Dystopian Wars: Kingdom of Britannia vs Republique of France 1000pts

Concentrate all firepower
on that dreadnought!

Our plucky contestants; the largely undefeated Charles - once again fielding his largely undefeated KoB fleet. The relative newbie Dunc, in his very third game, but fielding for the first time his freshly-painted RoF force.

Look, Mum!
Skimming cruisers!

1000points each means both field dreadnoughts, but no air power other than the obligatory 10 tiny tiny flyers. Both KoB are CAPs, whereas RoF field a Torpedo bomber flight and a CAP.

The objective is to destroy core fleet. And they're off! Minimal terrain covers the Britannian right flank, but the French have a plan to skim over it. This plan is quickly abandoned when the heavy Brit left flank open fire.

Magenta mkI rear view

Here come the Ecuyers

Dunc is eager to try his heat lances and manoeuvres his heavy hitters toward Charlie's dreadnought and battleship.

A fierce exchange of fire over the first three turns bag a cruiser and three frigates for Britannia, but a more impressive four destroyers, a cruiser and a frigate fall under the French onslaught. There's serious damage to the Magenta mkII and the Ecuyers though.

Inexorably, they draw closer

Turn four and things start to get nasty. Two KoB cruisers attempt to board a RoF cruiser, and with a swift exchange of cards are repelled! Meanwhile a line of KoB frigates unleash 20 dice on the Magenta mkI.
The French are feeling the pressure as the Majesty class unleashes 25 dice on the beleaguered Magenta mkII, which miraculously survives on 1HP. This proves extremely fortunate on the next turn when it delivers a critical with its redoubtable heat lance! An unfortunate boarding attempt is easily massacred by the dreadnought's CAP, however.

Massed French

Damage abounds, but the
RoF fleet is holding up.

Dangerous boats

Magenta mkI
takes heavy damage

Th KoB frigates completing
their pincer movement

A final round or two of firing saw two French cruisers down and a KoB frigate but the hour was late. A largely disabled KoB dread (7 damage and two half AD counters) faced a ready-to sink pocket battleship and a RoF dread with one hit, so there was still life in the battle, but a marginal KoB victory was declared as he was much closer to the objective.

All parties had jolly good fun, hands were shaken and North duly faced.

I think there will be more painting of DW models in the near future.

Dystopian wars: 1:1200 Covenant of Antarctica starter fleet

I've been beavering away at the starter box of CoA naval forces and finally have something to show.

To the rear of some of these shots, you'll see the island I made yesterday - I'll do a short post on that later.

'CVN Theatre', fleet designation Alpha 4 lies off the coast with accompanying  flotilla

 

More on this project... 

Dystopian Wars: 1:1200 Covenant of Antarctica fleet WIP 2

Work continues apace in the grebcave. Today I have mostly finished all the energy turrets and started the normal ones (apart from two, which I used as testers). The frigates near completion with super detailing, colour coding and numbering. The cruisers have been through this process and some super detailing is all that remains. The battleship is in a similar state. I've also started to bring the Pericles drone carrier up to speed, but it's a few steps behind. The Dreadnought remains in a second stage state.

Energy turrets

Turrets

Nose of the battleship

Frigates

Wha? On its side?

Hmm, upside down picture, you say..?

Rho-2 CVN Philosophy

On its side, you say?

Dreadnought and carrier in progress

Messy, but functional

Rho-17 CVN Ethics

Cruisers

Dreadnought turrets. On their side, you say?

On to finished starter fleet... 

Dystopian Wars: 1:1200 Covenant of Antarctica fleet WIP

I've taken quite a shine to this game in recent weeks, both painting and playing my Prussians. It was therefore a short leap to getting a second fleet.

The long and short of that is that I chose Covenant of Antarctica. In a game set in 1870, these guys are the main reason it's a science fiction game. Particle accelerators, time dilation, energy weapons - these guys invented them, and the rest of the world followed.

So I felt they would need something a little different, paint-wise. I've had some interference paint, made by liquitex, lying around in my paints box for some years, so I opted for the blue.

There are several areas of decking, which I had good results with using yellow and brown inks on my Prussians, so I decided to stick with that. This fleet also has several boats which use metal gantries - I always thought those models were the weakest in the range because the gantries looked too 'chunky' - so I determined I'd try to make those look more spindly. Citadel chain mail and black wash should do the trick.

So, on to painting. A grey primer from Halfords starts the process, followed by an all-over white drybrush to bring out details.

The magic starts at this point. The interference blue is applied like normal paint, although there is very little noticeable difference at this stage. A wash with dark blue ink, however, really starts to show this paint off against a dark background.

The energy fields used by CoA are described as 'blue-green' - I've used the pearlescent green liquid acrylic pictured to represent this. Vents and around the screw-drives were the obvious choices to start. As it's inky in consistency, it was a case of paint and wipe to fill the small recesses.

As I didn't want the ships looking brand-new, I decided to grunge them up a bit with some brown ink, but to make sure the interference effect shone through, I re-highlighted the flatter areas with more of the blue liquitex.

The brown ink was dabbed on, watered down, semi-randomly - I did use it a lot around the ball turrets and broadside guns.

After this, a light drybrush with chain mail on said turrets gave them an 'in use' look - this did need some touching up with interference blue to compensate. The gantries had a black wash, then the darkest areas were delineated with a 0.05mm black pigment pen.

I also used a white 1mm POSCA marker on the bases of the boats - both at the prows and around the screw-drives to simulate sea-foam. That's not easy to see from these pictures though.

More in part two, later.

Basic grey primer, then a white drybrush on the upper specimen.

A bit blurry, but you sort of see where it's going.

Interference blue only on the lower, ink wash over it on the upper.

little shiny fishies.

Work begins on the battleship

The Plato class cruisers. This is the only model I don't really like from the CoA forces, so I'm going to have to work a bit harder to get the results I want from it.

Production line in progress on the frigates, The brush is my drybrush for the dystopian wars projects. It's a size 8 Windsor and Newton 'Sceptre'. The size allows me to work quickly over the whole boat. For more delicate drybrushes, I use an ailing kolinsky sable 3 - long past having a point, but still useful.

The next four shots below illustrate the effect of the interference paint. Here, you can see the dull blues and browns of the battle-worn ship. (The hole in the middle is where the upper hull of the ship sits. As it is being magnetised, I leave it off for most of the work. You can see it on the last shot of this series.

As the camera changes angles, we can see the shine begin to come through...

...more and more.

Finally we see the Battleship with its upper hull in place (still sans turrets though) and the full extent of the interference effect.

The frigates in progress

I've got some way towards acheiving the effect I was after, but it's still not quite there.

The screw-drives are spaced along the battleship's length.

On to WIP2...