Litko Splash Markers for Dystopian Wars – Review

Dystopian Wars, Reviews No Responses »
Jan 192012

Litko Naval Markers for Dystopian Wars My gaming buddies and I have been playing a fair amount of Dystopian Wars recently as you can probably tell from the blog posts. I was trolling through DW battle reports online when I saw somebody using these nifty resin splash markers to track damage, instead of the cumbersome cardboard counters that come with the game. The markers come from Litko Game Accessories in a variety of sizes and they’re pretty cheap for a baggie of ten.

I ordered a set of the micro markers with the white resin base, and a set of mini markers with the blue resin base for 20 markers in total. They were promptly shipped from Litko and arrived in my letterbox in good time. You have to assemble them yourself, which involves wedging the ‘splash’ marker into the base that holds it. This was fairly painless, although I damaged one of the clear micro bases by applying a little too much force during assembly, so just go easy on them.

We’ve played several games now using these as damage markers and I think the general consensus is they’re more visually appealing than dull cardboard tokens. It was a good idea to get a mix of marker types as we’ve started using the larger blue markers to represent two hits (typically awarded by exceeding the Critical Rating of a vessel), while the white markers represent one hit. This means there’s less markers to drag around with each vessel and conserves them for play, although we’ve not run out of markers yet during our 800pts per side games. The markers are also small enough that they can be balanced on top of larger Dystopian War vessels.

If you’re playing Dystopian Wars I’d recommend picking up some of these cheap and cheerful resin splash markers for your table. The price is right and they definitely improve the look of a game in progress.

Posted by Stu at 11:34 am

Covenant of Antarctica Escorts – Dystopian Wars

Dystopian Wars No Responses »
Jan 072012

Covenant of Antarctica Painted Escorts I decided to kick off the new year with some figure painting. I’ve been stalled on my Dystopian Wars Covenant ships for a while now as I couldn’t decide on a paint scheme and didn’t want to experiment on the larger ships from the Navy box. Fortunately late last year I filled out my force with some additional bits and pieces, including a blister of Galen escort class ships. These little vessels seemed like an ideal chance to experiment with paint schemes.

Here’s the first three escorts painted and varnished with the Army Painter Super Matt Varnish I reviewed last year. They were painted in similar colours to the Diogenes class frigates I’ve already painted, but with more grey and less of the icy blue. The smoke stacks were painted in Brazen Brass, highlighted with Shining Gold and then touched over with Dark Flesh wash. I think these colours provide a nice warm contrast to the cold scheme on the rest of the ship and I’ll be using the same scheme on my Cruisers and Battleships.

Posted by Stu at 10:35 am

Review: Army Painter Matt Varnish Spray

Reviews No Responses »
Dec 212011

Army Painter Matt Varnish Spray

The Product:

This post is a brief review of the Army Painter ‘Matt Varnish Spray’ can. This is a 400ml can of varnish with a large, wide spraying nozzle. It’s part of the Army Painter line of products and is designed to be used with figures painted with their ‘Quickshade’ dipping tins. Slavetopainting.co.nz were kind enough to supply a sample can for this review and they sell it for $14.90nzd a can.

How Matt is “Super Matt”?

A good matt spray varnish can be hard to come by if you’re a New Zealand war gamer. For several years most of us have been using the expensive, 150ml spray cans of ‘Moana’ matt artist’s varnish which frankly is most ‘matt’ spray varnish I’ve ever encountered. However Moana was discontinued in New Zealand this year, leaving people frantically buying up the remaining stocks (one local war gamer bought the last fourteen cans in store) and looking for a replacement in the local market. So the arrival of Slavetopainting.co.nz seems quite timely.

I’ve spent the last couple of nights varnishing a variety of dipped figures in the garage with the Army Painter can and have to say it compares very favourably to Moana matt varnish. I can distinguish no difference between the ‘mattness’ of my older figures varnished with Moana and the handful of figures I’ve varnished with Army Painter “Super Matt”. I took a bunch of photos to try and get a side by side comparison of Moana and Army Painter varnished figures but in the end haven’t included them here because the results are identical. I’ll say that again for clarity:

Army Painter Super Matt spray varnish is as good as Moana Matt Varnish in terms of finish.

That should be a big deal to any New Zealand war gamers because it means we still have access to an excellent matt varnish to use on our painted figures. The 400ml can also means you’ll also have a generous amount of varnish to hand, however be aware the nozzle produces a fairly wide spray so you should probably varnish groups of figures rather than individuals to prevent wastage. Army Painter Super Matt covers well and dries quickly with no unpleasant odour and the finished varnish feels as durable as the other spray varnish products I’ve used.

Value for Money?

Army Painter Super Matt spray is available from Slavetopainting.co.nz at $14.90 for a 400ml can. This is superb value compared to the discontinued Moana 150ml can selling for around $12NZ. It is also excellent value compared to the Games Workshop Citadel Matt Spray which is also a 400ml can however sells for almost twice the price.

In Conclusion

I’ll be using Army Painter Super Matt varnish on my war gaming collection from now on and have no problem recommending it to New Zealand war gamers. You should definitely pick up a can if your Moana stash is running low, or you don’t feel like paying twice the price for varnish from your local Games Workshop store.

Posted by Stu at 11:56 am

Army Painter Products in New Zealand

General No Responses »
Dec 062011

Slavetopainting.co.nz My gaming buddies have just pointed out there’s a new online store in New Zealand selling Army Painter products: Slavetopainting.co.nz.

I haven’t used Army Painter products in the past myself because the cost was prohibitive by the time exchange rates and international shipping were added. I resorted to mixing my own dips instead. However now there’s a local supplier for Army Painter products with reasonable prices I may have to give them a crack. I’m also particularly interested to see how matt the Army Paint matt varnish is, considering Moana varnish is no longer being produced locally.

Slave to painting also carry a nice line of priming and basing products which also look intriguing, and are certainly considerably cheaper than Games Workshop’s equivalent products.

Posted by Stu at 11:24 am

Covenant of Antarctica Ships – Dystopian Wars

Dystopian Wars No Responses »
Nov 052011

Dystopian Wars Covenant of Antarctica Ships Strangely enough, when Games Workshop released their latest one off naval battle game ‘Dreadfleet’ my gaming buddies expressed an interest in playing a naval war game. Nobody was impressed with an expensive one-off game from Games Workshop, so Spartan Game’s ‘Uncharted Seas’ was mentioned as a naval fantasy alternative. That was until Daniel chipped in and mentioned he had the rules for ‘Dystopian Wars’. One look at the fantastic steam-punk, sci-fi themed ships from Spartan Games was enough to hook us and we immediately each ordered a naval box. We’ve also exercised the rules with a few games of Dystopian Wars and our own (sad) cardboard chit ships and they seem fairly reasonable, with an interesting mix of naval, land, and air units, some intriguing tactical options and the sometimes horrifyingly effective ‘exploding dice’ mechanic.

I ended up with the new ‘Covenant of Antarctica’ forces, ordered from Maelstrom Games and have started painting the contents of that box in a fairly typical ‘winter sea’ splinter scheme. Here’s a slightly murky shot of the first three squadrons of Diogenes class frigates. Just in case I forget, these ships have been primed with 3M Acid Etch, painted with a mix of GW paints and Vallejo Flames of War military colours. Then ink washed with a mix of india ink and Windsor & Newton blue ink and over-painted again with lightened tones thinned with acrylic thinner. They’ve been varnished with the now unavailable Moana Matt Varnish.

The Dystopian Wars ships seem universally excellent. The ships are one-sided resin casts of what appears to be rapid-prototyped 3D models. The level of detail is simply amazing on the ships, so I can only assume Spartan Games are using some expensive laser sintered rapid prototype service. For bombers and other large two-sided flyers the models are cast in pewter and lack the same crispness and level of detail as the resin ships which is a bit of a pity. They’re still passable models, but they’re definitely less defined in terms of surface details like tiny 0.2mm rivets etc.

We’re all painting up our forces at the moment and when you consider a Dystopian Wars naval box force consists of one capital ship, three medium ships, 9 small frigates, two large bombers and 10 tiny flyer tokens it is actually possible we’ll be playing with fully painted forces!

Posted by Stu at 12:04 pm

Cheaper than Games Workshop Skull White Primer

General 6 Responses »
Oct 222011

3M Automotive Etch PrimerI’ve been out of primer for a while now and after a recent purchase felt the urgent need for a new spray can. In the past I’ve used GW’s Skull White so I wandered into a local GW store in Auckland city and asked them how much a 280g can of Skull White primer costs these days. Apparently it now costs $30 NZD, after learning that I simply walked out of the store again. GW’s prices have been ridiculous for years now, and $30 for a 280g spray can is not acceptable to me. From memory the last can I bought cost me around $22 NZD and this is when the NZ/GBP exchange rate was considerably worse than it is today.

So I asked on our forum if anybody had a decent replacement option and Dustan chipped in with a suggestion. He’s using an automotive primer for his figures these days: 3M’s ‘Etch Primer’ which comes in a 400g can (see the photo). I nipped down to the local Super Cheap Auto and picked up a can for the low price of $19 NZD.

I’ve just finished priming my first batch of figures with it and it works just fine. I’ve finally primed my pewter 15mm Corvus Belli Romans as well as a box of resin Covenant of Antarctica ships for Dystopian Wars. I’ve noticed the spray coverage isn’t as fine as the Skull White can, but I’m only dusting figures and models with the primer, rather than trying to get solid coverage. A dusting of 3M’s etch primer doesn’t obscure any detail that I noticed and adheres well to plastic and pewter. It does adhere to resin, but not quite as strongly (you can scrape it off with a fingernail), but that’s fine as I’ll be over-painting it with several coats of acrylic paints. The primer has no negative effect on plastic or resin that I can detect and Vallejo and GW paints go over the primer coat just fine as well.

So if you’re sick of paying a ‘GW’ tax on their Skull White primer, try this product instead. It is just over a third cheaper, and you get more than an extra third of paint in the can as well. Thanks for the tip Dustan!

Posted by Stu at 2:55 pm

Hirst Arts Mold #320 Sci-Fi Terrain

General, Pulp, Warhammer 40k 1 Response »
Sep 112011

Hirst Arts Painted Pipe Terrain I recently picked up Hirst Arts Fieldstone Mold #75 which is pretty much a mandatory purchase for anybody using Hirst Arts for Mordheim or Fantasy terrain. As shipping internationally isn’t cheap I looked around for another Hirst Arts mold to include in my order and on a whim added the #320 5/8″ Pipe mold.

My order arrived last week and I was pleasantly surprised how much fun mold #320 is to cast and build with. It’s a pretty hungry mold plaster-wise, but a single cast gets you enough bits and pieces of pipe to make an interesting 6″ linear barrier for pretty much any 28mm scale war game you can think of. The pipe sections obviously work very well for sci-fi or modern terrain, but with the right brassy paint job a few pieces could probably be added to the side of a fantasy building for some kind of brewery or mad alchemist’s laboratory.

After casting the mold a couple of times I couldn’t resist playing with the parts and dug out a pre-cut and bevelled 3mm MDF base I had kicking around. I cut and bevelled a whole bunch of random organic shapes years ago and have been working my way through the stack ever since. It’s a great time saver for just cracking into a random terrain piece when you feel like it.

Hirst Arts Painted Pipe Terrain This bit of Necromunda/40k/Pulp terrain is made from just two casts of mold #320, a piece of cut chicken wire, some corrugated cardboard and based with a mix of kitty little and model railway ballast. The chicken wire and cardboard was used to build that little shack over a vertical tap piece which is obscured in the photos, but you can see in the unpainted terrain.

The pipes were painted with grey latex house paint and then weathered with the Vegemite technique before airbrushing them red with hobby paints and then over-painting them with my home-made dipping varnish. The base is just dry brushed with a couple of layers of dirty brown latex house paint as well. Things were left pretty generic as I plan to use this terrain for Pulp gaming, and possibly Necromunda or 40k terrain if I ever get around to playing those systems again. I’ve included a couple of Games Workshop Imperial Guard Cadians just for scale indication.

Posted by Stu at 2:08 pm
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