Five 'Raid' point fleet of Centauri designed for a campaign against my initial tournament Narn fleet.. Starting the Fleet Unlike the Earth Alliance fleet, which is so big it is divided over three era's, Centauri Admirals get the luxury of choosing from a wide selection of ships from a single fleet list. As I wouldn't be initially playing with 'In-Service' dates for the fleets, I opted to select what I hoped would be a nicely rounded five 'Raid' point fleet that would be roughly a fair match against the Narn fleet I took to the Mongoose Halls tournament. At 'Battle' level, and to be the flagship of my force I chose a Primus-class Battlecruiser. It might not have a huge selection of secondary weapons at its disposal, but what it lacks for in short ranged brawling, it more than makes up for in its long ranged battle laser primary beam weapons. Supporting the Primus-class is an equally daunting Belvarin Carrier. At only 'Raid' level, the Belvarin is an absolute star bringing six flights of Sentri fighters to the fray as well as some pretty handy short-ranged firepower in the form of all-round twin particle arrays. With the two Sentri flights that the Primus also comes with, the fleet gets a very useful eight flights of fighters in total. Two ships however, do not a fleet make. So, to give some up close support and hopefully draw some of the attention away from my two capitol ships I selected an iconic Vorchan warship, a Maximus-class frigate and a pair of fast-attack Darkners to harass the enemy from behind with their 20" range beam battle lasers and matter cannons. Painting the Centauri One of the things I most disliked about the look of the Centauri fleet, was the hugely gaudy purple and gold palette they were predominately presented in. I wanted to keep the traditional colourscheme, but only if I could find a way to tone it down a bit reduce the intensity of the purple. With that in mind I started with a basecoat of GW Foundation range Hormagaunt Purple into which I added increasing amounts of elf flesh for the highlighting. This gave me a far paler blue-grey colour for the hills rather than the deep purple you often see. To then bring the traditional colour back out I gave the ships a very thin wash of watered down purple ink. For the metallic trim and wings I started with a basecoat of tin bitz into which I mixed a little brazen brass and dark flesh. Using this as my base mix I then added increasing amounts of more brass and then finally shining gold and chainmail silver to create a weathered look to the metal sections. A thin wash of black and antelope inks helped to enrich the contrast before I gave the edges a final highlight of pure burnished gold to finish. Primus-class Battlecruiser
The grey central section of the Primus was a simple dry-brush of adeptus battle grey followed by a very light dry-brush of wolf grey to help lighten the overall edges. I then picked out a few of the panel lines with ghost grey before giving the hull a wash of very watered down black to intensify the shading. The main gun batteries, engines and prow detailing were initially painted in boltgun metal and highlighted with chainmail before the black was was applied. The detailing was then re-highlighted in neat mithril silver along with the extreme edges of the main engines. For the two flights of Sentri fighters, I followed exactly the same approach I did with the Narn fleet and removed the mounting peg from underneath each fighter replacing it with a length of rod cut from a paperclip. These were in turn re-mounted onto a small flying base as opposed to the hex-bases provided. As I mentioned with the Narn fleet, this is not something you need to do and the hex-bases provided are perfectly adequate in my opinion. I simply do not use them as I wanted to keep a uniform look to the bases of all my ships and personally found the fighter bases to be a little distracting. With the flagship now complete it was on to the rest of the fleet. | Next: Belvarin carrier and Vorchan | |
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