It was pretty invigorating to finish my Plague Marines at the end of the summer. That said, the project had definitely gotten to the point that I didn't want to look at it anymore. About a month later I started on some old Battlefleet Gothic ships I had sitting around.

You starting to get an idea of how many old miniatures I have yet?

So Battlefleet Gothic is a space naval battle game. In it, you command a fleet of ships in space going to war against another fleet. Some folks make cool terrain for it like asteroids and space stations and planets and other random stuff. It is a spinoff of Warhammer 40K and takes place within that universe.

It was originally released way back in 1999 and reached the peak of its popularity while I was still in high school. By the time I was actively collecting miniatures in 2005, it had lost most of its steam, though apparently Games Workshop still made stuff for it up until 2013, which is a surprise for me.

I ended up starting the game in springtime of 2008. The shop I was hanging out at in Tucson had an old starter box it was trying to get rid of, and so me and a friend split it paying maybe twenty bucks each. He took the Imperium ships and I took the ones from Chaos.

I was very into it for maybe a month or two. The game itself was very fun, I'd never played a navy game before and I was enamored at the complexity of the rules which took into consideration the momentum of the ships in their movement, and allowed all kinds of things from launching starfighters, firing torpedos, boarding other ships, and even ramming each other. I ordered a few more ships but the amount of time it took for the shop's distributor to get the things I ordered to me was on the scale of months, and by the time they arrived, I didn't hang out at the shop much anymore in favor of my friends' apartment, and I was in the middle of a new DnD campaign (4th Edition, *shudder*).

So my battlefleet sat unused for many years. Then last year as I ramped up my miniature production again, I came across them in my bitz boxes and I was wistful for the game. After finishing my plague marines, I went to work on them.

There wasn't much work that had to be done, most of them had been cleaned up by me many years ago, which I found a little sad that they'd been sitting around ready to be painted for so long.

There is no real need to mod them. I have an idea for a possessed daemonship that will require significant putty work and a severe thrashing, but I didn't really have the creative energy at this juncture to do it now.

The fleet's flagship is a battleship, a Desolator Class that serves as a massive gunship. It's supported by three cruisers and four small escort ships.

Since it's been a long time since I played the game, I only remember here and there what is supposed to be what. One of the cruisers is a Hades class, which is a carrier ship for starfighters. The other two I am pretty sure are gunships of some sort.

I remember the escorts being really cool to play. The advantage of a Chaos fleet is it is a bit faster and more manueverable while still packing a considerable punch with their weapons, and escorts are a bit of an embodiment of that.

I wasn't really sure what to do for the color scheme. I had never thought about it. The Chaos fleets in the official material were all a dull red, which looked cool, and definitely looked easy to paint, but I didn't want to really do something straight out of the book. I was already not modding these guys as it stands, and you know how much I love to mod my minis.

Ultimately, I went for a gunmetal base with some metallic reds and golds to give them a regal look. They were very easy to paint, and I got through them in just a few days, even while taking it easy.

Of course one might ask why it took me so long to post them. Well, that would be because of the tariffs put into place by the government.

See, years ago I stumbled onto these custom bases on Etsy for Battlefleet Gothic. They were simple, but I liked that and how they displayed the quarter sections which are important in the rules. They're made by some folks in Spain.

So I hoped I had ordered them in time to avoid the tariffs. I did not. I had to pay a significant amount of extra money to receive them, which the seller was very unhappy with and offered me a full refund, but I was adamant on these bases which I had had my heart set on for this fleet for a long time.

They ended up being shipped back to them for reasons beyond either of our understanding, and when they reshipped them to me, UPS refused to deliver them to my house without my being present. Being someone who works a full time office job and also has an active social life, I would never be home to sign for them.

I tried to have them delivered to a local UPS dropoff point, but UPS refused without giving a reason. Then UPS told the seller that the package was at the dropoff point, but it actually was not.

This sort of asinine back and forth persisted for well over a month. Then one day UPS delivered it to my mailbox while I was at work with no explanation given to me or the seller.

I want to also take a moment to share with you that I don't have a very strong economics background. I've taken a couple economics classes here and there and when challenged on the basics I seem to know what I am talking about, but I am not confident in my overall knowledge at all.

That said, in my International Political Economy class taught by an ornery arrogant Frenchman, it was hammered into us over and over and over again that tariffs are not good for the economy, that the consumer always ends up paying for them, and they are generally considered a bad idea by everyone who had an inkling of how economics worked.

And yes, we did discuss in the class how it might be leveraged as a form of foreign coercion, and it was also established that it would not be a terribly effective policy to accomplish many goals without the extreme cost of introducing uncertainty into international economics and uncertainty always leads to isolation and isolation is not good for a consumer economy, which the United States has been for some time.

So instead of boring you with my bitching about the absolute insanity of anyone thinking it's a good idea, I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how long it took me to get back to these dudes.

The first time I saw ads for Battlefleet Gothic it struck me as so impersonal, they're not like little dudes how could I possibly follow a story about some ships. Regardless, I found them fascinating, and when I had a chance to finally try them out, I certainly wasn't disappointed.

I still have more ships to add to the fleet, and I ultimately want to add enough to double the fleet's size, but that will certainly wait for a warmer day.

Next up, I think I might take a stop by one of my old Warhammer Fantasy armies, and see if I can make some headway there.