Maelstrom games had another of their great sales recently and I couldn’t resist picking up a second Dystopian Wars fleet. I was tempted briefly by the new Russian or French fleets but in the end chose the Empire of the Blazing Suns, mainly because it’s a fleet not represented in our small war gaming group yet and Maelstrom had EotBS Naval boxes in stock.
I’ve only played a few games with them so far, but have to say they feel considerably more brittle and specialised than the Covenant of Antarctica. Their basic Cruisers are fairly useless in my experience and I’ve taken to fielding a swarm of smaller vessels with air support instead. As they’re my second fleet I’ve also opted to speed paint them and here is the first batch.
I’ve painted them with Vallejo fantasy colours and then over-painted them with my custom ‘dip’ (a stained polyurethane floor varnish) and then lightly varnished with a matt spray. Five of the frigates have been painted twice too after I made the mistake of applying matt varnish on a cold night, after it had been raining all day. The varnish frosted badly and I had to strip and repaint a handful of them. Very depressing but I did learn that Dystopian Wars resin ships can be stripped with methylated spirits. Just be careful though because the meths will attack the resin fairly quickly.
Why a mix of red and white? I felt an all red fleet would look dull, and all white wouldn’t look that great either. So each squadron of three or more vessels includes a bone white vessel and everything else in the squad is red. Also I’m really learning to love Vallejo metallics. Their bronzes and golds really ‘pop’ on the finished vessels.