December Update

Well, its December and I just realized that I never posted an update for November. To be totally fair there hasn't been a lot of work done on the hobby front over the past 6-8 weeks. I'm still plugging away at the painting commission I accepted.

I did pick up a few new Warmachine Retribution models: Some House Shyeel Arcanists, a Lys Healer and a Voidtracer.

In addition to that my son, brother-in-law and I decided to started to play both Dropzone and Dropfleet Commander. I elected to start a Shaltari force after some research. I debated between the UCM, Scourge and Shaltari. The ranged firepower and teleportation tactics for the Shaltari eventually won me over. I picked up a frigate box for Dropfleet and I am debating on color schemes. I am very much looking forward to the release of the Battle Fleet boxes.

For dropzone commander I picked up a Shaltari starter box, a Coyote warstrider and a Firedrake. My son has picked up the PHR starter, a set of Sirens and Tritons. I had been apprehensive of trying this game out but I am glad we did. The rules are fairly straight forward and we flew through our first game together earlier this week and had a blast I might add. We ended in a draw as we only had time to play 3 turns and had both managed to claim one objective.

I have also been using my 3d printer to make bases for my new Shaltari hover tanks and for my new Warmachine characters. I have also been working on some 10mm buildings for use with Dropzone. The first couple have a dersert/scavanger feel to them. I would like to do some large apartment or business buildings for a city and have some ideas that I need to design.

I have heard that Warcradle has released some new renders for Dystopian Wars and Armored Clash. From the little that I have read they are mixing the Dystopian Wars IP with their own Wild West Exodus to create the Dystopian Age IP which will have their Wild West Exodus as a skirmish game, Armored clash has become a 10mm land/air game and Dystopian Wars has been revised as a 1/1200 scale naval/air game. Unfortunately with the meshing of game worlds a number of the nations have changed. In particular, my Republique of France appears to no longer be apart of the game world or potentially has been absorbed by the Prussian Empire, time will tell. Warcradle has the a blog detailing some of this.

https://blog.wildwestexodus.com/blog/2017/12/1/unveiling-the-dystopian-age

Sorry I do not have more pictures this blog but I have not had much to photograph to be honest. Once I finish my painting commission I will try to knock out my Retribution or Shaltari forces. I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season. Thanks for reading and God bless.

July/August Update - Fleet Action 2.0 and Firestorm Strike Force News

Its been a busy month. I haven't remembered to post anything until later in the evenings and then it is too late to get much put together.

Its been a fairly productive month, however. I finished a commission for a client. A Tomb Kings Warrior regiment. For myself I have painted the Dystopian Wars SS Dawn of Souls, the Corsican Incident prison tower, and I am currently about halfway through a set of Trollblood reinforcements: an earthborn dire troll, a trollkin sorcerer, a storm troll, a runeshaper unit and Braylen Wanderheart.

I was so excited to get the warriors regiment sent off I didn't get a full regiment picture taken but I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.

There has also been a lot of information released on Firestorm Armada on the Spartan Forums. It is definitely worth checking out if you have any interest in Armada. Overall, I am very curious about the changes, it definitely appears to be a faster game in 3.0 which I am excited about as it makes it more likely I can get someone to play it! Perhaps my Omnidyne fleet will see some action. Just need to get it painted now!

Spartan released the Dystopian Wars: Fleet Action 2.0 rule set and complete nation statistics. Very excited for this as I really liked the Fleet Action ruleset, particularly with land games. It also steamlines the game enough that my son and I can sit down and play a round without him getting too board which is awesome.

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/massive-new-update-for-dystopian-fleet-action-arrives

Spartan has also dropped some information on a new board game they will releasing which is set within the Firestorm Universe, Firestorm: Strikeforce.
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/firestorm-strike-force-qa
This game looks amazing in my opinion. It reminds me a lot of an old game I used to play with my dad called Dogfight.

This was a seriously fun game. I really like how it used the cards to allow you to duel with your opponents.

I am very excited to pick this up to play with my kids. I am going to wait until there are some Relthoza, Aquan or Sorylian sets are out though first as I don't have as much of an interest in the Terrans.

I have a couple of posts backlogged to put up I just don't have the pictures loaded for them. I have a Sorylian Command Helix I still haven't posted pictures of and a proxied Pathogen Firstorm Armada fleet that I would like to get some pictures posted for. So hopefully I will get those pictures taken posted. I intend to post again soon:) Thanks for reading!

Kingdom of Denmark Surface Assault Group - Unboxing

 I picked this up recently to paint as a commission for someone. I love the Asgard Carrier and the appreciate the airships for the Danish. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

The exterior of the box.

Asgard Carrier, I really like the little details on the underdeck of this carrier.

Second picture of the Asgard carrier.

Fafnir Light Skyfortresses. Really like these models too!

Second shot of the Fafnir Light Skyfortress.

Magni Assault Blimps, Asgard tower, Tyr Assault Craft and SAS tokens.

Second picture of the Magni Assault Blimps.

 I have been debating on a color scheme for these guys. As of now I am thinking of a dark blue with grey and white stripes and some red accents to tie in the danish flag. I will definitely be planning to do a cross on the Asgard carrier deck. Looking forward to getting these painted.

Thanks for reading!

Long time no see!

Hello all,
Its been a little while since I last posted. I must apologize for that. My youngest decided to take a month or so break from sleeping. The sleep deprivation definitely decreased my drive to type up posts. I still made some progress painting my list of mini's but not as much as before then.

I have also seemed to have jumped projects a little more than normal. I have made progressed on my Dystopian Wars Chinese Federation Aerial box. I completed the majority of a custom Firestorm Armada Pathogen fleet. I dug out my old unpainted League of Italian States models and painted them up.

My son has also convinced me to try Privateer Press's Warmachine. He had asked me a couple of times over the past year to give it a try so we looked into it further. I like how rules play out, some of the warjack combat options can get a little confusing but the game we played was a blast! After doing some research I decided to give the Retibution of Scyrah a try and then picked up some minis for Cygnar and the mercenaries as I couldn't quite decide which I wanted to try the most. My son decided Khador was his favorite and picked up their starter box. Our first game had my Retribution guys get stomped by the Khador heavy warjacks.  We had a blast however and my mind has already started working through what I can do differently next time. My brother-in-law has also bought into Warmachine/Hordes to play as well though we have not had an opportunity to play yet. He elected to pick up a Convergence of Cyriss forces as well as Everblight. I'm very curious to play a round against Everblight and see how different the risk management of Hordes differs from the resource management of Warmachine.

If you haven't seen the new Spartan release this month, the 10/15mm building ruins look fantastic. I took advantage of my Corinthian Club membership and picked up several of the ruins, The Corsican Incident and the Dawn of Souls objective marker. I am pretty excited to get all of these and paint them.

SS Dawn of Souls

Bonus Structure I got for purchasing on Easter weekend. This thing looks pretty sweet! I really like seeing the infantry bases within the building for scale.

I hope to get some pictures of my Pathogen models up this weekend as well as do some in progress pictures of my Warmachine forces. Hopefully my kids and lighting will cooperate so I can get another post or two made. Hope everyone is having a good week. Thanks for reading!

Painting & Terrain Progress

Things have been pretty quiet around here. My brother-in-law has been unavailable much over the past few weeks so I haven't had much opportunity to play anyhting. I have managed to paint and build a second town for Dystopian Wars as well as the harbor set and half of the airfield set I purchased last year.

Trying to a get a layout put together for the second town.

Re-laid the town out after getting the board and roads painted.

First couple coats of paint on the buildings. Really like how the brick looks on the buildings.

Final picture of the town and research campus. Really happy with how this turned out!

First bit of the harbor districts painted. I was pretty excited when I got these painted up. I am looking forward to seeing this on the game board.

Just a picture with the new town and the two harbor sections together.

A final pictures showing the airfield I painted and the center harbor section. 

I hope you all enjoy the pictures. These have been a lot of fun to paint and build. I am really excited to get a couple of games in with my brother-in-law once his life calms down a little. I have already started a new project for some additions to my Armada collection. I hope to put some pictures or teasers up soon. Still have a couple of models left to finish before then, Thanks for reading!

Building a Dystopian Wars Town

I have been working on a little town for Dystopian Wars recently as I noted in my previous post. I figured it would be helpful to put up a set of pictures and steps for how I have put the whole thing together.

I used a thin black artist canvas for the base and then added black foam board and green stuff, (Kneadatite), to create the landscape. The buildings will be from Brigade Armor's 2mm line of buildings purchased from Picoarmor.com as well as some of the Dystopian Wars buildings. The trees and crops are from Galeforce 9.

Black canvas, black foamboard and green stuff

I effectively painted a pva glue over the board and covered with a fine sand.

I glued the buildings on and spray painted the board black.

I layered some greens and browns on the board to begin the process of making the land look like land.

This picture was taken after I had done some of the rocks and stone buildings.

This was taken after I had done the terracotta roofing and sandstone buildings. I also went back and added shadowing to all of the building doors and windows.

I then went back and added some vehicles and a packed up Farm vehicle to make the town feel a little more lived in. In the background you can also see that I used some flocking to create a planted field.

A picture of the finished town. I went back and added around a dozen more buildings to the town to help it feel a little more substantial. Honestly I am thrilled with how it has turned out!

A second picture from a different angle of the finished town . I can't wait to use this for a game!

Thanks for reading! I am continuing my creation of dystopian terrain. I should have some harbor districts done followed by an airport and second town in the next week or two.

Updates - Dystopian Wars and Dropfleet Commander

Its been a quiet week. I finished up the Dystopian Wars town I was working on. I hope to have a post on that in the next week or so. I also finished painting all of the SAS and node tokens for my Blazing sun Fleet.

Spartan recently posted the contents of the Dystopian Wars Expansion Boxes. The majority of them look awesome in my opinion. As a backer of the kickstarter I will be getting the French expansion set as well as russians from the Ice Maiden set. My brother-in-law will be getting the Britannian and Covenant expansion sets. My son will be getting the Prussians from the Ice Maiden set. Very excited for these!

Kingdom of Britannia - Dynasty Repair Ship

Covenant of Antarctica - Menedaius Support Ship

Federated States of America - Providence Bombard Vessel

Republique of France - Marans Bombardment Submarine

Empire of the Blazing Sun - Toyokawa Repair Vessel

I also will be getting the Republic of Egypt fleet box. Spartan also recently released a set of images for the Sehkmet Armored Cruiser. Not quite what I imagined but the more I look at the model the more I like it.

I have also been looking more and more at Dropfleet Commander. I think this is one I will definitely be picking up over the next month or two. The novel ideas of objective based play and and the signature spike weapon ranges really appeal to me. I will post some more about it once I pick up the rules and models. I saw this set of new tokens to be released this year at some point.

Dropfleet Commander Advanced Sectors

Recent Progress

I have been working on a couple of little projects over the past few weeks. My brother-in-law has had some interest in Infinity so I have acquired some Nomads to counteract his PanOceania guys. I have painted a trio of Alguaciles. I have also been working small town for Dystopian Wars using some Brigade Models buildings I purchased from PicoArmor.com.

I have also branched out in my hobbies and will be increasing the diversity of the models and games written about on this blog. I will likely always be a Spartan Games fan primarily but I would be lying if I didn't say that Dropfleet and Dropzone Commander looked really interesting. I have strong like of the PHR and Resistance models. Obviously, Infinity has piqued my interest and Dystopian Legions looks rather interesting to me as well depending on the releases made this year. The Russian Coalition has honestly looked really cool despite not being released and the Republique of France once they are fleshed out a little more. Not that I need any more models to paint at the moment :)

Nomad Alguaciles - I went for a red and white scheme with the grey pants.

Mediterainean town - I still need to add some supplies, vehicles and most importantly trees!

I'm hoping to finish up my town tonight or tomorrow. I am not sure what I am going to do for my next project. I have the materials to making a little mining town for dystopian wars. I also still have about 10 Nomads that need to be painted. I started my Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ground forces a while back and I am feeling the call to finish them about now. I have found that I really enjoy the ground combat of Dystopian Wars and Fleet Action so I have collected some pretty solid ground forces and just need to get some photos put together and added to the blog.

I will be putting up a final picture of the town once it is all complete. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Last Year in Review

Happy New Year!

The past year has been a crazy one. It started out  strong with a lot of painting and gaming but ended with much less completed nor any games played. I hope that this year I can be a little more consistent with my updates and gaming. One of the reasons for less updates recently is that with winter and the time change here in the US I have a much smaller window of opportunity to take pictures. This has hampered my ability to post blog updates as most of them have been painting related. I am going to try and get into the habit of taking some pictures each weekend while I have the light to do so and hopefully that will help me post a little more regularly.

I have a decent size backlog of miniatures, (Dystopian Wars, Firestorm Armada, Planetfall & Infinity), to paint this year, which I will list out below. For Christmas I received a Relthoza Firepower Leviathan which I am very excited to paint. It is a fantastic, and massive, model and will look excellent on the gaming table! Ok, on to the statistics and hopeful plans for the new year.

This past year I was able to paint 268 models and played 11 games. I was shocked at how many models I painted throughout the year. I would be thrilled this next year if I can paint a similar number of models. Hopefully, I will be able to work out the time to play a few more games this year compared to last year.

This year I have quite a few models in the queue to be painted. Some of which I have and quite a few I know I will be acquiring at some point in the next few months. Currently on my list I have a large number of dystopian wars models, a couple of planetfall models and several infinity models. I also have some terrain projects for dystopian wars and a couple of things to finish up for planetfall.

Dystopian Wars/Fleet Action

Blazing Sun

Taki-Ashi Heavy Walker x1

Komainu Garrison Tank x6

Ke-Ho Light Tanks x25

27x SAW tokens

3x Node tokens

Chinese Federation

Fei Long Skyfortress x1

Chi Long Assault Flyers x3

Zhulong Interceptors x5

54x SAW tokens

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Perun Mobile Airfield x1

Rarog Landship x1

Palnik Medium Tank x3

Szpada Flame Tank x3

Burza Bombard x3

Poltava Light Tank x4

Rycerz Light Tank x5

16x SAW tokens

Republique of France

Frelon Small Bombers x3

Marceille Light Cruisers x3

Furieux Scoutships x2

Defense Tower x2

36x Saw tokens

Russian Coalition

Kostroma Fleet Carrier x1

6x SAW tokens

Merchant Vessels x4

Oil Rigs x2

City Districts x3

Harbour district x1

Airfield district x2

Armada
Dindrenzi
Bastion Battlestation x1
Pilum Platforms x3

Relthoza
Ichneumann Frigates x4

Ryushi
Onnisha Carrier x1
Hokita Crusiers x6
Akkarai Corvettes x6

Terquai
Alkonost Assault Carrier x1
Alkulkan Assault Cruisers x3

Planetfall

Relthoza

Varisei-Kei Leviathan x1

Namisc Light Walker x12

Directorate

Shade Heavy Gunship x2

Phantom Gunship x3

Artillery Marker x2

Terrain

Buildings x10

Barricade Walls x 10

Relthoza Structure x1

Defense Cannon Structure x1

Infinity

Nomads

Starter set x1(6 models)

Reverend Moira Healer x1

To add to this I have been curious about Dropfleet commander. This may lead me to pick up a few of their models to try out a game or two this coming year. We shall see, I honestly don't need anything more to play or paint at the moment. I also backed the Dystopian World expansion kickstarter which will net me something in the neighborhood of 145 new models! So this year looks to be a very busy year for painting which I am very much looking forward to.

I hope everyone reading this has had an excellent first week of the new year. I hope to get some pictures up of my Relthoza Command Helix and Ba'Kash Aerial helix. They have been painted for months now, I just haven't had time to get pictures taken and posted.

I am optimistic to see some of planetfall Allied Core Helices this spring. Particularly the Terquai, Veydreth and Ba'Kash ones. Hopefully Spartan will be able to get these released amidst their busy Dystopian Wars Schedule.

Dystopian Wars World Expansion Kickstarter Update

I posted this on my dystopian tales blog and wanted to share here as well that the kickstarter has done very well so far at 155% funded. The campaign is only 2,200 GBP short of unlocking a new faction for the game. I believe I noted this in one of my previous posts but I am exceedingly excited for this stretchgoal! The possible factions that backers will be able to choose from are: Teutonic Order, Spanish Confederacy, Republic of Egypt, Hellenic Kingdoms and Garibaldi's Legion. Out of these I think the Teutonic Order and Garibaldi's Legion are my least favorite options but any would be cool. Tomorrow, I believe, there is supposed to be an overview of the possible factions released so that we can vote on which will be added to the game as part of this Expansion.

Other than my excitement of helping pick a new faction I wanted to share images of many of the terrain bolt-ons. A large part of this kickstarter campaign is the addition of terrain specific to Dystopian Wars. Of all of the images shown so far these look awesome and will a ton of character to any battlefield they are added to.

Sturginium Rig - This thing measures about 5"by 6" and looks fantastic!

Overhead pic of the sturginium rig. Lots of excellent little details all over this model.

Island and Hazard Set - Love the little buildings set into the side of the rocky outcroppings.

New Resin iceberg set. The largest of these look to be about the size of a battleship. I plan to pick up a set of these as I think they will be awesome painted up on a game board.

Second shot of the iceberg with the new Prussian Empire monitor and destroyers..`

New fortified harbor set with a Prussian Empire monitor for scale purposes. There are supposed to be some additional buildings which have not been completely rendered as of yet which will be part of this set as well. This is another set I really want to pick up!

This is a close up of the harbor gates. It has been indicated that there will later be nation specific gates to further customize this set. Very excited to see the buildings which have yet to be rendered.

Several renders have been revealed for the Core Nation Expansion Sets. So far they have revealed the medium ships for the Blazing Sun, Republique of France, Kingdom of Britannia and Federated States of America.

Chita class robot submarines - Love these models!

Royan class gunship - I really like the look of this model. It has the appearance of a pocket battleship.

Felshaw class light carrier - Cool looking little model. My brother-in-law is expecting to pick up a few models.

Calico class light carrier - Very cool little ship. The rocket battery in the back is replaceable giving three different configurations.

Russian Coalition Mezan gun corvette - I very much like the triple barreled guns on the front of this ship. These will be a lot of fun to paint.

I am very excited to see this kickstarter finish out and in particular getting to vote on adding a new faction. I will post again once some more renders are released or the new faction is determined. Thanks for reading!