I've decided to take a wee break from the Napoleonic insanity and do something completely different.
Sylvain and I tried out Spartan Games' Firestorm Armada several weeks ago which was good fun so I thought I'd check out both Uncharted Seas and Dystopian Wars as they use many of the same rules mechanics. Once I got a good look at some of the steampunk models for Dystopian Wars I knew that is what I wanted to try, so I went for it whole hog and purchased the starter fleets for Prussia, Britain, USA and Japan.
I decided to try the ships for The Empire of the Blazing Sun first as I had a few ideas of how I wanted to do them from seeing period Japanese woodblock prints.
These castings are quite stylized, kinda remiding me of the art-deco locomotives of the 1920's. First up are a few of the smallest ships, the frigates.
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| Two of the Frigates. |
Then the Meat and Potatoes of the Fleet, the hardworking cruisers.
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| Three cruisers. The structures on the top and rear of the hull are rocket pods. |
Here's an example of one of the Capital Class ships:
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| A Battleship. |
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| The brass disc pod on the stern is a shield generator... |
The colour scheme is pretty straightforward: I first primed the ships black as I was just too lazy to go out and buy grey primer. I 'lifted' the black basecoat by heavily drybrushing them with Codex Grey, then went over them again with a drybrush of Foundry Austrian White (C shade). I then washed the ships down with a coat of Delvan Mud and highlighted again with Austrian White. The red was GW Red Gore highlighted with Blood Red. The planking is Americana Sable Brown then inked with Flesh Wash and highlighted with Sable Brown again.
Very nice work, Curt! What are the rules like? The ships remind me a little of GW's "Man-O-War" system from years back.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kevin. The rules are quite fun and easy to pick up. It has interleaved activations which we like (no IGOUGO silliness).
ReplyDeleteThere are only 4 weapon range bands (each at 8") to keep things simple.
Every unit has a Damage Rating and a Critical Rating. If you get hits equal/exceeding the Damage Rating then the model loses a Hull Point. If its a particularly heavy attack and there are enough hits to equal/exceed the Critical Rating then the target suffers 2 Hull points of damage AND you get to roll on the Critical Chart (which can get pretty nasty).
We quite like the 'exploding 6's' which is basically all natural sixes cause two hits and you get to re-roll them again with, of course, the chance of another 6 with the same result and so on. It means that there is always a chance that a low-powered unit (like a Destroyer or bomber) could potentially really put the hurt on a capital-class ship.
The air rules are also pretty straightforward which is good as the carriers can send out swarms of the buggers.
Finally, there are optional 'hammer & screw cards' that you can incorporate into the game to play on your units or your opponent(s) which can really shake things up.
We're going to have a game tomorrow so if I remember to have my camera handy I may put up a battle report on my blog and crosspost here.
Cheers,
Curt
Wow, great work! How big are those ships, anyway?
ReplyDeleteThanks Dallas! The frigates are quite wee: probably 35-40mm long. The Capital ships can get quite large though, going up to around 150mm long. The battleship shown is probably around 110mm. All in all I think they are sitting in that 1:600 range.
ReplyDeleteIf you get a chance check out the Sky Fortresses - the designs for the Prussians and Blazing Sun are pretty darn cool. I picked them all up (whore that I am) but thought I'd leave them until I get the meat-and-potatoes stuff done first.
Dude - that is frigging cool!!
ReplyDeleteLots of painted detail on such small models. Great job!
ReplyDelete