With our development studio always buzzing with the activity of testing, it's sometimes easy to forget that we have our own lovingly crafted personal lists for when we want to challenge eachother to a fight across the seas.
Join Chris and Robin as they showcase their Dystopian Wars lists that they use to wage war!
They’re basically twins!
When it comes to the high seas, there is one siren song that I simply cannot resist—the kraken. Thus, the Ika Colossi of the Empire have sunk their beaks into my soul, and called me to serve the great Celestian Emperors! When building my list, I mostly focused on getting as many Ofukoro Ika Colossi in my list as possible, even if perhaps that meant I would not have a great many models total.
This list doesn’t delve too much into the standard Empire arena of Hazard and Disorder, instead choosing to focus on Japan’s incredible Leaping torpedoes. With the huge number of Escorts across the fleet, and the two pairs of Ofukoro Ika Colossi hatching more every round, I should be able to guarantee that I always have ammunition for my Chita-Strike Battlefleet Bonus, and my torpedoes should always be punching above their weight!
The Matsumoto (another one of my favourite ships!) is extremely important, as it's through their huge array of Generators that most of my ships will (hopefully) be surviving the first round until their squid-saviours can arrive. I’ve made quite a lot of concessions to get my glorious four squids into this list, so the initial ‘Surface’ contingent is fairly light—both in terms of model count and hull. With the Matsumoto, I should be able to weather any first-turn storm with those units, ready to counterattack once the Ofukoro arrive. If I’m lucky, I’ll even get a chance to use the Hyperbeam Lense Cannon’s Coruscating quality to take out a few ships at once! Evening the playing field between my enemy’s forces and mine…
But I’ve talked around them enough; the stars of the show are, of course, the Ofukoro. I’m putting a lot of eggs in their hatchery! After their arrival on turn 2 (thanks to Unexpected Arrival, which I suppose is actually quite expected), they’re going to need to start tearing ships apart to help me stabilise from what I imagine will be a very rocky first turn. If they can afford to spend some actions topping up any lost Escort tokens, that will also be quite welcome! Luckily, these Colossi are very tough and should be able to hold any objectives I need admirably, especially if the Matsumoto can get close enough to share its shields.
Aside from the low numbers, the biggest weakness of this list is the relative lack of anti-air and anti-SRS options. Some Alchemical Rockets or Cap Cap Flak Guns on the Hokkaido and Sakata should help, but if I’m facing a whole horde of Airships… well, maybe I should start looking to include some dragons. To that end, I’ve already begun converting an Empress Shinzua-aligned Tianlong squadron, taking spare claws from some Ika Colossi I’ve built as Kaiju. Or maybe I should try and squeeze in some Skyfortresses? Or Korean Rotorcraft?
Looks like I’d better start working on a 3000-point list.
The Might of the Imperium - Robin Cruddace
Greetings, fellow Admirals. I’ve only been enlisted to join the crew voyaging the conflict-stricken seas of Dystopian Wars recently, having started with the latest edition. It took me a little while to decide which faction to start with, as there are so many interesting choices amongst the eight Great Powers. Whilst it was a tricky choice, I ultimately decided to throw my lot in with the Imperium. Why? Well, honestly, the box cover of the Konig Battlefleet Set did much of the heavy-lifting, what with the wondrous mix of utilitarian vessel design and crazy, arcing sci-fi weapons.
The Vitruvian Colossus artwork sealed the deal, however, regardless of what game you are playing, giant fighting robots are cool.
So that’s where I started. A Konig Battlefleet, a Vitruvian Colossus and just because I loved the idea of it, an Imperium Aerial Squadrons for a Nuremberg Airship (I needed a Line ship and if my line ship could fly, all the better).
The force took no time at all to assemble, and soon it was time to get the paint brushes. I wanted something not too dissimilar from the look on the box—an industrial, battle-worn, utilitarian force. The whole force was primed using Mechanicus Standard Grey—but you could use any dark grey undercoat (the airship was affixed to a paperclip during painting so as not to get paint on its clear flying stem, and only glued onto it once finished). Once that had dried properly, I got a big brush and applied a liberal black wash (using the ubiquitous Nuln Oil) followed by a good drybrush of a lighter grey (I used Administratum Grey). And that was it—the hulls were done in almost no time at all.
Having ‘cheated’ to get 90% of the model done in no time, it was time to get some ‘proper’ painting done. The decking is where I focused most of my time; it’s the part of the model that contrasts most with the neutral grey of the hull, so it’s where the eye is drawn to. As such, I chose to paint this to a fairly high standard (two separate edge highlights—Doombull followed by Deathclaw Brown—over a solid Wyldwood basecoat); it’s subtle unless you get in close and look, but if you do I’ve found it helps to trick an observer into thinking you’ve painted the entire model to that standard. It sounds fiddly, but was actually quite straightforward due to how the deck panels line up. That, and also the fact the deck area being painted was never huge.
That done, only a few other details—metallics, windows and crosses—remained. For the iron such as that used on weapon barrels, I basecoated with Leadbelcher, washed with Nuln Oil, and then added a highlight of Stormhost Silver. For the brass areas, I used Brass Scorpion, washed with Agrax Earthshade and then highlighted Leadbelcher. The windows and energy effects on the arc-weapons were painted using Nihilakh Oxide. This was the first time I've used this paint, and I found it needed a few coats in places as the paint isn’t really designed to be used as a base, but it has such a vibrancy to it that it just pops out, so I persevered where needed. The result certainly conjures images of electricity thrumming through power cabling and arcing in flashes to illuminate interiors to my mind. The last of these details were the Teutonic crosses, which were blocked in with Grey Seer before having a quick wash of Apothecary Grey and an edge-highlight of white.
I could have stopped there, but as it had all been so quick I decided to paint a bit of weathering onto the hulls of my vessels—mostly because it’s fun to do, but also to help break up the solid grey blocks with a patch of colour here and there. To get the effect I wanted, I used a thinned down orangey-brown (Gore Grunta fur) in order to paint a few patches and thin streaks of rust, oil or grime here and there. I did this by just choosing a rivet at random, putting a small blob of brown on top of it with a small detail brush, and then drawing my brush straight down. I did this a few times dotted all over the hull, and then finished by dolloping (technical term) some more Agrax Earthshade onto the metal areas of the engine stacks, again to make them look a bit more dirty and grimy.
And that was the bulk of the models all done—basecoated, washed, highlighted and even weathered in record time. Only a handful of the models had bases, but they were even easier to paint. I started with a dark blue contrast basecoat (I used Tallasar Blue) over a Grey Seer undercoat, which did almost all the hard work for me. Once dried, I did a few dry brushes of increasingly lighter blues (Ultramarine and Teclis Blue), followed by a light dry brush of white over the whole base, and, for the Colossus, concentrated around its wake.
Start to finish, sprue to tabletop, the first 1,000 pts of my Imperium fleet was completed in less than a week. Whilst it’s only a modest fleet, I’ve been able to use it in several games now, and even have a handful of wins under my belt. My journey into Dystopian Wars has only recently started, but I know enough now to realise Vitruvian Cololossi inspire terror in opponents, and I’ve faced enough Carriers to appreciate that I’m going to need to get some SRS tokens of my own. As a result, I’ve already reinforced my fleet with a Konrad carrier (I have to admit that the hull on this one did take a fair bit longer to do…)
For my next steps, I am assembling more airships and Destroyers, as I have plenty left over from my initial purchase. I have no doubt that the remaining Colossi will also be assembled soon, and I might treat myself to a Maximillian Linebreaker just because it is so cool. Looks like it will soon be time to get the paintbrushes out again.