Dystopian wars: Plain planes?

The Dystopian wars game system combines land, naval and air forces in a strange Victorian steampunk world of combat.

My foray into this world started with the purchase of the Federated States of America starter set. A couple of days ago I completed a trial paint of one of the small plane tokens.

I very much enjoyed this experience and wanted to get on and paint the rest of the planes...

So here goes...

The tokens represent a small collection of planes. The game then combines these in sets of 1, 3, 4 or 5 into squadrons. The starter set comes with 10 of these plane tokens and every fleet gets to use 10 fliers for free so it feels important to get these painted up quickly. Afterall free is my favourite cost...

You get a choice of ways to split the planes into different squadrons, so out of ignorance I hve elected to go for what the game calls "composition 1". In other words I have split the planes into groups based on the first thing I saw.

I aim to identify each squadron by the colour of their wing tips.

I hope you like them. I have tried to maintain a cloud effect and the Eiffel tower (isk) side pattern..

Blue Squadron

Red Squadron

Yellow Squadron (recon)

Dystopian Wars: FSA plane colour trial

After opening up the post at the weekend to uncover my Dystopian wars, Federated states of America (FSA) battle set, it didn't take me long to get out my paints and have a trial at painting one of the paint tokens.

It is difficult to overstate just how small these things are. The bases are 20mm square, which means each plane is just 8mm wide. Can't get too much detail on a planes that size.

To Keep it simple, I have decided to go with a single colour scheme, and indicate the different squadrons by the wing tip colours. I decided to go with green and a simple wash. To accentuate the front of the plane I have given it a brass / bronze colour. 
I have tried to paint the base so that it looks like the planes are flying through clouds. The edge is then painted so that the pattern looks as much like the Eiffel tower type of girder arrangement as I could get it.

The base looks quite speckled here, but in reality that it is not the case, I might just have got a little dust on the base when I photographed it.

I am quite happy with this and will continue with the rest of the bases....

New game excitement: Dystopian games

Very little beats the excitement of starting a new game system. So when the postman delivered a box full of fresh new toys I couldn't wait to get the packing open and my hands on new game goodness.

Every now and then our club will run a little tired of the current games we are playing and will reach out for the thrill of something new.

The game is Dystopian Wars from Spartan games. Spartan games are a company not too far from my home town of Exeter, and have grown a great reputation through games such as unchartered seas and Firestorm Armada. I choose to buy the rule, pack of cards and the starter set for Federated States of America.

The Rule book is soft back and looks to be printed to a good standard with quite a few colour plates. I have not read the rules through yet, but first impressions are that the layout could do with a little tinkering. However it is a nicely presented book.

The book comes complete with a plastic coated fast play card.

I also brought the random cards. Although I have not looked at these in detail, there appear to be around 50 odd random events or buffs which will change the way your force work.

Then comes the bit I'm most interested in, the box of figures..

When you open the box you find that the figures are tightly wrapped in bubble wrap which are then pushed into the box. Its like playing pass the parcel.

I have photographed the figures next to a British 50 pence piece for scale. The bags contain..

10 plane tokens..

Two bombers...

and 13 ships of varying size.

With their bits and pieces...

The ships and the plane tokens are cast in polyurethane resin and the detail on these are to a VERY VERY high standard. True there is a reasonable amount of flash, but this was cleaned off in under 10 minutes and I am left with a set of models which are all screaming "paint ME first".

Time to abandon all other projects and start this one!

I only hope the game plays as good as the ships look.

Now where are my paints?