With tonight's post we come to
Dystopian Wars, the last of the three new games which I'm now learning to play, the other two being
Infinity and
Malifaux as previously discussed. Dystopian Wars has looked interesting to me since I first heard about the game, particularly due to its integration of land, air, and sea units into a single game system. Plus I find the Jules Verne styled, Victorian steampunk setting for Dystopian Wars strongly appealing. Of course I'm also a big fan of the all the miniatures Spartan Games has produced for each of the original nations so far. This actually presented something of a problem for me initially as I could not decide which nationality I wanted to collect. They all looked great, but none of them grabbed me more than any other.
I therefore thought it would be best to wait and see how the game continued to develop as more models became available. Eventually I picked up a copy of the rules and really enjoyed reading it during the time that I wasn't able to paint or work on any miniatures. I was no closer to picking a faction however until I saw the early artwork and pre-release images for the upcoming Covenant of Antarctica. I was hooked. The weird pulp style of their vessels, planes, and walkers was right on for my liking. Also it's just a hunch but I suspect these guys might turn out to be the true villains of the Dystopian Wars universe, which would be a cool bonus. I'm rather certain that it's not possible to build giant, mechanical, clawed walkers without also being an evil genius. It just seems to go with the territory.
So I was really excited earlier this week when I received in the mail the initial batch of CoA miniatures to be released. I'm thus starting out with a Naval Battle Group, an Armoured Battle Group, and a Fleet Carrier. As the first expansion nationality to be added to the game, there's currently no information about the Covenant units in the Dystopian Wars rulebook. Instead they've included a 40 page booklet with each of the Battle Group boxes. This handy booklet has new rules introduced for the Covenant of Antarctica plus stats for all of the CoA units. Additionally the first fifteen or so pages of the booklet is all new background fluff about this youngest of nations, providing it with a greater sense of depth and history. It's so well done in fact that I think it's too bad similar booklets were not made for the other nationalities as well.
For those curious about these starter boxes, the Naval Battle Group contains models worth up to 740 points fully loaded, while the Armoured Battle Group comes in at 745 points.
I haven't decided yet how I want to paint these miniatures, though a few possible color schemes that I like have come to mind. If time allows I hope to paint a test figure or two this week. I'd originally planned on starting with the CoA fleet, but seeing both in person I'm now tempted to begin with the ground forces. I wonder if it would be easier considering the terrain and space I have available to initially work on learning the land-based aspects of this game. I think by first focusing on the Armoured Battle Group, I could begin trying out Dystopian Wars as quickly as possible which would be nice.
All in due time I suppose. If anybody has a preference concerning this, I'm certainly open to suggestions. Otherwise I'll make up my mind in the next couple of days whether my introduction to the game will be by land or by sea. Okay, that's it for now. Happy painting and gaming, everybody!
Oh, joy... little magnets. Lots and lots of little magnets. Yippie.
It was not all magnetic tedium however as I also managed today to clean and prime the Pericles Class Fleet Carrier for my CoA naval group. The two-tone priming turned out better this time than on the last set of minis, but still not as well as I had done on the original test batch. Again I do not think I was conservative enough when spraying the blue primer over the initial bone-color paint, but with this color scheme it doesn't really matter as variation among models is fine and in fact desirable. I just hadn't originally intended them to be quite so blue overall, but regardless I like the results so I'm sticking with it. If I can find the time I hope to start painting the fleet carrier tomorrow.
Okay, they're not completely 100% finished yet. I still need to spray them with varnish but otherwise I've now painted the Ptolemy Class Bombers and the Tiny Flyer tokens that come in the Covenant of Antarctica naval box. The bombers look a lot like they did the last time I showed them on the blog, having only added highlights to the metal areas, the orange canopies and windows, and the glowing green rotor blades. It's all pretty subtle though so the changes might not be noticeable in these pictures. I love these models and am quite happy with how they tuned out.
I've hit a couple of snags tonight while working on the Tiny Flyer tokens for my CoA fleet. Due to an early mistake I had to change my plans for these little buggers and I'm not as thrilled with the revised color scheme. Nonetheless I will continue on with it and perhaps plan on picking up a 30-pack of flyer tokens once they're released which I can paint as I had originally envisioned. Initially I had wanted to the flyers to be based on the same blue scheme as the rest of the fleet but have instead opted to paint them in a mostly metallic set of colors.
I'm a little anxious about how this batch of flyer tokens will turn out but fortunately they don't represent too large of an investment in either time or money, especially as I would have wanted to buy a pack of flyer tokens anyway just to get their stat card. I do still hope that I can salvage these ones as I could then use the differently painted tokens as a way of further distinguishing my squadrons. Plus I have a feeling I'll like the revised color scheme more once I am further along with the tokens. That in turn is good motivation for me to return to painting them right away. Goodnight!
I don't know what I'll paint next for my Covenant fleet once I've completed the squadrons of frigates. I am interested in magnetizing the turrets on the remaining ships but I'm not too sure how I should go about doing that. I have however picked out what I want to include for my first 1000 points which I will use to learn how to play this game. Since I already have the starter box and a fleet carrier, there wasn't a lot of room left to include more units. Conveniently by adding a single blister pack of Icarus Class Medium Flyers, due to be released only a few days from now, I'd reach that 1000 point mark.
It's still really early in the process but I do like how the split color scheme looks so far on the bombers. Unfortunately I didn't do as good of a job this time creating a gradient between the colors on the set of six frigates. I did not space them out as much as I should have when priming them so that the blue paint would blast sideways onto the ships to either side, almost completely covering over the bone-colored undercoat. I'm fairly sure however that on such small models this will hardly be noticeable except when viewed from close up, if even then. Also I am happy to learn this lesson at this point rather than later on when I'm painting the bigger, more impressive ships. :)
Today I started painting my first models for Dystopian Wars, beginning with a squadron of CoA Diogenes Class Frigates. Initially I'd planned on trying out a different color scheme on each of the three ships in the squadron. I really liked the first paint scheme that I tried however and so I proceeded to paint all the ships the same way. There are some more details left to work on and a few areas that I need to clean up, but otherwise they're close to being finished. What you see in the pictures is a good indication of the look that I'm going for with my Covenant of Antarctica fleet.
I'm really pleased with how these three Frigate have turned out so far and they've been fun to paint as well. Another nice thing is that the color scheme was very easy to do as most of the work happens in the priming stage. I may have to modify my approach somewhat when it comes to painting the bigger ships, but for now it's encouraging to think that I might be able to finish this fleet fairly quickly. The Frigates are indeed rather simple models so perhaps I shouldn't expect to much at this point, but I can be optimistic at least.
One of my hobby goals for 2011 is to continue experimenting with new game systems, even if only to learn the rules as an excuse to paint different sorts of miniatures. Last year I really enjoyed delving into Hordes especially although I did begin peeking into Warmachine and Malifaux a little as well. Early on I even made a decent start on painting my Circle Orboros army before running out of steam and resuming work on GW projects. I believe those are games I'll have fun with for quite some time to come so I'm happy with the investment I made in learning them.