The fleet grows

I've been expanding my fleet over the last couple of days in small working sessions.

Two hours on thursday afternoon saw my vanguard drones expand to six, with a small modification on the design. with two options for armament I decided to give them pyroacid batteries. A heavily trimmed spine fist was mounted underneath the nose of the drone. Later, I'll be making some drones with feeder tentacles, but I can't do that until I get my hands on some old pens that I can remove the springs from.

Vanguard drones with pyroacid battery

Today I've built two of my prototype Krakens. One with pyroacid battery, and the other with torpedoes

Kraken with pyroacid battery

Kraken with torpedoes

I also commenced building my first cruiser, using a spare back plate from a carnifex, with a pair of massive talons coming out from it. Two warrior barbed stranglers form the back end, with a spore mound as the underside. A spare armour plate forms a beak at the prow.

I still have to add the armament to the cruiser, but I'll come back to that next time i work on the fleet.

Unarmed cruiser

Another new project

I've just started another new project after browsing trademe's WH40K listings.

I found an auction for Battlefleet Gothic, consisting of The rules, a Chaos fleet, and a conversion fleet of tyranids. Being a bug player myself, the tyranid fleet was of great interest to me, and I asked the seller if he had details on how the fleet was built.

He replied that he found the details on site but it was no longer around. Being a curious person, I did some browsing, and found a site that may or may not have the one he used , but had some good advice on scratch building tyranid vessels. One page added to favourites later, and I was off to my bits box, digging out a few items.

A gaunt devourer was removed from the arm, and three scything talons from my genestealer sprues were worked on, removing the arm from the elbow up. The small spurs from the elbow were kept, and the rest of the arm tossed. The arms were cut to a better size after that, and test fitted to the devourer. Once I was happy with the cuts to the arms, I glued them on, and added one of the small spurs to the top of the devourer. I now have my first vanguard escort drone, and the means to make a large number of them.

The site I got the details from also suggest using Raveners as Hive ships, with a few alterations, and I just happen to have three older raveners lying around, along with a 3rd edition Hive Tyrant. So I could have the makings of a fairly large fleet just lying around in my bits box. Not too bad, one army's left over parts forming an entire new force for another game