Warhounds 2 Warmasters

A series following a collection of would-be Admirals taking on the challenge of building a fleet in an entirely new game system; Dystopian Wars by Warcradle

(Ed Note: I’d like to, with no small amount of gratitude and pride, draw attention to the first post for the site penned by my better half, also referred to as Long-Suffering Wife or LSW, and more usually ‘Christina’ or simply ‘C’. That the Tale of More Gamers series has such an attractive draw that it has enthused C into not only learning to play but to buy, build and paint her own fleet is a testament to the series and Dystopian Wars itself)

I am that rare creature that many would say does not exist; a casual tabletop gamer.

I had played and loved the likes of Blackstone Fortress, but the first real tabletop game I ever played was Adeptus Titanicus. This came from a starter set, a lockdown, and figuring out the rules with Jay. And I loved it. It was basically chess with explosions. All about positioning and watching what your opponent was doing, so you could run your Warhound out of that lumbering Warlord’s arc, then get right in and chew their ankles off. Then came layers upon layers of Legios and Maniples and I sort of lost interest. I know that when you play regularly, the extra combinations you can form add to the joy, but as mentioned, casual. I just want to make the robots go boom. Preferably causing a chain-reaction long enough to make you forget who fired the shot that started it.

So what made me decide to join in with Dystopian Wars exploration? I’m not going to lie. It was the dice.

We were watching a play through, and the game itself looked interesting. Once again, the key factors of movement and positioning, trying to stay a couple of steps ahead of your opponent looked very pleasing. But what tipped me over to full buy-in was the fact that the same roll of the same dice could be fabulous in one context and apalling in another. No more cries of “Why can I only roll 1s/never roll 6s?!?!?” The blues that were useless in attack could be the thing that saves your hull at a different moment. The theoretical possibility of infinitely added exploding dice also adds a layer of excitment to every roll. Although I have since realised that nobody ever wants a blank face. The “Nat 1” still exists.

This time I was doing something completely new though. I was actually buying, building and painting my own models. I had never done any modelling (although I am partial to a jigsaw), and apart from a less than half completed paint-by-numbers of a dachshund and one thoroughly mediocre dark elf (which itself was over a decade ago) (Ed Note – it was post table standard and a Dark Elf Crossbowmen, to be specific. It had colours, washes and highlighting and it was based), I hadn’t wielded a paintbrush since school.

Despite my preference for sightly vanilla rule sets and seriously low modelling chops, I chose Empire, which has some of the most convoluted rules (Ed Note: As far as my experience of the system goes I feel like the Empire are about the third most complex Faction to build a list for – after Enlightened and Sultanate) and fiddly painting. Because that’s what happens when you offer a woman a dragon and a giant squid.

And yes, the very first thing I built was the dragon. I had Jay beside me to give pointers for cleaning, to help me not cut lumps out of either the model or myself. And I will say, there is a definite satisfaction when those first pieces click together. Finding the right bits on the sprue is a (sometimes enraging) mini-game in its own right, and watching the piece come together is very pleasing. Although if anybody fancies starting up a side-gig cleaning the pieces down for gluing, you have a customer here. That is just plain dull.

The building process continued and among the things I learned, is that when you build a giant sky city (Ed Note: Zhanmadao for those not familiar with the Empire roster), there are many beautifully moulded pieces that will never see the light of day because you glue other parts over them. I also learned what a Greeble is, and how to use them to hide the fact that you’ve glued 2 bits together 90° out, too far back in the build process for correction.

Then started the painting. And having started the build with the dragon, the painting obviously had to start with the squid. (Husband Note: There is a Logic at play here, beyond me, but it is at play. I’m sure of it…) These were sprayed ‘Chaos Black’, then dry brushed with ‘Iron Warrior’, followed by ‘AK Oily Steel’, topped off with a watered down (mediumed down?) ‘Flesh-Tearer Red’. And at that point it was time to start the trim, using ‘AK Old Gold’. Jay thought I was slightly insane for wanting to do every piece of trim on every tentacle, but I definitely stand by the choice.

The Heilong Flagship was next on the list. Again we had a base of ‘Chaos Black’ and then select areas ‘Iron Warrior’ and ‘AK Oily Steel’. From  here I needed to add some extra layers; the decking planks and roofs needed a careful drybrush with ‘AK Bold Titanium White’ to allow me to use ‘Garaghak’s Sewer’ Contrast paint to get an aged bamboo effect on the decks and then the same drybrush followed by Aeldari Emerald contrast paint gave me a bright jade green on the pagodas and roofing on the prow. Then out again came the ‘AK Old Gold’ and tiny brushes. Who needs functional eyeballs or hands that aren’t cramped to claws?! Overrated, say I!!

So now I just need to paint my floating sky city and the rest of the fleet (including the Empire half of the new Dominion of the Dragon 2 Player Starter set when it arrives!) using all the techniques I’ve learned.

Oh! And I should probably learn to play the damn game!