Dystopian Wars Aussies

Well, that took far longer than I had intended, but I completed my fleet a few weeks ago, just in time for a local tournament hosted by Adam Stephens over at Clockwerk Warriors.  The tourney was a blast, and the details are available on his blog, as are a few images of some of the fleets. 

With this project completed I've turned my focus to completing the last few of my Heavy Gear models, as well as some long neglected 40K armies.  Hopefully I'll be able to hunker down and get some done quickly. 

Austrailians Ahoy!

So Imaginary wars got my Aussie fleet in on Friday, I just picked them up today because there was massive flooding in my neck of the wood including several States of emergency declared.  things have mostly calmed down now but the damage is yet to be determined. 

On the the models though, Spartan Games have done an incredible job on these, and the assemble is going smooth.  all of the turrets and drop ins are smooth, and there has been minimal flash to clean.  Magnetizing these is going quite smoothly due to a polarization tool I made.  I cant remember where I saw it to give credit, but I took two plastic sticks and drilled space for two magnets. placed opposite polarity magnets in these holes, and then labeled them body and weapon.  This had made it easy to insure that all my turrets and hulls share the correct polarity.  Once I have a chance I will take some photos and prime them.

Fire Support and Thunderhammer

Just purchased a tripod so I can take photos of models that aren't just a blur, so I figured I should upload some completed Minis.  I just finished painting and sealing my fire support squad, and had to reseal the thunderhammer due to some light frosting, so I thought they would be a perfect test as I already promised a photo of the thunderhammer.

Next up is starting my recon squad.  Had a nice break in the rain and a good low humidity so I was able to prime them.

This is Sparta(n games)!

One of the major consequences of the heavy gear league was meeting several new gamers, and getting to watch some other games that occurred on the same night.  On nights where no Heavy Gear players showed up, or they had pre-arranged matches, I stayed and watched what was happening at the other tables.  This was my first real intro to Flames of War, a very popular game based in WW2.  While it is an interesting game, and I highly recommend anyone that enjoys historical games to check it out, my attention was caught by a different game, Firestorm Armada by Spartan Games.  It is a incredibly interesting game about space combat.  But more than Firestorm Armada I was interested in a different game by them, Dystopian Wars.

I'm gonna borrow a description of the game from the man who introduced me to it, and whose blog I highly recommend you read.  Imagine WW2 happened in the 1800's, with weird science.  The game takes a combined arms approach, having aerial, naval and land components.  The first game I saw was a naval battle between the Covenant of Antarctica, and a force I can't remember, but I was captivated by how the game worked and the design of the models.  Last week I had the fortune of playing a 2v2 intro game with myself playing a small Antarctica fleet, allied with the Russians, and the Prussians and French on the other team.  While we finished early due to time constraints, I was sold on the game, and have placed a order for the Australian naval fleet, one of the new forces in the game. +Adam Stephens 

Beginnings

For several reasons I have decided to start up a blog to help keep track of my gaming and painting.  I've been a 40K player for almost a decade now, and while I still enjoy the game, I don't tend to play it much anymore, so, inspired by the community at my local FLGS, Imaginary Wars, I decided to start playing some new game systems.  I started with Dream Pod 9's excellent "Heavy Gear."  They had decided to start a growth league for HG, spanning several months.  It is a small scale squadron based game, with a lot more tactical depth than I was used to from 40K.  And it was considerably cheaper to get into.  This game has been around for many years, and has gone though many revisions, streamlining and simplifying the game.the sheer amount of factions and models that exist for the game is rather impressive, and to see the variance of different mech designs they have is awesome.  Just for reference, they call their mechs "gears."

I decided to Pick up a starter set for the Northern army.  This included the rulebook needed to play, and 2 squads of gears, a fire support squad, meant to sit back and provide heavy fire at a range, and a strike squad, an elite squad of fast, well armed gears to get in at a closer range.  To add more points to my force I picked up a Thunderhammer, which is a walking artillery piece.  This is easily my favorite model in the game that I have seen, and photos will be getting posted of it soon.  This brought my army up to 800 pts just in time for that level of play.  The last level of the league was 1000 pts, and to get to it I purchased a recon squad.  As the name implies, it is a lightly armored, fast moving squad of gears, which have the ability to spot for other models using target designators.  Unfortunately I was not able to make it in during the last few weeks of the league, and as such was not able to use them until a few weeks ago.  While the league is now over it remains a fairly popular game at the store and has a small, but regular group.