The King and I

All these early mornings and late nights have kind of had a toll on me and I felt a little under the weather on Friday evening. Usually I hang out with my boys, who are the very best gang of gamers ever, but I opted to stay home instead, have a quiet night and finished my final model of my fleet; La Rochele Experimental Battleship.

I'm normally a carrier guy, eschewing the ships of the line for the big, beefy decks of a carrier. I love imagining the thing spitting out wave after wave of fighters in a World War II-esque fashion.

So it is a bit of a departure for me to sing the praises of a battleship, but I've got to say to all French players: If you don't have a La Rochele get one, do it, do it now. Stop reading this now and go to this link, put your money on the barrel head and order this. You won't regret it.

Why do I love this battleship so much? Only cause it does everything! First, it's a skimmer. I dare your inner 5 year old to not secretly squeal in delight at the prospect of flying ships. Dare you.

Skimmers are great. They can fly over mines, you can park on islands to become nigh unto invulnerable to boarding and torpedoes, they can shoot over and fly over other models... They're cool.

Also, this dude comes with 2 heat lances. An experimental heat lance with a 270 degree arc of fire in the front that first out a x1 DR damage at RB 4 and 3. Once you get into RB 2 and 1 the fun really starts because you roll a D3 each time you fire the sucker. You can get up to x3 DR damage! To make matters worse (for your opponent), if you are on your broadside you can link up the x1 DR Lancette for a whopping x4 damage potential against whatever you are shooting at! Obscene. Incroyable, as the French say!

This sucker also has a decent broadside, same as the Courone and a forward gun that is, frankly somewhat lacklustre but hey more dice so yippeee!

Finally, and one of my favourite parts, this beastie IS a hybrid carrier in that it comes with a compliment of 4 tiny fliers that get shot out of the sides (see picture) out of a bay. Which is cool as hell.

I named mine Le Roi, The King. Elvis is alive baby and his throne sits at the helm of my Rochele!