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...