The Null Steersman - Oldhammer exclusive

I just have to admit it, BOYL is over and it was only a week ago ! Like most people attending and taking part by playing and socialising, I feel a little post-BOYL blue (that's a thing).

Honestly, what better way to still ride the vibe than to paint the exquisite special model we were offered there ? Right ?

We've been used to having great models throughout the years now but I have to say this one is remarkably good.

Third BOYL for a bloody lucky french !!!

Back at home after a few weeks on holidays and plenty of nice stuff done and people met. Like a couple of time before, those holidays ended with the Oldhammer Grand reunion : Bring Out Your Lead aka BOYL.

It's funny how after a couple of previous editions, everything seemed so familiar this time, people, the place, it felt like home in a way.

Like for the previous years, I was determined to making the best of it again so tried to squeeze as many games in as I could.

Let's have a quick look at the games played :

Completed Imperial Space Fleet - The Red force

If Space is the final frontier, then someone better guard it well ! After painting a tyrannid and Eldar fleet, I had to paint the last remaining faction for this jewel of old school gaming that Space Fleet is.

I won't bore you (again) with what Space Fleet is but if you're still wondering, hen you can check these posts to get a better understanding.

Eldar Space Fleet

After showing you a bit of my work in progress the other day, I've finally decided to take the time to finish my Eldar fleet for the simple reason I want to move on to the Imperial one and many other projects !

Eldar space fleet in progress and some frills and fauna...

Back in December, some WIPsters and I vowed to go on a buying embargo. We've done that before and the idea is to basically stop buying and hoarding models  and to reduce the leadpile or at least stop its uncontrollable growth (saving a few coins in the process ideally).

Space Fleet - Full tyrannid force

AAAhhhh, the sense of achievement when you finally finish an army ! It's been a very long time since I last tasted that sweet taste. And It's probably the first time in my life I've managed to make it happen in a day !

You might recognise those from an earlier post where I was shamelessly showing off bare lead and exposing plans for the future... Well Thantsants' report about his Space Fleet games at BOYL were enough to ignite a fire in my heart.

Space fleet is a very dear subject to me as I've already said HERE and HERE and for some reason I've decided to start with my Tyrannid fleet.

Space fleet - Imperial Fleet

Alright ! After my last poste about my freshly acquired tyranid fleet, it was time fo rme to have a look at the Imperial models I have to see if both forces match or not. Since I haven't been collecting them with a definite plan in mind it's highly unlikely both would be of equal size but the opportunity is also to look at what I have and what I could do with it.

After a couple of trades (and several gifts) over the last 2 years, I've managed to assemble this force with a bit of everything.

Now let's have a look in detail :

Space Fleet Tyranid fleet

Space fleet... the final frontier... LA LAAAAAA LA LALALALAAAAAAAA...

Erm... sorry about that.

Today I'd like to tell you (again) about Space fleet yes. The reason for this is I've had the opportunity to get some rather unusual models from the excellent Chris Steadman lately.

You might know after confrontation, I have a slight obsession for Space Fleet as you can read here :

Part 1 about early designs and both imperial and Eldar fleet

Part 2 about how to adapt the game nowadays and the Tyranic fleet

Now take a look at this :

All models kindly labelled by Chris himself, this saved me a lot of time and trouble believe me...

I'm usually not the kind to display bare lead for the sake of it as I'm a painter at heart but those are not models you see that often and more importantly, I'm using this opportujity to think out loud about how to procede with them.

Let's take a look at what we have here  (all painted examples taken from Solegend):

From Space fleet to Battlefleet gothic ? Part 2

OK, after talking about the previews of "Battle fleet Gothic" in WD119 (1989) in the previous post,  I'd like to develop a bit further on the game itself and how it evolved. The previous post and discussions around it (either on this blog or on the GW specialist Facebook group) have enabled to gather a bit more information on the whole story thanks to  Evo Von Himmel who playtested it at the studio back then and Andy Chambers who supervised the release of battlefleet gothic in its later incarnation.

Evo Von Himmel :

"There's actually a further layer to the game's history. I playtested the 'original' BFG in about 1990, prior to SpaceFleet being released, when I was working at GW.

The rules were incredibly complex, and involved lateral thrust, and protractors(!), from memory. I helped run a demo game of it at the Nottingham store. The version released in 1999 bore little to no relation to the original. 

(...)

From what I remember, the released version of BFG was a total rules re-write. I playtested both it and Confrontation at about the same time. Strange that it took nearly ten years for the new version and Necromunda to be released, and both were changed utterly from what I tested!"

Andy Chambers : "Just to round out the tale a little: When I started at the GW studio in 1990, Richard Halliwell was working on a spaceship game entitled battlefleet gothic. There was all the concept material you've seen, a plastic Imperial ship and a plastic Eldar ship already made for it, I loved the concepts from first sight, but the game was honestly not great and it never got anywhere. Andy Jones and Jervis did spacefleet a few years later to get some use out of the unreleased plastics. I tinkered around with doing a tabletop battle game for spaceships in 40K for a number of years (it started out being card driven), developed it in my own time and eventually managed to persuade studio manager Robin Dews to put it on the schedule. Because I'd always liked the name and I wanted to honour all the preceding work for it I asked that it be called Battlefleet Gothic - an easy sell since there had already been vague disappointment around the studio that the original never happened. I believe the tri-tail Eldar ship was a conversion, I might even still have it somewhere."

We now have a clear view of where the game was heading then and the similarities with confrontation and its rather complex ruleset (released at the same period) is even more surprising.

So how did the game evolve then ? The gamebox contained all gaming material for a quick and easy games playable by a younger audience as a sort of introductory game :

From Space fleet to Battlefleet gothic ? Part 1

Over the years, GW has released a vast array of games developping other aspects of their major settings (namely warhammer Battle and Warhammer 40k). For Warhammer Fantasy Battlle you could think of Warhammer Fantasy Role Play,  Mighty Empires, Man o'war, Mordheim, Heroquest, Warhammer Quest, Blood bowl, etc...

Warhammer 40k which was already strongly Roleplay oriented at the start was developped with Space Hulk, Confrontation, the Epic system, Necromunda, Inquisitor,...

One of the games I'd like to talk about today is Space Fleet :

Space Fleet was published in July 1991 by Games Workshop and designed by Jervis Johnson and Andy Jones. It was released as a board game for about 2 to 4 young players. I insist on young players because the rulebook given with the game is actually printed on just 2 A4 sheets (we'll develop on that a bit later.)  Space fleet was not the first step into space ship combat for Citadel who had previously released models for Star Cruisers.

While released in July 1991, the game was advertised in November 1989 in WD119 (that's 20 months before) so let's have a look at that :