Great game, great community, great models, living ruleset, unreal level of developer-customer interaction. My current main game, wish I could play every day.
Side note, incase it was not painfully obvious, both the core rule book AND the orbats got updated on the same day, so make shure to download them.
As sutch the product: Rules & Gubbins is basicy invalid even tough it is still beeing sold. The rules book is outdated and the victory & valour deck included is invalid as the V&V cards got an update in july.(This goes for the Hunt for the Prometheus Two Player Starter Set allso.) The only products left that has value in the R&G box is the plastic templates, dices and condition tokens, but if money is an issue then the templates can be downloaded and printed, the game dices can be replaced with standard dices and the condition tokens can be replaced with anything that can be written on and placed next to the ships.
Unit info in the booklet that is included in all battlefleet boxes is allso naturaly invalid.
To say the V&V deck is invalid because two cards got an errata of 1 sentence is a bit disingenuous. There's also a 5 and a half page rulebook errata pdf that's pretty easy to assimilate, as well as a fully updated rulebook pdf, for free.
There's definitely a reprint coming very soon but neither is a bad purchase if you're itching to play right now. You're gonna want more than one set of dice anyway.
Yeah, the V&V deck got a super small errata of two rewordings, so saying that this one is worthless, would mean the entire book publication of GW is worthless at this point. But yeah, buyer beware for now.
There is a heavy indication that the rulebook will actually be available as a physical product really soon, so I expect an updated version of the Gubbinz set to go along with it. It's 2 years old by now, so an update is probably in order.
On the flipside, if you don't care about any of the rules, you might want to keep your eyes peeled for any future deals on both Gubins set for dice/templates/decks or Hunt for the Prometheus. There's also new artwork for something called "Sturginium skies" with new model previews showing up on their social media, so they are definitely planning something big for the game with physical products too.
Very good point that Gubbinz and Hunt might get discounted real soon and Hunt is already worth buying even if you throw 1 side in the bin. Starting Commonwealth and/or Enlightened might be stupid cheap for a while.
Other than the sheer amazement of all the rules dropping at the same time (no waiting years for codexes), the Orbats also have rules for all kinds of upcoming models, particularly the aerial units planned for each faction.
To be fair GW only shies away from doing that now because the 3rd party market (now augmented by 3d printing as well) would make stuff before GW could get it out the door. Heck there are already squats out there now!
Dwars and most other makers can show advanced stuff that might even be a year or more away because, basically no one bothers to make extensive 3rd party models for them.
Yeah, GW can't release something now without 3D artists copying it... But then again, their high prices are also something that makes the 3D print route more appealing.
Heck, "standard game 2000p GW armies" now hover between €400 and €600 investments. That alone makes it worth considering getting 3D prints.
A "standard game DW fleet" is something that sets you can around €100 to 180 including dice and tokens. I would not consider the hassle of getting a budget 3D printer to save a bit on that. There are some 3D prints out there geared towards Dystopian Wars though, but they are mostly for terrain. I embellished my terrain with those at least:
The reason theres so few DWars/non-40k 3d printable ripoffs out there is because for those people who make money piggybacking on GWs IP there just isn't any demand or money to be made by by doing so, and for those who make free stls of GW designs many of them understand that Warcradle and others are much smaller businesses and the future of those games and companies would be jeopardized by knock-offs... so they just don't make them out of principle.
Interesting comments about the possibility of a new rulebook/gubbins set, was thinking of finally taking the plunge but I guess I'll hold off.
3D printing has its own troubles. The Patreon model (now also a tribes one that is similar and runs through My Mini Factory) basically helped encouraged an insane race to the bottom in value of an STL. There are firms putting out as many models as GW might in a 1/4 period in 1 month - every single month - in STL form for about £10 per month.
So there's big pressure and competition for 3D printing to go for what's "hot" to sell. Ship combat games are just not "hot". So those doing it are often doing it as side projects so they grow slowly and steadily but aren't a big market interest.
D Wars was always pretty much on its own in the market even back in its most popular periods. Heck even before that we'd only really had Man O War for a short span of time.
Right now I'm aware of only one other firm doing a ship combat game in a fiction setting; meanwhile STL wise I know 1 person doing fiction ships
That is true. Dystopian Wars is pretty much on its own in the wargaming niche. There's not a great wealth of fantasy/steampunk naval games (perhaps the recently Kickstarted Leviathans game).
But I suppose that's why I like it so much as I do. It's not trying to be a Warhammer/40k/killteam clone and is unapologetically its own thing. And to me, that's part of the appeal. It doesn't feel like a "store brand Warhammer" thing. That's just not something I'm interested in, because I already have plenty of original Warhammer.
Dunno if I agree with that, theres been plenty, just none of them last very long.
Man O War (AFAIK the OG in the genre)
Pirates of the Spanish Main (which started out as being questionably historical but quickly added asian revolutionaries, ghosts, sea monsters, steampunk mercs, and vikings
Uncharted Seas (which was replaced by Dystopian Wars because Spartan never learned how to multitask)
Dreadfleet (which disappointed everyone by inexplicably and confusingly *NOT* being Man O War)
original Dystopian Wars (which died but was resuscitated by Warcradle)
original Leviathans (which was announced before Dystopian Wars but released after, and then disappeared because Catalyst couldn't get their gak together)
Mantics Armada (kinda Man O War 2.0 thematically but not really in terms of rules)
nu-Dystopian Wars (which is seemingly doing okay but struggling to grow)
nu-Leviathans (we'll see)
plus a number of smaller no-name generic rulesets/Man O War re-writes/failed kickstarters
See if we take off things that were made by Spartan Games that really just leaves Mantic's Armada and Leviathans. Mantic's Armada was the one other I mentioned (that I couldn't recall the name of); meanwhile Leviathans never really went anywhere before and I get a feeling its just way more niche than Dystopian Wars or Man O War ever were.
Meanwhile Dreadfleet I don't really count because that really was more of a one and done boxed game rather than a fleet battle game. Which was a huge part of the problem. Super awesome ships, but only 1 per race. No fleets, no expansions, no additional content; just one and done. It was very much more a boardgame with models instead of a wargame.
In the end Dystopian Wars is pretty much on its own. Lets also not forget it never really failed as a game, it was more the company that failed as a firm through multiple avenues. Far as I was aware the original game always sold wel - save in periods when Spartan was focusing on another game and left it to languish.
We can hope that as the new Dystopian Wars will pick up steam as game groups get more active and the social side of wargaming basically rebuilds itself. There's no denying that a lack of events, conventions and clubs most certainly hurts the growth of new games
aside from a steampunk vs. fantasy theme, is DW considerably different from Mantic's Armada in game play and style? I had the opportunity for a demo this weekend but the guy had to go to a wedding. We were both equally disappointed and horrified for him.
Overread wrote: See if we take off things that were made by Spartan Games that really just leaves Mantic's Armada and Leviathans. Mantic's Armada was the one other I mentioned (that I couldn't recall the name of); meanwhile Leviathans never really went anywhere before and I get a feeling its just way more niche than Dystopian Wars or Man O War ever were.
Meanwhile Dreadfleet I don't really count because that really was more of a one and done boxed game rather than a fleet battle game. Which was a huge part of the problem. Super awesome ships, but only 1 per race. No fleets, no expansions, no additional content; just one and done. It was very much more a boardgame with models instead of a wargame.
In the end Dystopian Wars is pretty much on its own. Lets also not forget it never really failed as a game, it was more the company that failed as a firm through multiple avenues. Far as I was aware the original game always sold wel - save in periods when Spartan was focusing on another game and left it to languish.
We can hope that as the new Dystopian Wars will pick up steam as game groups get more active and the social side of wargaming basically rebuilds itself. There's no denying that a lack of events, conventions and clubs most certainly hurts the growth of new games
You forgot about Pirates of the Spanish Main by Wizkids.
Shrapnelsmile wrote: aside from a steampunk vs. fantasy theme, is DW considerably different from Mantic's Armada in game play and style? I had the opportunity for a demo this weekend but the guy had to go to a wedding. We were both equally disappointed and horrified for him.
I would say the two are fairly different, Armada is based on the Black Seas ruleset from Warlord, and is very focused on Age of Sail style maneuver and combat, and so has rules and mechanisms relating to a ships orientation relative to the wind, and a lot of play revolves around maneuvering with that in mind (in fact, the order of activation is based on "weather gauge" - meaning that ships will activate across the table based on how close they are to the "point of origin" for the wind - which can change from turn to turn - some/all of these wind rules are advanced/optional rules in Armada whereas they are core rules in Black Seas. ), whereas Dystopian Wars doesn't really have the same concern. In terms of combat the rules aren't too different from one another, weapons in both fall into categories/types that dictate their range/performance, but whereas Dystopian Wars uses proprietary d6s, Black Seas (and I assume Armada) uses generic D10s (though they recommend color coding so that you can differentiate how many of each type of weapon is firing in a given volley). When firing in Black Seas (again, I assume also in Armada) you have to choose to aim high or low, high means you're targeting sails and masts, low means you're targeting hull - no such distinction exists in DW. In Armada, 10s to-hit score crits (note, the math in Armada is reversed from Black Seas, in Black Seas 1s are crits 10s are misses, in Armada the reverse is true) - in Dystopian Wars, the equivalent of a "6" is basically an exploding die, i.e. you get to roll an additional die into the attack pool. etc. etc. etc. At the end of the day they are both games played with dice and tiny ships, so in that sense they are similar, but how each game goes about figuring out how these things interact is different.
Shrapnelsmile wrote: aside from a steampunk vs. fantasy theme, is DW considerably different from Mantic's Armada in game play and style? I had the opportunity for a demo this weekend but the guy had to go to a wedding. We were both equally disappointed and horrified for him.
I haven't played Armada per se, but I played Black Seas, and Amada is the same system with magic bolted on. I found Black Seas, while having satisfying sailing/wind mechanics, to be incredibly dull as even a perfectly lined up shot will just chip away something like 10% of the target and you end up with this excruciatinlgy slow game of circling the table trying to line up more shots than the enemy. From what I've seen of Armada on youtube it's about the same gak. IMHO Armada sculpts also look like happy meal toys.
DW is almost the reverse, firepower is brutal and fire arcs more forgiving, most of the time your only worry is if you can line up an extra broadside at a different target, you main guns are probably at max effect on most rounds. Maneuvering is also pretty well done but of course there's no wind to worry about. Its own weak point is that it takes a long time to resolve attacks, you are throwing buckets of proprietary dice and often you have to count how many of each of the 6 different symbols you rolled. This eats up time and makes the game last fewer rounds and so less movement gets done. I would also say ships move relatively slow compared to how quick they die, so to a spectator passing by every hour the game can look pretty static, with fleets just getting smaller as they crawl straight forward.
In fairness that's kind of what a sea battle is expected to be. However with huge titans with close combat weapons, chainsaw submarines and air units (which I suspect some will come with bombs!) I think you'll see forces get more up close and personal.
There's also a natural evolution most games go through where armies start small and steadily grow larger as the core market get more models and want to use them and as factions get more diverse rosters and, again, players want to use that diversity.
Heck games that last long enough can go through ups and downs as the core company shifts focus over time (bigger and bigger as they focus on the core players; adding in smaller default army sizes when they want to focus on newbies and breaking down the barrier of entry)
Shrapnelsmile wrote: aside from a steampunk vs. fantasy theme, is DW considerably different from Mantic's Armada in game play and style? I had the opportunity for a demo this weekend but the guy had to go to a wedding. We were both equally disappointed and horrified for him.
There are players who end up surprised at how deadly the game can be... As monster volleys can cause horrendous amounts of damage in one go. The big smashy robots also do big smashy robot things and are pure alpha strike units.
But then again, the designer recently said (on the FB group) that the game is designed to have roughly 8 units a side that are not supposed to be slugging it out in a 5 turn uneventful type of game. The whole Dystopian age setting is kind of about humanity discovering devastating technology and not knowing how to use it responsibly.
It's also a game with alternate activations. It can take a while to sort particularly big dice pool in the first 2 rounds,but that quickly dwindles away as you progress through the game... And because it's alternate activations, you are never stood there doing nothing at all during the game for too long.
It's also a game with alternate activations. It can take a while to sort particularly big dice pool in the first 2 rounds,but that quickly dwindles away as you progress through the game... And because it's alternate activations, you are never stood there doing nothing at all during the game for too long.
I recently played my first game at 1k points, didn't really have much of an issue sorting the dice pools. It's basically the same time as picking out dice in 40k. I was pleasantly surprised, was expecting it to be worse.
We played the Fog mission, so everything had obscuring and was tougher than expected. Turns 1 and 2 just had single ships going down (Cruisers and Frigates) or getting crippled, while Turn 3 saw both fleets pretty decimated.
Maneuverability felt fine, but I was playing Alliance Levant so my fleet was probably at the upper end there.
Only real pain point that we noticed was flipping victory & valor cards to read both sides of the effect.
My first ever game was Fog too. Makes the dice rolls fast!
Wait till you get rolling 30 dice and sort them all out in piles because you have an ability to re-roll one symbol of your choice (like all blanks, or all single counters), then re-roll your Hits and Double Hits because you're attacking into a magnetic generator, then roll bonus dice from exploding hits
Wait till you get rolling 30 dice and sort them all out in piles because you have an ability to re-roll one symbol of your choice (like all blanks, or all single counters), then re-roll your Hits and Double Hits because you're attacking into a magnetic generator, then roll bonus dice from exploding hits
Levant with plenty of heat lances and solex. Like I said, not as bad as I expected.
I still have some models from old Dystopian Wars and have seen it in abundance since it was relatively popular around 2010-2012. Don't know much about the relaunch, but new sculpts seem more cartoonish than the old ones, although the old ones were Red Alert enough already.
There is definitely a large difference in aesthetics. The old sculpts, while fantastical (like the Statue of Liberty on hoverboard) had a style that somehow still looked like you were looking at a real world ship recognition guide while the new ones have a more toy-like chunkyness to them.
I think part of that is perhaps that the old were resin metal whilst the modern are nearly all plastic with a few resin. The shift to plastics might well mean that they've made certain details more chunky whilst other finer detailing is harder to achieve with plastics and thus appears less.
I also think it might be a difference in the style of 3D renders they use and that they don't put out enough physical photos of their models (Which is a fault I lay at the feet of a lot of model firms these days - heck whilst Infinity goes a bit overboard in the quality of paintwork they do at least show off most of hteir stuff as an actual model)
Overread wrote: I think part of that is perhaps that the old were resin metal whilst the modern are nearly all plastic with a few resin. The shift to plastics might well mean that they've made certain details more chunky whilst other finer detailing is harder to achieve with plastics and thus appears less.
I also think it might be a difference in the style of 3D renders they use and that they don't put out enough physical photos of their models (Which is a fault I lay at the feet of a lot of model firms these days - heck whilst Infinity goes a bit overboard in the quality of paintwork they do at least show off most of hteir stuff as an actual model)
Having painted with the last sets of plastics, the difference in fine detail is definitely there between their first sets of plastic sprues and the latest models... I don't think it's necessarily a limitation of plastics, but more a case of it being a relatively new medium for the company.
I would also like to see a lot more pictures of physical models (on tabletops) on their website to help newer players out getting an idea of what's out there. However, I don't think their release pipe-line (which seems to be way shorter compared to mammoth companies like GW) allows them to get boxes out with fully painted models on them. I do think Warcradle operates closer to the "6 months to a year between finalized design, mold and product" timeline as opposed to the 3-4 year window GW has.
Thing is they could still populate their website with painted models and a proper clear store and lore page per unit coupled with battle reports and battles and such.
I think whilst the community can do a lot, its good for a company to do their own stuff as well. Internal stuff can achieve a standard and it at least is easy to find; community level stuff depends where on the community you interact if there is any and can also vary widely in quality and reliability. Someone might do a fantastic series of painting and battle reports and then move on with life and other interests.
And its not just WC, too many model firms today I feel rely too heavily on renders and not enough paintwork and photos.
Agreed on that front. The DW website does a decent job explaining the who and why of the factions, but not what they look like, besides the box cover art.
lord_blackfang wrote: Agreed on that front. The DW website does a decent job explaining the who and why of the factions, but not what they look like, besides the box cover art.
Looks like they took the feedback to heart and included pictures of those ships that are already released. Some are shots of the plastic models if the Studio hasn't painted up a particular variant yet.
....and in the same step, some orbats got changed again.
Commonwealth aka got a visual overhaul of its orbat and new special rules and battlefleet rules + some new models (like the Alexeyev Class flagship)
so might be time to check if your factions orbat has changed, (yet again.......)
Everything but Union, Enlightened, and Alliance have been updated. Union should be next (hopefully next week), then enlightened still this year. Alliance will be waiting for a new release next year before their orbat gets an update.
art... forget the art, 50-70% of the models in the smaller factions dont even have a model yet, cant even make some of the battlefleets as the flagship models dont exist yet... they are falling way, way behind on model releases and that is prolly the biggest weakpoint of this game at the current state.
Apart from that, this orbat round is apperently in order to make one universal structure in the game.
Easier way to identify units and add unit limitations, but allso make one universal template for all battlefleets to follow regardless of faction to make the game easier to balance for the devs.
That's sort of how they've always done things. The next 6months-ish worth of releases are in the ORBAT as a "beta rules set" so people can try them out and send feedback, sometimes use older Spartan models (like the old chinese flying fortress) AND get an insight about what's to come for the faction in the near future.
Even though it does test your patience somewhat, I kind of like it... You do get a look into the near future and if there will be units that interest you (or if the faction goes down a path you don't really care about).
FrozenDwarf wrote: art... forget the art, 50-70% of the models in the smaller factions dont even have a model yet, cant even make some of the battlefleets as the flagship models dont exist yet... they are falling way, way behind on model releases and that is prolly the biggest weakpoint of this game at the current state.
That viewpoint is outright delusional. The game is getting an average of 2 new hardplastic sprues each month. I challenge you to find any game outside GW that can match that.
We're seeing unit entries added to orbats before the model is out. That's not falling behind on model releases. That's getting rules early.
Dystopian Wars only feels super slow because of how big Spartan was before they collapsed. So yeah many of the factions still have a long way to go to grow to their old sizes. That said whilst I feel like the art direction has gone a touch more deiseal than steam punk; Warcradle have solid designs and you can already see how they are improving working with the plastics with the new small turret designs and such.
I think 2023 will also be a big year because many of the core fleets now have a good portion of their core ships. This means that we should see far more airships and wild fancy and crazy science stuff coming through in the new year. Perhaps also with more things like civilian and shore batteries and the like.
But let's also not forget Spartan's models were not modular. Your faction started as 1 battleship, 1 cruiser, 1 frigate, then a carrier group of about the same variety, then maybe a third variant of each size class, then loop back to resculpt the first starter with new names.
The Spartan counts-as lists that used to be at the back of the Orbats were like two dozen entries per faction, but in practice half of that had never been available to buy at retail in any real capacity.
The same variety is more or less matched by any two Warcradle sprues with accompanying flagships.
And even if the doubled release pace only lasts until midyear we're talking about about 18 new sprues by next Xmas, that's doubling what's available now. Plenty to cover all the current entries with room to spare, probably even a plastic flagship here or there.
Yep Spartan had a lot of variety with individual resin ships. Which is why WC has been able to go pretty fast with the core ships in plastic and getting a lot of the range out really fast.
I think what's missing now is simply the cool fancy wild stuff. Ergo the fun wacky saturday morning kids cartoon superscience machines and such. And honestly we are starting to see that arriving here and there and its only going to get better from there on
That's coming for sure. The japanese plastic submarine, which we can infer from the orbat, has 6 builds including a magma beam cannon, a gundam carrier and a tentacled submarine (it has the same melee action as the squid colossus). And their new dreadnought has an anime beam cannon.
I've made a Faction guide for this game on YouTube for those people who want to get into the game, but are not quite sure what each faction is all about...
It's not black and white though and only a brief overview of each of the 8 major factions:
First up - Mod/op request that we change the thread title since this is appearing to be the generic thread for Dystopian Wars that isn't news in the Warcradle news thread.
Took the dive with some Sultanate recently, massive chunk of resin in the form of a huge carrier and some plastic support ships. End of the week/start of next I hope to have the new Battlefleet set (which is basically the original battlefleet plus a support sprue) and a portal ship.
Might not be a bad idea, there was never made any general thread for DW 3.0 but over the past 12 months, intrest in the game on this forum has increased.
Lets see if OP can change the title to a more general discussion term,(or if he asks a mod to lock this thread and make a brand new general discussion one) and if we get too many hobby pictures in here, one can allways make a seperate dedicated hobby thread.
I've adjusted the title to be more descriptive of what the game is all about (especially now with the latest kits, it seems fair to mention the sky warfare aspect).
And a general thread about it is indeed missing, so any discussion is good... Be it hobby projects, rules evolution or questions for people curious about the game.
The hardest part is waiting for new releases. January's wave officially releases this Friday, won't be in stores for another 1-2 weeks, and we've already seen gorgeous kits coming a month after that.
Am i the only one who is annoyed that they dont sell DW dices seperatly?
Yea i can buy countless of 11mm dices, i prolly have 100+ of them allready both regular and custom 6 design as i used to be a dice collector, but this game has designed their own dice symbols as defualt standard, and while there is a conversion chart for regular dices, not using value 6 for both exploding hit and 2 shields means house rules, to the point where it is just better to use the official dices.
To be fair with the new Battlefleet starter sets you can likely get a good many dice as most of those sets are going to be worth getting 2 of for most players since you get a nice big chunky resin battleship and most fleets have at least a few variations for them to field.
Granted not as good for established players and I agree it would be good of them to sell dice on their own not just in the gubbins set
lord_blackfang wrote: Yea I'm pushing 100 DW dice and I've never bought a Rules&Gubbins box
I only have the 16 or so that came with the rules and gubbins, i dont have any need for the 2p boxes as i have zero need for them (thats how it is when you are primarely a union collector), and the new 1p starters arrived 7 months too late for me.
Cant find any feedback section to WC either so i can suggest this to them. (all they have is feedback regarding mis-packed or damaged products and beta rules)
They've also added a visual ID chart at the end of each Orbat so you can work out exactly which ship is which.
Also fun news from the Discord - they've got plans for some beachhead missions and battles aiming for the end of the year. Already previewed a generic ground unit token.
We know that they are going to do the land game fully as a separate scale (set in internal Africa which is one of the big hotbeds for ground battles between all the playing nations and links up with WWE setting); but it seems like coastal and beachhead battles are going to be a thing. But as said this is end-of-the-year stuff so its a long way off.
This game has been on my radar for a while, aesthetically it's right up my alley. I need to look into the factions a little more and consider giving this game a go. Might grab one of the fleet starters, i've narrowed it down to Union/Commonwealth/Imperium.
On the official website I did have a slightly hard time figuring out the visual style of each faction at a glance. Putting a painted set of each faction starter above the faction description might help with that. The gallery is kind of a wall of images, a lot of which are blank.
Yeah they've not updated the gallery in a while; but there are also some ships on there which aren't yet released as teasers. Same for the Orbats (which mostly now do have ship ID's in them in a chart with visuals). There's always a few ships that aren't yet in models so that you can see the stats of what is coming up.
This game has been on my radar for a while, aesthetically it's right up my alley. I need to look into the factions a little more and consider giving this game a go. Might grab one of the fleet starters, i've narrowed it down to Union/Commonwealth/Imperium.
On the official website I did have a slightly hard time figuring out the visual style of each faction at a glance. Putting a painted set of each faction starter above the faction description might help with that. The gallery is kind of a wall of images, a lot of which are blank.
Commonwealth and Union are starter factions as they do not have a lot of complex rules, favors range, are not too slow and have higer survivability. Imperium sits in the middle ground, not to hard but not too easy either.
Models gallery will allways have more blanks then not, as WC makes rules 12-18 months ahead of their model production. It is allso a pdf rules set, so balance changes to the game and units happends very frequently. (like they do for all warcradles games)
I went with the Commonwealth, was pretty happy when unboxing the starter fleet. The resin ship was really clean and crisp, no mold slippage or excessive flash to clean off. It's obvious that magnetizing the weapons is a smart idea.
When it comes to the 2 large hovercraft (transport vs shockwave) i'm kinda baffled on that choice. Going to be a fun hobby project though.
Thargrim wrote: When it comes to the 2 large hovercraft (transport vs shockwave) i'm kinda baffled on that choice. Going to be a fun hobby project though.
For me the bridges more or less hold in place without glue, so can try both variants before committing.
Thargrim wrote: I went with the Commonwealth, was pretty happy when unboxing the starter fleet. The resin ship was really clean and crisp, no mold slippage or excessive flash to clean off. It's obvious that magnetizing the weapons is a smart idea.
When it comes to the 2 large hovercraft (transport vs shockwave) i'm kinda baffled on that choice. Going to be a fun hobby project though.
The new faction starter boxes are good, price is steep but in the long run it pays off. I jumped on the game before they existed..............
Yes, the resin work is of good quality, and the plastic casting has in practical terms 0 flashing. From a hobbyist aspect, it is a good range. (20 and 21 resin models might not have a perfect fit though, but it was their first years, so it is kinda natural to expect)
You dont need magnets for the gun turrets, blu-tack does the job just fine, i use it on all my ships and the turrets have not fallen off yet.
Remember, the pdf faction orbat rules takes priority over any printed faction rules, so allways use the pdf orbats.
Thargrim wrote: I went with the Commonwealth, was pretty happy when unboxing the starter fleet. The resin ship was really clean and crisp, no mold slippage or excessive flash to clean off. It's obvious that magnetizing the weapons is a smart idea.
When it comes to the 2 large hovercraft (transport vs shockwave) i'm kinda baffled on that choice. Going to be a fun hobby project though.
Like Blackfang said, see if the top parts (the bridges) can just clamp on through friction. They often do.
And yeah, the resin ships are 1 part molds... That's the positive side about a model with a large flat bottom and no base: you don't have mold lines on them, except maybe a bit of flashing at the very bottom of the model. Magnetising is also fairly easy if you use magnets that use imperial system dimensions, rather than metric. I'm in Europe, so I do have to drill them out slightly to 4mm holes to get that snug fit. Very easy to do, although that diameter does mean I use my cordless drill to do so (as my pin vice cannot take it).
FrozenDwarf wrote: Nice start, i did my ships white just as the box art so seeing some variation is nice.
I actually think the mechanicus standard grey is too dark, they kinda bleed into the darker blue tabletop mat and don't pop on the tabletop. To me a lot of the ships look like bare metal in the artwork. I think the Russian fleet was definitely meant to be white colored in the spartan games iteration of this faction. Maybe i'll shift to dawnstone or administratum grey for the rest.
Well, kinda how warfare marine vessels is ment to be, to blend in with the sea, that is why there is alot of grey tones chosen for the factions in regards to the studio artwork.
As for commonwealth studio artwork, it is my opinion that one can take the studio design in two ways, white as mentioned in the lore (The white army), or a bright silver that in direct light appears to be mirror white. (the latter seems to be the case of the borodino box art style to my eyes)
I did a "dirty white" where i used black,grey and white spray and bathed them in a thinned down black oilpaint.
But thing is, each faction has its own hull design so even if you would paint the commonwealth say blue, you would still see they are commonwealth ships, so in the end, any colour is better then plastic grey and resin white.
Colours on battleships is always a bit contentious.
It's a world where you can become obscured/harder to hit through generators, so I always imagined real world camo patterns take a back seat in this setting.
My French are bright Magenta and tbh, When those are on the table, people tend to come and have a look, simply because they stand out on a blue/green sea board.
I had thought the white navy got it's name from their white uniforms, or at least that's the only lore i've seen about it. Regardless, I shifted from mechanicus grey (on the Rurik) to AP uniform grey (on the Kustov), I think the weathering shows up a little better now:
Thargrim wrote: I had thought the white navy got it's name from their white uniforms, or at least that's the only lore i've seen about it. Regardless, I shifted from mechanicus grey (on the Rurik) to AP uniform grey (on the Kustov), I think the weathering shows up a little better now:
The white navy was called that for the same reason the white army was - because the color was the symbol of monarchists and traditionalists that took up arms to uphold the pre-revolutionary order against the Reds.
I've made a video review about the new Egyptians for those interested:
This was an incredibly well designed set and really easy to assemble. Perfect balance between large enough parts to see the model progress during assembly, but still enough detailed parts too for the different builds.
At first i was like, the heck, new faction?? this dont like anything in the range, but then i remembered, sultanate..........
It is a hovercraft design and sutch ships are not lean and sleek. I like it.
One thing that i feel is underappreciated about this range is the vast differences in model design.
It is like they are trying realy hard to get gamers who care not for naval games, to become interested. All they need is a bit more exposure at various cons in u.s and eu.
My view is DWars has been growing steadily. One downside is that WC can't do the huge releases that Spartan Games used to do which really got a lot of attention.
At the same time their growth is more measured so they shouldn't suffer the issues that plagued SG whereby they were almost always focused on only one game system at a time and had to drop others from the focus which resulted in a painful cycle of hyper attention and product focus followed by sudden periods of silence.
WC do have their own design approach and their use of plastics does mean that a lot of core ships can be covered by one or two sprue perfection. Sometimes more for a few (eg Alliance).
For me the big thing with the Egyptians is bringing some much desired visual diversity to the Sultanate fleet. They get a lot out of their plastics ,but it can also mean that a lot of their ships feel and look very similar. So having the Egyptians is a breath of fresh air.
They've also previewed one of the skyships for them at a previous convention and it looks so sweet. You can see all the standard Sultante designs in it, but its also different and even looks a touch more flamboyant in design.
I love these new Egyptian models. They also just paint up lightning fast if you go for a largely metallic paintjob:
I used a spray of retributor armour for this, picked out some details in Green stuff world Siren scale green (the teal metallics) and slapped on an all over shade by mixing 50% GW magos purple contrast with 50% medium.
The whole thing gets drybrushed with silver and a gloss coat gets applied.
I then pick out some silver details and shade with nuln oil. After that, pale blue grey on the decking and hovercraft parts with thinned GW gryph charger grey on the deck and pure black templar on the hover elements.
After that, I apply silver to the weapons, pick out the casings in GW blood angel red contrast and shade them with nuln oil.
Stark contrast to the traditional eu region palette.
On one side of the coin it combines realy good, but on the other it is just too mutch gold for my personal taste. (never been a fan of models where majority of the colour is gold/copper/brazz/bronze, too flashy for my taste)
They should brighten up your cabinet pretty good =P
Great news everyone, a new 2 player box is coming in october, Fortune and Glory, AND it is two mercenary fleets: The Honorable Eclipse Company vs The Crimson League.
This is the perfect recruitment box since it comes with the rules and gubbins box, and both fleets can be used by any of the 8 factions. HEC can be found in the Union orbat, TCL can be found in the Sultanate orbat.
Box content in spoiler, HEC facing left, CL facing right.
I do like that box and that both sides can be built as mercenary forces for anyone to take makes it really easy to buy. No having to split the contents.
One thing about the model range is that it is like a baseball game, it goes from home run to 1 ball strike-out in an instant.
I personaly did not like it when the covenant got the UFO models earlier this year, but the latest alliance battleship to be released next month is possibly even worse for me, it is just simply "over the top". (some will however adore this ship, but hey we are all different)
Oh and btw, her torch, that is a Solar beam weapon.............
One thing is for shure, bring out that ship in a demo game and heads will turn.
See both of those are ships from the past - the UFO ships were a big thing in the original force (although slightly less perfect circles, but they were there). The Liberty model is actually tame compared to the original form Spartan Games (which was very much a marmite model even back then)
Also one of the alternate builds for the Liberty lets it have just a regular massive laser gun on top so pretty easy to proxy for that if you don't want to use the statue.
I know the statue of liberty is french-sculpted and iirc theres a counterpart twin of it in france, but its a symbol so strongly associated with the US that I think it was probably a thematic mistake to use the design for a french ship.
I think it was thematic mistake to cut her legs off and mount her on the Eiffel tower! Otherwise I adore the "flanderized national architecture on boats" design of DW and I actually regret that Warcradle didn't commit to it as fully as Spartan did. But this particular one is a fail to me.
But that is probably why this is an upgrade option (and not even that strong an upgrade option, which is deliberate) for a ship that otherwise looks pretty normal.
Union is on the move with a new box for march, and it is the air that is the focus now with the Destiny sky fortress. It is a bit of clunker, again unusual design route that sets it apart from any other game but not in a bizarre way, but atleast now you can make a full union blimp air force when combining with eclipse company.
We allso get the remaining models from the fortune and glory 2p as seperate box sets.(Merchant Convoy Squadrons and Sultanate Aerial Squadrons)
