Viva la France!

  

So I think it is safe to say that we all like to build new lists.  For Dystopian Wars I only have two fleets, a fully painted American fleet (which looks god awful), and a French fleet that is half painted. The first half looks awful, but I have some frigates which do sport a relatively nice color scheme.  With the new boxes coming out, I must admit I've set my sights on rebuilding my 1250 point French fleet from the ground up.  So for my fleet commodore's vessel, I think I'll take one experimental La Rochelle class battleship, with a cloud generator.  This will also allow me to grab the heroic fleet commodore Jean-Claude Geroux.  Since he is big on the French Revolution, I am going to call the battleship De la Glorieuse Revolution, or "The Glorious Revolution".  The battleship with the heroic fleet commodore is a bit pricy, with the total coming out to 200 points, but a La Rochelle class battleship seems quite powerful, and I would be confident to fight a dreadnought with it.  I will also bring a Mk I Magenta battleship.  While the La Rochelle is powerful, it's arment is mostly heat lances and lancettes, which are great against larges but not so good against mediums or smalls.  For 150 points the Mk I Magenta can deal with most of the enemy mediums quite nicely, but we will add the cloud gen for 10 points.  I feel its a solid investment.  Its name shall be La Fierté de la Révolution, or the pride of the revolution.  It could be Jean-Claude's old command ship!  We now have 360 points worth of models, all larges.

I want to grab one last large for our fleet, and that's a Couronne class battle carrier (called L'esprit de la Révolution).  This gives us a way to gas up our tiny fliers, and also adds rockets and another heat lance to the fleet.  It costs 140 points, but I am going to add the cloud gen to bring to 150 points even.  That means that our larges will be 510 points of our fleet!  Not bad so far!

Now for mediums.  First off I am going to take 2 squadrons of Cherbourg class battlecruisers.  Each squadron costs 130 points and contains one battlecruiser, but with three heat lancettes each of these can easily devastate a battleship.  Despite this, they are glass cannons, so I will probably have to use them carefully.  I am sure my opponents will learn to hate them very quickly!  They will be called Cracheuse de Incendie and L'œil de Feu. That brings me to 770 points.  Not many left now!  For my other mediums I will grab a squadron of Ecuyer class support cruisers.  These will be a great way to deal with flyers and planes, but also can deal with smalls. I will probably not name these.  Three models at 55 points each give me another 165 points.  I am now at 935 points!

On to my smalls.  First off we need 4 Reguin assault corvettes, for 20 points each.  Then a squadron of three Epaulard bombard subs, at 35 points each.  We are now at 1120!  And so, to bring us to a total of 1250, I am going to take 2 Furieux skyships.  These can spot for our Epaulards, plus they have some great mines.  I will have no trouble using them.  So there we are, 1250 points of French awesomeness.  So now, what does our shopping list look like.  We need the Attack Flotilla, Carrier Support Flotilla, Extra Tiny Fliers, Mk 1 Magenta,  Furieux Skyships, and Ecuyer Support cruisers.  All of this can be found at the Warstore for $133.94.  Sigh... maybe for Christmas.  Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this list build, cause I know I have! 

Wacky Wednesdays #1

Okay so what are Wacky Wednesdays?  Basically, every two to three weeks I'll post one.  They will talk about games I don't play, but do follow.  Today's topic: Dropzone Commander.  Dropzone Commander is a fairly new game from a fairly new company, Hawk Wargames.  Currently there are four different armies you can choose to play as:

The Scourge: Basically the aliens in the game, the Scourge have taken over many of the world humans used to live on, including Earth itself.  Not surprisingly, they have some very unique designs and sculpts.  The Scourge are fast and hard hitting, but lack the powerful armor the other armies sport.  They like to get up close and personal, using their speed to get their weapons (which are powerful but short ranged) into position.  They have some very unique infantry in the form of worms and human slaves.  Overall, an interesting force with some interesting options and tricks.

The United Colonies of Mankind:  Its tough being the last humans in the galaxy (or so they think), but the UCM is definitely rock steady.  They want to take as many world as possible from the evil Scourge, and thus have tailored their fighting style to counter these hideous aliens.  Their vehicles are relatively slow, with very heavy armor.  Their slow speed also allows their weapons to lay down an impressive volume of fire, even while moving.  They have a very good bomber, good special forces (who have some tricks of their own), and nifty dropships to back them up.  Overall, creeping advances seem to be the UCM's style, and boy are they well suited to doing just that!

The Post-Human Republic: Well I guess the UCM aren't the only humans left over from the Scourge invasion! The PHR are not dead set on reclaiming the lost human worlds, as they have been able to forge a nice new republic from the tattered remains of the human race.  A lot of the PHR is made up of cyborgs, and their weapons reflect this.  They use a lot of walkers, but have some nasty tracked rocket launchers to back them up!  They have a very flexible army style, with units being composed of six walkers.  This means you can very easily have two antiaircraft walker in the same unit as two demolition walkers and two antitank walkers.  They are also pretty tough, and have a really great air superiority fighter.  They are all about flexibility, in every way, shape, and form!

The Shaltari: The good aliens in DC, they are a highly developed species that can actually teleport units from one place to another. They also have shields, something no other group has.  Their walkers do not move very fast on their own but with teleportation gates, who needs to be fast?  They have a lot of energy weapons, as well as some other nifty tricks.  Overall, they play like aliens.  What's not to like?

As I don't have a rulebook, I can't say too much about the rules.  Games appear to take 2-3 hours to play, relatively standard.  Play is smooth from what I have seen, but it is still be developed with new rules and changes being introduced.  I'll close this post with a link to their website. Enjoy!

http://www.hawkwargames.com/

Operation Sirocco Review!

Because my blog really needs more posts, I am trying to post every day this week.  Today we will be giving Dystopian Wars fans a real treat: a review of the latest campaign book, Operation Sirocco!  I will not be talking about the story the book contains, as I wouldn't want to spoil anything, but a general overview is probably in order.

Overview: This book covers the campaign in Africa and the Mediterranean sea.  The time period is from February of 1872 to June, 1872.  I won't give away very much, but basically the French decide to reclaim Napoleon's vast empire, with the other Imperial Bond powers working to help them but also working to achieve their own goals.  The Grand Coalition spends most of the time trying to fend off the Imperial Bond attack, but do launch an offense of their own.  The Covenant of Antarctica also gets involved, and finds yet more strange technology in the process.  Overall it is a very nice story, although major politics are once again left out, except for when they have an effect on the battles being fought.

 The Good: Very high print quality, with absolutely stunning color pictures.  Story is presented well and organized neatly and efficiently, with subtitles used to state the names of the battles and troop movements.  Nine scenarios are provided with the book, covering most of the major operations and battles fought out.  Finally, this book is not strictly Dystopian War, as several scenarios use the new Armoured Clash rules.  Also, a picture of Dystopian models is even sneaked in at the back of the book.

Dystopian Legion Models

Armoured Clash rules in print?
HECK YEAH!

 One of the great things about the Armoured Clash rules included in the book are the full color diagrams provided for many mechanics of game play.  I got a much better understanding of the rules from these!


The bad: Unlike Hurricane Season, very little artwork is used, with almost all the pictures being of real models.  Also the lack of attention paid to the major politics that went on.  There was some very stupid things in the political information they did provide, namely the Sultan not inviting an Egyptian ambassador to the treaty meeting.  Really Spartan, do you think the Sultan is that dumb?

 The ugly: The cover.  Hurricane Season's cover was way more colorful than Storm of Steel or Operation Sirocco.  Please Spartan, get some decent artwork to slap on the front of your books!

Overall: I would give it an 8 out of 10.  Only thing I didn't like was the cover and lack of politics in the story.

I will leave you with a parting shot of Operation Sirocco compared to Storm of Steel.

Operation Sirocco is definitely thicker.

Table Report 1: 8/26

Hello and welcome to my brand new blog.  I am a relatively young member of the wargaming community, but still have a good deal of stuff.  This blog should chronicle my adventures fairly well (I hope!), but first allow me to say a few things.  Because I am young I do not have a ton of time, especially with school starting really soon.  I play very few games, so look for more reviews, tutorials, and other things similar to that.  I will try to post between two or three times a week, but am very busy.  Also, I have very little money.  I may eventually put some ads on this blog to finance my projects, but for now please bear with me.  So with that little introduction out of the way, lets move on to this post....

One thing I will try to do every week is a table rep, where I basically talk about what is on my hobby table right now, and what I will be working on/ posting about.  This week, I have three distinct projects going on(Note: I am not a photographer, please bear with my bad pics).

Overall shot of the table currently

 So that's the table, built about two years ago.  Originally used for a train layout, I repurposed it a year ago when we gave away the layout to a local hobby club. No Dystopian Wars or A World Aflame projects this week.

Project 1: Open Fire! Forests

 Project #1: Terrain! I love making terrain, it is such a rewarding experience.  Currently I am working on making the 2-D forests from Open Fire! 3-D.  I have glued the trees in place, they are pinned so I can remove them to fit tanks on them.  I am ready to complete them, just waiting on some more flock to come in.

Project 2: Assembling Open Fire!

 Project #2: Next up are the models from Open Fire!  Although I am waiting on greenstuff to come in so can fill in the gaps on my Shermans, I have been making good progress on my Germans.  Should be ready to start priming by next week!

Project 3: DL Grenadiers

Project #3: Some DL here too, in the form of a half finished Grenadier platoon.  I have been working on these for a while, really want to get them done! Shown are the three I have completed, four more are in progress

What to look for: In the coming week I will probably do a review of Operation Sirocco for the DW fans out there, and possibly a review of A World Aflame.  Maybe some more shots of the forests and models as well.  Also, there are Wacky Wednesdays coming up, more on that Wednesday! I hope you have enjoyed my first post, and please follow my blog!