Space Hulk, Battlefleet Gothic... and Crusade?

[ThePenitentOne]

Spacehulk was my gateway into 40k, many years ago (89? 90?), so it's only fitting that Spacehulk will kick off my first Crusade.

 

I have the 22 stealers from Spacehulk; they're trapped aboard a Blood Angels vessel, but among them are some very, very old purestrains who have experience fighting in both the hive fleets and multiple insurrections; these specimens have come to understand humans, and even their technology via previous telepathic bonding. When the vessel encounters warp anomalies, the purestrains their odds of survival are better if they attempt to make planetfall using automatic escape pods than remain aboard a compromised ship. 

 

When the purestrains begin their rush, the marines respond with extreme prejudice and seek to execute every Xenoform aboard the ship before any can escape; eight escape pods exist. Any stealers that escape the hulk crash on Orisons Wake, where they scatter to the ruins of the various settlements, separating to maintain stealth as they infect multiple settlements.

 

I put a lot of time into designing the floorplan for the mission; I have Kill Team: Rogue Trader and Blackstone Fortress, and I did my best to maximize the space, keeping the corridors between rooms tight and winding. I also tried to match it to what I remember about Imperial ship design from Battlefleet Gothic- a long narrow neck connecting a wedge shaped nose with a bulkier aft section that holds the engines, quarters and command centers,

 

My ship's footprint is about 50" long, maybe 16" at its narrowest and 36" at it's widest. I'm looking for a BFG vessel used by Space Marines that fits the footprint. I don't know BFG well enough to scale a Gladius Escort. It seems to be the next size up from a Thunderhawk. Its BFG description says that frequently, it is only occupied by a single squad of Marines, which is exactly what this ship is carrying- 10 Terminators and a Terminator Sergeant.

 

Could the Gladius be my ship, or are my dimensions way too small? Is there another space marine ship that better fits my footprint?

 

PS- I only have one box of spacehulk tiles, so I can't make it bigger. Pics will come, but I want to write up the actual mission as a PDF- I'm content with the floorplan as is, because it's the best I can do with what I've got, but it would be nice to know if there's anything that fits what I've got.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ryltar Thamior]

Cool concept for a series of linked games, although it's probably worth noting that a Gladius is still going to be quite a large vessel to try and model in its entirety. Like, yeah, it's *small* .. but it's 40k Imperial Ship small. Which is to say, not small at all in 28mm scale. Assuming it's based on the comparable Sword class, that would place it at longer than a kilometer in length. It's also not quite accurate to run it with a wedge-shaped design like most of the Imperial Navy vessels - as it looks more like a significantly down-scaled battle-barge or strike cruiser. 

But don't let that stop you - it's certainly plausible for a First Founding chapter to maintain some of the really old style designs where the distinction between Space Marine and Imperial Navy designs was less than a guideline. 

Here's one of the rare images of one in something other than side-on:

http://www.solegends.com/citcat2006us/c2006usp0840-01.jpg

In terms of the actual floorplan approach ... it might be plausible for you to instead use one of the smaller-still Marine escort ships [there's mention of a particular Hunter-class destroyer of the Scythes of the Emperor desperately attempting to carry a warning back to Sotha that might prove inspiring]. [in fact, a ship smaller than a Gladius might make more sense for your concept, because I would suspect a Gladius would have a landing bay with accompanying either gunship or smaller shuttle/lighter craft if it's habitually carrying a squad of Marines about the place] 

Whatever you decide, the best solution is probably just to have multiple sub-assemblies of floorplan on a deck-by-deck basis; and focus these around key 'mission critical' sites where clashes and confrontations are likely to arise. So, instead of attempting to do an entire ship all at once - you're just doing a piece at a time and recycling components as the action moves from site to site within. 

The stuff in the central raised portion of a ship near the command-decks in particular will benefit from a more restrained approach, precisely because it's small rectangular spaces one on top of the other rather than a big long one. 

You can also get around some of the limited space by imagining - accurately, I might add - that a lot of what's surrounding a given deck is actually really thick armour plating, machinery, and other such non-traversable spaces. 

Also, one rather simple solution to the limit on floorplan that you've got from the Rogue Trader and Blackstone Fortress sets tiles being all you've got to hand ...

... is to print out your own additional tiles, and mount on cardstock. From memory, although it's been years since I looked into it, there was quite an active Space Hulk 'modding' community online that used their photoshop skills etc. to generate a variety of floor-tiles for different sorts of dungeon (e.g. Necron Tombs, etc.). You can also definitely find images of the old boardgame tiles from 1e and 2e around the place. Here's some pretty cool ones I just found from a chap on Dakkadakka. 

Ultimately, I know that something printed out on a home printer and then mounted on cardboard isn't going to be as nice as the stuff that GW puts out in its game-boxes .. but short of building a rather massive (and likely expensive) Zone Mortalis board yourself [see, for example, the amazing Phall boarding action display board that FW did a few years back], you're already dealing with a degree of abstraction and flatness - the only question is, how much you're comfortable with. 

[Wrath of Bruinen]

This is such a cool concept. I’ve been toying with a parallel idea to build a crashed spaceship piece of scenery that can cover a small space hulk map (probably mission 2 from the 4th ed set) and run a simultaneous space hulk/40k battle, but I really like your idea of linking games together etc. please do share what you come up with as you go along!

 

Unfortunately I don’t have a good answer to your question - just wanted to stop by and acknowledge the awesome idea

[ThePenitentOne]

Thanks much for the picture, and yes! The Hunter is my ship. Thanks also for the design tip about the wedge; I think I can redesign the forward command bridge to suit the shape of the ship. Very, very helpful.

 

Thanks for the link to the tiles too; this is a small prologue game, so I don't know that I'll use them this time around, but it's great to have them. I've built two 3D Spacehulk Boards in my time, and that's actually my preferred solution; they're so versatile, you can use them for any game- we used to play both 40k and Necromunda on those boards. This time around, I wanted to do something different, so I'm trying my hand at modular terrain.

 

 

@TheWeepingAngel- thanks for the interest. I'm a slow painter/ crafter, and people here will tell you, I talk way more than I build, paint or play. But connecting the pieces of the universe that GW gives us to create a more complete picture than you can get out of a single game has always been a passion, and I'm hoping 9th will get me moving.

[Brother Tyler]

Interestingly enough, the most well-known ships of the Adeptus Astartes - the battle barge and strike cruiser - "do not represent a single class of vessel, or specific configurations of weapons and systems, but rather represent a broad range of different Space Marine vessels used for largely similar tasks." The iconic imagery of both of those ships derives from the models that were released for the Battlefleet Gothic game, but neither was presented as "the" configuration of such ships. The BFG rules even allowed players to take other ships of the Imperial Navy and upgrade them to battle barge/strike cruiser status. Similarly, Adeptus Astartes fleets often include numerous rapid strike vessels - vessels smaller than strike cruisers and crewed by Chapter serfs and servitors. The three Adeptus Astartes vessels that are classes, the Hunter (destroyer), Gladius (frigate), and Nova (frigate) are still large enough to require crews of numerous Chapter serfs and servitors (in addition to the few Adeptus Astartes on the vessels). All three of these vessels are of considerable size. You would need a very large model to represent the smallest of these (but of the choices, the Hunter seems like the most reasonable for your purposes).

 

Following the lore, however, you could very easily take a very small Imperial Navy ship for your purposes, retro-fitting it with stuff suitable to your Chapter. These fall into the Space Marine Rapid Strike Vessels grouping, representing ships that serve in patrol missions and as escorts the larger strike cruisers and battle barges. These are generally the escort type ships from the Imperial Navy fleet lists (the Sword, Firestorm, and Cobra), simply upgraded with rules for Space Marines. Of those ships, the Cobra is the smallest, and it is still much larger than a Thunderhawk (which can be launched from it).

 

For modeling the tiles, a cheap alternative is to use wood squares available at most hobby shops. They're pretty cheap and you should be able to find them in the size you need (about 1" should be fine). Sometimes you can find sets with all one size, while other sets come with varying sizes (the other sizes being good for giving your terrain a bit of variation).

 

I'll be watching this with interest as it's similar to something I'm working on for this year's Armies on Parade.

[ThePenitentOne]

I built a lot of corrugated cardboard mock-ups over the past year, but I just stepped up my game and bought foam-core. I'm building 15" square tiles with recesses for drinking straw pipes, covered with nylon mesh screen. I can play Combat Patrol with 6 such tiles; unlike GW, I'll take my board up a half step for Incursion by adding 3 more tiles. More tiles once we hit Strike Force and Onslaught. 

 

My buildings will be stackable habitations- three foundations, five stackable levels, and three roof tiles. I can play combat patrol with even a single foundation; there isn't much point in building the second foundation until my board is at least 45" x 45", and I won't need the third until 45" x 90".

 

There will be two ships, both small enough that they won't be a battlefield on their own, but large enough that landing them on a battlefield is an event. The first ship is the Traveller, which is the Blackstone Fortress ship that belongs to Espern Locarno; the other is the Clarion, which is Taddeus the Purifier's ship. Both have a role to play in the Chronicles of Saint Katherine's Aegis.

 

My carboard prototypes aren't pretty, but they're usable- these are the base tiles for my wych cult arena before they were all painted:

 

 

I'll add one of my Imperial pieces once I switch computers- the photo hasn't been uploaded to my gallery yet.

 

The boards will be fast- I have enough material for 3 tiles, and I want 6 finished by the end of launch weekend. That's when the Spacehulk game is being played, so I won't be playing Crusade until the following weekend.

 

Buildings will take longer, but 9th is good incentive.

[Ryltar Thamior]

Managed to track down some better pictures of Hunter-class destroyers, although it seems like you're going in a slightly different direction if you're running one or more ships as landers - and a cool one, at that!

There's been a few efforts at doing 40k ship interiors in 3d that I've seen around over the years - some of which are less reliant on cities of death sprues or whatever than others. Going for square rather than hex-based platforming may assist with the integrity and aesthetic of things; and it's possible that you could accomplish pretty cheap, quick and robust walls simply by getting off-cut blocks of wood of a relatively regular height and going from there, potentially with card mounted on the sides to conceal the grain for painting, or adding levels of detailing. Multi-layer relief adding Gothic arch shapes, for example. 

In terms of a lander ... have a look at these. They're rather old logs on Ammobunker, and I don't think they ever wound up completed - but both got remarkably far. First, and Second. Check out the concept/design art on the first posts of those threads, perhaps

I think that this is the furthest that either got, although the other one was also looking pretty impressive also. 

Awhile back, I'd had a perhaps similar thought for an Inquisitorial gun-cutter or lander - getting around the difficulty of constructing the blade-shaped prow by instead going for rather large double eagle heads - as seen on these fine vessels (there's also a few in the background of this Storm  Trooper art) ... except .. significantly smaller. 

There's also a few other concepts for landers floating about the place. 

[MithrilForge]

oh this concept sounds like one i dreamed up way back in the late 90's early 2000's 

hope it goes well and I look fwd to seeing your results ...even if a Glacier moves faster than you it'll be worth it!

 

Cheers, Mithril

[ThePenitentOne]

Thanks so much for all the responses; obviously no way to build even a Hunter truescale. So my board would essentially represent a small part of a single deck. I still haven't redesigned my board with a hammer head, but it's an easy mod. The game is still planned for Saturday. Hope to post pics, and hopefully the first Chronicles of Saint Katherine's Aegis youtube video.

 

If the game is Saturday evening, stuff isn't likely to be posted until mid-week; my Sundays are PACKED, so no post production/ decompression time. I'm not an expert in any of these things, but I think sharing the work as I learn will motivate follow through.