East India Merchant Company Thoughts

I recently read the playtest notes posted by Delboy, Dystopian Wars Senior playtester, located here. Personally, I love that every ship has so many upgrades and options available to them. This instantly makes them a fleet that I would love to play for. I am also a huge fan of their aesthetics, Spartan games really did a great job when designing these vessels.

The Athea Class Battleship is by far my favorite vessel from this faction. It makes me thinking of a floating fortress. The Griffon Class cruiser has a very similar feel and appearance only on a smaller scale which can be seen from the picture above.

The Forbes Class Support Blimp is also a very cool looking model in my opinion. Bristling with 4 upgradable turrets and an internal Tesla Generator. While not the quickest unit it can pack quite the punch if utilized in an intelligent manner.

The Syera class frigates I also find very appealing due to the fact that they come convertable to three different models. From left to right you have MkII Frigate which is essentially a boarding frigate with a brodside attack. The MkIII Frigate which trades the boarding ability for a decent secondary turret. Finally the MkI Frigate which gives up the turret for improved AA, CC and bonus versus submerged models.

The tiny flyers of the EIMC even have a cool model. I love the biplane look combined with a turbine or whatever types of motors they are equipped with.

The flexibility of each Indiaman combined with their very cool aesthetic have ensured that this fleet will make my Christmas List this year. That same flexibility will also help this fleet to not get pigeon holed into a single playstyle or strategy which is very appealing to me. I will be very much looking very forward to painting them over the holiday season and fielding them against my Brother-In-Laws Russian Fleet! 

Destroyers & Bombers painted

Hi again. As promised I have some pictures of the finished Fortuna Bombers and Cinquedea Destroyers along with some "mostly" finished Scutum Frigates.

I would have to say that I am most happy with how the Fortuna's came out. While I really like the Cinquedea's they are not my favorite model aesthetically. However, their 360 degree turret and torpedoes makes them a very powerful unit when used correctly. The red and white stripes are similar to one of the fighter wings I showed with the carrier. I wanted to come up with something that kinda looked reminiscent of a World War One plane while also still incorporating the color scheme of the rest of the Italian (Maltese) fleet. The results are as you see below.

The Cinquedeas are painted very similarly to the cruisers and the battleship I have already shown off. Though they are a little more industrial due to the turret being located on top of the ships and the 6 stacks and engine block.

Here is a little preview of the Scutum flotilla. They only have their primary colors so far, no shading or detailing as of yet.

My next project is to finish up the Skaggeraks I am currently working on. I also have an old flotilla of Saxony class Corvettes that I might finish. We shall see...

Back from Hiatus/Italian Carrier Painted

Again I must apologize for the length between posts. We have had a lot going on the past few months at home and at work. Hopefully from here on out I can be a little more frequent with my posts.

About a month ago I discovered the joys of XCOM: Enemy Unknown. That sucked away most of my free time for the first few weeks after I bought it. It has a Men in Black meets Independence Day feel to it. If you like squad level turn based strategy it is definitely worth purchasing to play. I have beaten the game once and am currently playing two more games through. One by myself on Iron Man Mode and a separate play through with my brother-in-law. We just split the characters on each mission and play it hotseat.

Ok, now on to the Dystopian Wars update. I did finish the Affondatore class carrier, named Atlas, several months ago and have even fielded it once against the Russian Coalition. The results were a little mixed. While the Atlas peformed admirably, sinking several cruisers and damaging a Tunguska. The rest of the Italian fleet did very poorly. While the Atlas was able to escape the battle with some damage, the Italian fleet as whole lost the engagement.

Now on to the pictures:
The Atlas

Aerial View of the MTB Launch Platform

Overhead View

Aerial View of the Flight Platform

I haven't finished painting all of the tiny flyers yet but here is a preview of the 4 different color schemes I am using.

I am hoping to post another update tomorrow or next weekend at the latest. In the next update I will showcase my painted Fortuna Bombers, a squadron of Cinquedea Destroyers and hopefully and squadron of Scutum Frigates. I have fallen in love with the preview of the new Danish Naval battlegroup. So in preparation for purchasing and painting that fleet I have begun painting some Skaggerak Gunships I had purchased a long while back. Until next time, I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Cruiser's Painted

Sorry its been a while since my last post. The last month has been crazy busy. I have been able to finish my three Gladius Cruisers. Named for some of the more prominent cities on the island of Malta. The Valleta, The Mdina & The St. Elmos Fire.

Valleta, Mdina & St. Elmos Fire in Formation

The Valleta

My next post will hopefully be sometime this week. I almost have my Carrier/Flagship, the Atlas completed. Once that is finished up I will post some pictures it. I am also wanting to get a game summary posted as well as a review of the Italian ships.

Knights of Malta Battleship completed

I finished up my new Italian battleship a few days ago. My color scheme drew inspiration from the banner of Malta and the Knights of Malta. I tested out a couple of ideas and decided on a red hull with white superstructure above. This was then finished of with metal details across the vessel.

The first vessel I painted was the Jacopo, escort for the Commodore's battleship. This faithful little vessel proved fun and fairly easy to paint.

Happy with the paint scheme I was free to begin on the centerpiece to my new Knights of Malta fleet. The Monte-Cristo, a Mars class battleship.

Again I went with the dark red hull with some brighter red dry-brushed along the center of each hull plate. The above decks I painted a medium brown and the dry-brushed a pale sand to give the appearance of wood being bleached.The rest of the model is basically white with metal accents and dark metallic color across the seems to accentuate the rivets and the separation between plates.

Monte-Cristo with escort Jacopo.

I just purchased the Italian Naval Support Group and will be posting pictures of those and the remaining ships from the naval group when I get them finished.

Today my son received his first Dystopian Wars Miniature. Granted he is only two and a half but he absolutely loved the Steam Train looking Ships of the Blazing Sun. When he saw me painting my ships he picked out some paints to do his in and I took to the challenge. I just finished his battleship, hopefully he will like it when he sees it in the morning. Without further ado....

Its a little late so the light wasn't the best when I took the pictures but you can get a pretty good idea of what it looks like. I have to say that I was impressed that the colors he picked worked as well together as they did.