Dystopian Wars - Empire of the Blazing Sun (Base Fleet)

(Originally posted on the Home Page, December 5, 2011)
I've been going pretty hard collecting and painting Napoleonics for about a solid year now and I have to say that I've gotten a little burned-out. So I thought I'd break up the routine and recharge the batteries with something completely unrelated. 

A few weeks ago Sylvain hosted a game of 'Firestorm Armada' to which I really enjoyed the simple mechanics of the rules and afterwards I thought I'd check out the Spartan Games' website to see what else they had. Well, on top of 'Firestorm Armada' they also have a Victorian era steampunk game called 'Dystopian Wars'. I've always been drawn to the funky brass-meets-Jules-Vern esthetic of steampunk and thought I'd try out some of the models as they looked quite neat.

Well, at these things go, the idea of 'a few models' promptly went out the window and I instead picked up all four fleets direct from Spartan Games through one of their promotions. The main castings are resin with white metal details. The casting quality of both the resin and metal is very good. Crisp, clean with no unsightly bubbles or excessive flash. 

So, here are the first group out of the painting gate - some ships from the Japanese Fleet, or as the game calls them The Empire of the Blazing Sun. These ships are quite stylized in their design, something along the lines of floating art-deco locomotives, which I think has a great look. For a paint scheme I decided to mimic some of the turn-of-the-century Japanese woodblock prints I've seen which depict the naval battles of the Sino-Japanes and Russo-Japanese wars. I quite like the high contrast between the light grey hulls and the black and red accents. Here are a few examples:

This stuff is really so easy to paint after doing a zillion 28mm Napoleonics. Its basically a lot of drybrushing, a mid-tone wash, pick out the details and you're done. First shown below are a couple of the smallest ships, the Frigates.

Two of the Frigates.

Then the mainstays of the Fleet, the Cruisers.

Three Cruisers. Those structures on the top and rear of the hull are rocket turrets.

Then an example of one of the Capital Class ships, a Battleship.

A Battleship with some sort of a trippy shield generator thingy on the stern.

...and a photo of the whole Fleet as it stands now.

Next up will be the British fleet which I'm still mulling over the colour scheme...