Which GW miniatures represent the 3 ships from the book Rogue Star that this game is based on? I know there is a Rogue Trader Cruiser, but which 2 escort ships?

There are miniatures representing sword class frigates and Lunar class cruisers. Both pretty common ships throughout the Imperium of Man, and they are in Rogue Trader as well.

There is the whole line of Battle Fleet Gothic minatures on the GW site. Look under specialist games. The imperial fleet is great. There is also a Rogue Trader cruiser in the misc section as well as the RT escorts. Just keep in mind there is no standard RT vessel. I also use star wars ships, B5 ships, and and other random minis.

They are listed as Cruisers in the text and the main ship is a heavy Cruiser. The RPG shows an Imperial cruiser as an example. The only difference physically in the Imperial Cruiser models between Heavy and Normal is the addition of a pair or dorsal lance turrets.

So, by deduction, the escorts would be normal Rogue Trader cruisers and the main ship would be a rogue trader cruise with the added pair of lance turrets?

Thlaylie said:

You know, just by looking att BFG miniatures it can sometimes be pretty hard to discern exactly what gun does what, because there are multitudes of guns on each miniature.

Anyway, miniatures that would be of interest to Rogue Trader players and GM's are:

Rogue Trader Escorts

Rogue Trader Cruiser

Dauntless Class Light Cruiser (Lance)

Dauntless Class Light Cruiser (Torpedo)

If there are any guns that seem to be sticking out too much and doesn't match the ship's stats, then thy could easily be cut off and filed down.

Varnias Tybalt said:

It's not that difficult, actually, at least on Imperial Navy cruisers (because the kits are modular and represent a range of classes, so you have to be able to tell the difference at a glance; the Battlefleet Gothic rulebook is illustrated to help ship identification). The bulky square guns are batteries, lances are often turret-mounted weapons (because they're precision-targeted, rather than simply saturating an area with fire). Those are, in BFG terms, the only two kinds of weapon you'll ever find on an Imperial Navy Cruiser's broadsides (though many replace the space used for some weapons bays with combat launch bays housing ship-to-ship bombers and assault boats, and superheavy/extra-atmospheric fighters). Guns tend to be grouped together anyway, with (on the models, and with the classes listed in the BFG rulebook) up to two distinct sets of broadside weapons (mirrored port and starboard).

On the prows, a set of recesses (three on each side) often denotes torpedo tubes, with a powered ram at the base of the armoured prow. Some vessels exchange this ram (and the internal space used for the torpedo tubes and their magazines) for a high-powered extreme-long-range weapon called a Nova Cannon.

With that in mind, the ship at the top of the image below (considering the two groups of weapons along the broadside and the weapon in the prow) is armed with a weapons battery and a selection of lance turrets, with prow torpedoes - as it happens, it's actually a Lunar-class Cruiser. The one below it has weapons batteries and launch bays, with a prow Nova Cannon, and is a Mars-class Battlecruiser (the additional lance turrets along the dorsal ridge in place of the sensor spines mark it out as a Battlecruiser). Every gun smaller than the ones I've mentioned are defence turrets, and thus not of any direct concern in ship-to-ship combat until ordnance and attack craft become involved.

It gets a little more fiddly with escorts, but they don't tend to vary as much anyway in terms of armament - Sword-class Frigates have a weapons battery, while the similar Firestorm-class replaces part of that battery with a high-powered Lance and the smaller Cobra-class Destroyer mounts a small weapons battery and a few small torpedo tubes.

I am actually thinking of using the BFG vassal module for my rogue trader combats.

Salcor

You forgot the Mars class has a "Dorsal Lance Battery", the little turrets in place of antennae you mentioned. This is easily added to the RT Lunar class cruiser but:

Torpedoes?

Nova Cannon?

I have determined that one of the "escorts" in the Rogue Star book is a Dauntless Light Cruiser the "Fairlight."

They make (or made at one time) a "Lunar Class". I've got one. I'll see if I can't dig up a picture of one.

These are what they originally looked like. They looked like big Sword-Class. Really ugly birds....

WOW! Anyone been to Forge World's site lately?? There seems to be a huge run on their BFG minis. Most of them are "Out of Stock". Wonder how much of that had to do with RT hitting the shelves?

Could be. I wonder if this'll encourage them to fill in a few of the gaps and release new mini's/rules? A fairly obvious Imperial Armour supplement could deal with a space campaign too.

Forgeworld is giving BFG the same treatmant they gave Epic a couple of months ago. Checking if it is worthwhile to continue....

It is possible to kitbash any kind of Merchant. I'm should post pictures of my BFG Rogue Trader fleet soonish I guess.

Though when going 'easy' the following are very suitable for PC vessels:

Rogue Trader cruiser
Imperial Lunar / maybe modified
Sword class frigate
Firestorm frigate
Cobra destroyer (torp tubes filled down)
Adeptus Mechanicus cruiser
Adeptus Mechanicus light cruiser
Iconoclast destroyer (simple standard common design)

Personally I'm gonna try and kitbash some of the designs from the RT corebook.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

I'd say it's probably more to do with Games Day having only been a couple of weeks ago - I was one of the people who brave the sheer mind numbing stupidity of the queue/mob at the Forge World stand only to be told that they had allready sold out of everything I wanted (including some BFG Tau ships) when the show had only been open for an hour.