Painted Dystopian Mercenary Fleet (lots of pics)

Finally. Pleased to say I have now completed painting my two mercenary fleets for Dystopian Wars. The Black Wolf and East India Merchant Company box sets and an Air base as well. I have not added up the game points worth but usually the sets are around 800-900 points each. Plenty of options for creating a force from. I did buy a second large Black Wolf submersible in addition to the box sets though.

Black Wolf ships including surface skimming ships with Mini Subs ready to drop into the sea.

Double Trouble! Two Black Wolf Submersibles with support skimmers.

Hanging around the air base. Spot the Tiny Flyer Ace.

Nice detail underneath that won't be seen in games like the small fighter ready to drop into the polluted skies.

I took the photos with an iphone in the backyard in the shade. Blue appears to be a colour that digital photography can go a bit silly with. I certainly won't win any miniature photography awards. :)

Painting them all Panzer Grey with a London Grey (Vallejo) dry brush was my idea to make them all look aligned to the same flag. The Red was inspired from the painted example on the Black Wolf box cover. Spartan Games has a Heavy Bomber flyer for a future release but no date as yet so that is really the only future purchase for this force. Very happy to get this completed so I can start my next 28mm project.
Cheers from Brendon (The Kiwi)

Islands in the sun

In the Dystopian Wars 2 player set 'Shadow Hunter' you get some sheets of Islands, sandbars and rocks to use on your Dystopian oceans. I thought it is a great idea for easy to store/transport terrain and it also means no balancing acts required if you have toys that end a move on these features.

Inspired by how good they look I thought it was easy enough to make some more from Google Earth Imagery. I made some using parts of nearby coastal areas, printed them out and glued them on some card and cut them out.
Living here in Darwin we have lots of land that is void of all those man made features like Roads, Buildings and so on which could potentially destroy the illusion of scale. I didn't bother with an exact scale but used my eye to gauge if it looked OK. Coastal areas can contain many areas of shallow water that would be a problem for some Dystopian vessels. So perhaps the lighter coloured water can be shallow water.

All pieces from Google.

2 smaller pieces above on right from Shadow Hunter.

2 on right from Shadow Hunter, large table edge piece on left from Google.

Photos taken in poor light with flash.
Cheers from Brendon

Dystopian Wars Version 2 force build tester

Some wargames can make things seem complicated at first. They can be the first few times you work through a detailed sub-set of rules. Dystopian Wars version 2 could perhaps be a hard slog for those completely new to wargaming but the scenarios in the intro 2 player box set could be a great starting point for newbies.
However for someone like me who has played in the previous edition I found the force build rules a ...."Holy computations Batman!" moment. To get it all figured out into a what does it all mean I went to a spreadsheet format in Excel and came up with this below.

I have found it really handy so far even though I am yet to play a game. Below is examples for placing in the Light Blue lower areas. (Quick guide to limits not to exceed except the red total minimum).

And here is an example of it when used.

This may help you as it certainly helped me.









Cheers from Brendon.

Dystopian Wars Objectives

These are really something you could get creative with and make something original yourself. Especially as Spartan Games has made the card set that is used in the game with these available on line. But if you just have to have something ready to paint then the Dystopian Wars Objective box can add a lot of unpredictable fun to your games.
I painted my set as bright, shiny pieces. Sure I could have painted them with colours more fitting to whatever I think each one might be but I figure these are gaming pieces and every player wants a golden ticket to help them dominate the opposition don't they?

A mysterious box, containers, observatory, oil pumps, comms array, earth drill, ??? Who knows?

Some Blazing Sun Scouts to give you an idea of size.

I painted them brass then gave them a brown wash then a sort of dry brush with brass then highlighted with gold. Wasn't actually as quick as it sounds.
When you capture an objective in the game the card you receive is either a bankable one for use later or an instant effect type. When our group used these in a game we got a few surprises when some objectives turned out to be booby traps which resulted in Raging Fires on board ships. DOH!

Cheers from Brendon

Dystopian Version 2. Looks good!

Wahoo! Got an awesome delivery. The new Dystopian wars 2 Player Shadow Hunter box. I went halves with a fellow gamer and as I ordered the big fat rule book he will keep the rule book from this box. Hopefully that will be delivered soon.
Apart from some very cool looking new models and a rule book this game box comes with a token sheet and some very nice Island, rocks and sandbar terrain and Tactical Card decks x 2. The terrain is only flat cardboard but they will be very useful for the game. Operation Shadow Hunter is an A5 booklet with 7 missions that introduce the game. Each mission escalates the rules learnt and models used until the final mission uses all the models. Good for first timers.

Mandatory out of focus photo of some box contents.

Apart from the excitement of new miniatures which include a Ghosted version (clear resin) of a Japanese terror ship it's flicking through the rules that will keep me occupied in my spare moments. I am really liking the new rules. I could say rule changes but I will try and adopt the mindset that this is the rules of a new game and not amendments/improvements. Here is some random bits of Info that any veteran Dystopian players (or new ones) may like to see.

Dice. Red, Blue and Black
Red explode...6 = 2 hits and roll another dice (only Red dice explode). Blue...6 = 2 hits. Black...6 = 1 hit.

Tactical Cards. Each player creates a deck of 16 before the game. The cards have a value rating (VPs). You may swap Generics for Non-Generic but must be equal in value. No repeated cards allowed which is a balance consideration. You make a hand from them during each turn. Hand size depends on agreed point value of the game.

Force Build. Main Force and Strategic Force (up to 40%).
Strategic squadrons (Not Large or Massive models) must be assigned as...Advance, Flank and Reserve.
The effect is on deployment zone and when they are deployed (Turn 1,2 or 3 or before Main Force).
Not just a game of deploy everything then start moving and blasting. I like this a lot but it's going to take some practice with all the percentage requirements that you can't exceed. No biggie really....just Math.

Dodgy photo of a nice diagram in copyrighted rule book.

Crew Types. Models have 8 Crew Types. Elite is best and Non-Combatant is the worst.

Ace. Support Aircraft Wings (those tiny flyer token squadrons) can have an Ace (costs points). The Ace gets a re-roll and can have a dogfight duel with opposing Aces. Sounds ace to me. It is also required for an Ace to stand out so it's a painting opportunity as well.



So in a nutshell. Fricken awesome! Looking forward to trying this game out with perhaps a few small force games then escalating to an upsize versus the various Darwin Dystopian Naval players. I consider all the old models as new from now on as the point costs and stats have been amended as have the weapon/generator options in many cases.

Cheers from Brendon and happy hunting in a Dystopian world.