I came to the Dystopian Wars party a little late, jumping on board right around the time v1.1 was released. In fact it was entirely by accident that I discovered this marvellous little game in the first place. Last year the chaps and I went down to the excellent Burton Doubles Field of Glory Tournament (Badcon 2011) and took the opportunity whilst there to visit the Excellent Spirit Games. This is a proper games store, a game store for gamers and I highly recommend a visit if you're anywhere near the area. I digress; while browsing about we came across the rather lovely looking models hanging in unassuming blister packs, and although we purchased other bits and bobs, but not these little resin ships, the seeds of a new collection were sown.
Very soon Spartan Games had some of my hard earned cash and I had some of their little models to paint up and play with. My friend took the Kingdom of Britannia (the British) and I took the Empire of the Blazing Sun (the Japanese) and we were soon running through a series of training games as we began to build our forces.
We're still making progress on our force-building and here's what I've got done so far.
6x Nakatsu class cruisers
6x Tanuki class gunships
2x Ika Mechanical squids (submerged bases not shown)
18x Uwatsu class frigates
Here's the Sokotsu class battleship. So far I've found it fairly underpowered against the British fleet, taking far more damage than it dishes out. It does add a solid backbone to the force though and running two of them seems to improve my force's options.
Next up is the Ika mechanical squid. This is slow, ponderous and spends the majority of most battles submerged. But it's my biggest killer and the unit my opponent fears the most. If these chaps get into boarding contact, there's not a ship on the British fleet that isn't wiped out in one action...Its the only thing i have that can touch that damned British Majesty class dreadnought.
This is the Nakatsu cruiser, a turkey of a ship for sure. Had i known that i wouldn't have gone for two basic boxed fleets that contain these dreadful ships. Its not so much that their armoury is in fixed channel, but its universally underpowered across all its statistics. Really not found much use for these vessels yet.
The far better option is the Tanuki gunship, which i upgraded to as soon as possible. Rugged, flexible, and effective.
Rounding out my surface fleet so far are these nasty little wasp-like ships, the Uwatsu frigates. they die in droves, but can dish out a lot of pain when used in massed swarms.
My surface fleet is also joined by a small but expanding air fleet. So far i've got 4 DFA-170 class bombers. I currently use them in two groups of two, but they operate much better in three's so i need a couple more to give my two groups. These are brutal aerial gladiators and seem able to easily take out the British 'tiny flyers' as well as lay down a lot of rocket and bomb pain on his surface ships.
I also have the obligatory assignment of 'tiny flyer' aeroplanes which i usually run as one group of fighters and one group of torpedo bombers. the Blazing Sun torpedo bombers are unusually effective having 'fast torpedoes' more likely to get through and damage the enemy ships.
In the pipeline I have a Tsukoyomi class war gyro (essentially a flying battleship), and another swarm of small ships, this time the super fast and hard to hit Fujin class corvettes. I'm thinking of expanding into an all-air fleet at some point...
The Spartan Dystopian Wars figures are a mix of resin and metal components are are exceptionally well sculpted and cast. Certainly everything I've seen so far is mercifully free of the 'bubbling' problem common to many resin models. The only issue I've had so far is their flying bases being a little tricky to assemble.
I chose a colour scheme based on the WWII Japanese aircraft scheme here:
I also felt the train-like appearance of the Blazing Sun ships somehow suited a green livery.
Painting the ships themselves is actually extremely easy and with some flat painting, washes and dry-brushing I got the whole fleet done so far in around 4 hours of painting.
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