a speed paint to my "table top standard," I did cut some corners and there's some tidying to be done now (that I missed in my dazed state last night).

In fluff terms, these ships belong to a group known as the Heralds of Kephis. At the core of this group are the renegades of a Space Marine Chapter I wrote about some time ago - the Myrmidions. Both loyalists and renegades are fleet-based boarding specialists with a distinctly aquatic theme, the darker side definitely has that "Innsmouth look." The heraldry was very much inpsired by House Greyjoy of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. I'll upload some more specific fluff later...

I wanted to reflect the aquatic look in the ships' scheme, as well as making them look a little worn and dusty (is there dust in space..?). I didn't want to start faffing about with powders, and the scale of the ships makes it difficuly, at least for me. I started with a base of Regal Blue followed by a highlight of Enchanted Blue.
 I then used Brass Scorpion (my favourite metal, but the pot needs shaking a lot whilst in use) for the metallic parts. This was then lovingly doused in an Agrax Earthshade wash. I was going to use Nuln Oil, but the Earthshade gave a nice pond water look.

I then gave them a light dusting of Codex Grey. I brushed over the metals just to dull them slightly, and I'm generally quite pleased how it came out.

The lower part of the hull which is only visible if you really look was left Regal Blue and then just highlighted with a drybrush of Codex Grey, it seemed to work well enough.Just to make sure there was some extra detail, and something I planned from the start was the reflection of "copper-bottomed" ships - so I painted the keel in Brass Scorpion. I left the spines in the standard hull colour so the keel also reflected the fin of a fish (aquatic, as I said before...). I gave the keel a similar weathering wash as I used on my Draco here. I'll be honest, it was essentially the last thing I did, so the keels are in need of tidying in particular.

The copper bottom / fin style keel

If you want a particularly Tzeentch-y look, I'd highly recommend this process, but just missing out the wash and maybe using Space Wolves Grey for the last highlight.

I'm not a fan of putting the names of ships on bases, so I tried to vary the details where the classes are the same, also I think each of the masts and antenna and whatnot are done a little differently on each ship - some work better than others. In terms of names, I haven't given them any specific names yet, but I have a pool (no pun intended) with names like The Drowned, Dagon, Kraken, Hydra, Triton etc.

On these ships, I decided not to extend the brass detailing all the way to the edge, in order to differentiate duplicates

I thought that using Chainmail or Boltgun Metal (the former definitely worked better) on other metals/details, it would add a little more depth - or make it pop more as it were. So all of the gun barrels I painted in Chainmail (and the turret body black on the larger ones), and picked put a few of the gribbly bits on each in the same.

I also decided to add a couple of spots of colour in the form of navigation lights on the wings of the bridge, they may have turned to Chaos, but lets not throw safety out of the window. I was going to do some of these on the masts too, but I'm not too sure. I think it's okay "as is." Lastly, I dotted a few "window lights" on the bridges.

Note: Some of you may have seen this last night, I'm not sure how but it got reverted to draft again. Most mysterious (or me being ham-fisted again. Stupid phone).