The Battlecruiser sails

Seemingly everywhere is now sold out of Dystopian Wars stuff. Well the cheaper places are. I picked this Battle Cruiser up at one of the more expensive shops here in Hamburg, Spieleland. I have to admit I am really enjoying painting these. It is nice to have a break from the Warmachine stuff finally. While I look forward to getting back to them once Wrath looms closer for now I am concenrating on getting my Prussian Fleet ready.

Friday Showcase - Thunderers

Here is another of my Battle for Skull Pass regiments. I have a full metal regiment of these guys somewhere too but those were painted in my old blue and white colour scheme. These twenty doughty warriors were prepared for a tournament a long time ago and they have featured in almost every battle I have fought with my Dwarves since. For these I just went with red rather than the mixed red and green scheme I had been using. I guess this was due to the fact I had painted the Clansmen from Battle for Skull Pass fully in green. The strong gold helps tie them together well.

I made a funky movement tray for this regiment as I often found that I needed them deployed in a line rather than as a block. Having them in trays as you can see here let me quickly and relatively easily reform the regiment. Thankfully in eight edition I can now fire in two ranks so there is no need at all for me to use a really long thin line like I used to sometimes just to get all the shots I wanted/needed. I still cant decide if I should expand this regiment out to thirty guys or not. Eight edition suggests I should but I really haven't the desire to paint more...

Islands in the Sun...

So I can't just play Dystopian Wars on the open sea. Nope that would be boring so I deciede to make some island terrain. I still haven't fully committed to playing the game so i am not really sure why I am making terrain. I guess I just like to do it!

How to make your own dream island:
Islands are not hard to make. They are hard to get to look correct though. Unlike terrain at other scales here you are creating an entire geographical feature and for it to look its best it has to look natural. I am far from an expert but I know there are only certain ways in which an island will form and the best looking islands will keep this consideration in mind. For this island I decided for an outlying rock with a small and slightly eroded bay. I collected up a few blank cd's recently and these make excellent if a little restrictive bases. I would love something a little larger but finding something like these thats cheap and durable isn't easy. Also I don't have to cut the cd's to shape they are fine as they are!

I started off with the rocks. I can't really call these cliffs as they are according to scale only six meters high on average. I used some torn pieces from a cork placemat. These make the best rocks for terrain in general. They take paint well and they are really nicely textured. I framed the island with these building up some height in places so that the piece is a little more visually interesting. I left the bay area free from rocks.I then filled in the gap with some air drying modelling clay. I made sure to wet the top of the piece down a good but and to smooth the individual chunks together while doing this. I find it cuts down a little on the surface cracking. It won't help with shrinkage but thats not to big of a problem on this smaller scale. When I am doing pieces like this I tend ot use lots of small chunks of clay. When these dry they separate and can leave cracks in the surfec which are annoying to fill. Wetting the top and smoothing it down with your finger, while messy, manages to stop this a lot.

Once all this is dry I start flocking the piece. I use a fine sand with a few small stones thrown in. I think it is similar if not the same as what GW sell. I do this in sections to minimise any possibility of warping. Thats the fastest way to ruin a terrain piece in my opinion. Once the flock is dry I gave everything a black spray as undercoat and to seal the piece. I manage to spray paint the window at this point so I was in a lot of trouble once that got noticed! I guess thats one of the dangers of spraying out a window. For painting I used grey on the rocks, pretty simple with some Badab Black in the end to wash it down and make if look different from the sea. The land was Scorched Brown with a Bestial Brown drybrush over the top. The sea was painted grey with a lighter grey closer to the cliffs. Some green was added further towards the rim. Over all this I gave the base a blue wash. This gave a nice light blue tint to everything. Finally I added the waves with an old brush I had. Its just straight white over everything.

So thats how I made my island. I am not sure what I should do with it now but maybe some others will pick the game up too?

And now for Something Completely Different!

So I have been busy... and not with either Warmachine or Warhammer. The Miniwar Hamburg club have been talking about starting with Dystopian Wars and so last week when I was in the games store I decided to take the plunge and see what all the fuss was about. I had heard the D6 Generation's review and it raised my interest. So rather than buy everything at once as my collectible habits have conditioned me to do I decided to get something small and see how it paints up. So I ended up with a packet of Arminius Class Frigates and the sudden urge to paint. Thankfully the urge to paint lasted until I got home!

How to Paint Dystopian Wars Ships:
These models are resin and that means problems. I haven't really worked with resin before other than some very small jobs and I certainly haven't painted it before. Plastic and metal are really easy to paint and don't really need any special considerations. Resin does and it is nasty stuff to get in your lungs. So wear a mask... you have been warned! Examining the models closely I noced very little problems with flash. The models seem to be sculpted and cast in a very simple manner. I am assuming a one sided mould is used with the top open. This means that the only flash you should get is along the bottom of the model which would sit at the top of the mould. The fact that there are no other mould lines anywhere on the model supports this. That meant very little clean up. I basically broke off the flakes that you can see in the picture above. Simple, just the way I like it! I was worried a little about the mould release agent that is usually used for resin. It can bubble the paint you put over by producing a gas. I have seen a lot of Forgeworld models ruined by this. So these ships went into some warm soapy water for a few minutes to ensure that none remained. I didn't scrub them as I am not sure how strong the resin is. The warm soapy water seemed to have done the trick however as there was no bubbling.

So the first thing I noted as being a problem is the lack of a base. I have seen these models based but I didn't have the material to do so and seemingly it can cause a problem in the game when ships get up close. So to paint these I needed to glue them onto cocktail sticks. Two to a stick made it pretty easy to handle them and paint at the same time.Having the ships mounted on the sticks also gave me the benefit of having something else to hold them by. Three pieces of foam from old blisters held the ships while I was doing the detail work. As a basecoat I used German Field Green from Vajello. I am slowly phasing out my GW paints so needing this colour gave me an excuse to buy other Vajello paints to shore up my dwindling supplies. When I painted the basecoat on I noticed that the models don't have many flat surfaces. The armoured plates on the side of the models are heavily textured. I assume this is intentional on behalf of the designers. I at first thought it was a reaction between the paint and the resin. This will be annoying on larger models but for now it is fine on these small ones. I picked out the wooden sections with Snakebite Leather.A black wash over this picked up all the texture on the model nicely. I then added some details like the Imperial Flag and the Iron Cross. These took a little time to figure out but I was able to manage them easily enough after some trial and error. I highlighted everything that seemed to need it. The wooden sections on the ships got some Snakebite Leather mixed with Bleached bone. This brightened them up a lot and gave a good contrast to the darker green of the ship. The metal plates got a selective highlight of German Field Grey and Sea Green. This just picked out the raised struts and armoured areas. I got fancy then and numbered the ships too... I don't know if this is needed in the game but it can't hurt.

Dreadstone Blight - fail

I don't know what the problem is these last few weeks. My many years of modelling have failed me a second time. I don't know what the deal is with Dreadstone Blight. Try as I might I can't get it to go together. I shaved the pieces back so far that there are gaps visible between them. Glueing them to the base piece just doesn't work. The pieces seem warped somewhat. This causes the curve to be off a little and due to this the walls are not perfectly circular. Well at least circular enough for the floor pieces to fit in. I actually got so annoyed I through everything back in the box for another day. Maybe I will try this out again over the weekend.... though it has been so frustrating I really am struggling to find motivation for this. It should be simple... It looks simple.

Has anyone else had the same problems? I am scouring the net at the moment for a guide on assembling the piece but there doesn't seem to be one. Maybe I should do one if I can get the damned thing together at all. I really am dreading when I have to deal with the Witchfate Tor... thats going to be hell.