The Heldenhammer: Or How I Learned A Big Lesson From A Tiny Ship

This past weekend, in an almost afterthought to finishing up the painting and basing on my Treekin, I decided to paint the Heldenhammer.  I don't think it's the most exciting ship in the box, but it's one of the few left, so I'm marshalling on to finish the box.  In painting the ship, I learned something very important that is probably self-evident to most people.

I know that there are models, such as the Doomwheel, that require painting sections followed by assembly, rather than the other way around.  I had even heard people say that the Dreadfleet ships needed this process, but I shrugged it off because I wanted to assemble them and play the game.  Whoops!

Those sails were a monster to paint.  There was no space, and I did good just to get some gold on there.  It's not sloppy, but I wish I could have gotten in there to really work on the finer details.  Keeping the sails off the ship until they were painted could have accomplished that.

Oh well, you live and you learn, and I'm glad I had this lesson driven home by a Dreadfleet ship, rather than something like a Screaming Bell.

Painted Dreadfleet: Skabarus

I painted Skabarus, the Skaven undead fish hulk monter, this past weekend once I finished my Glade Guard.  He's a nasty looking guy, that's for sure. 

In game, we ignored Skabarus at first, but it has two major advantages.  First, the Warpfire cannons that ignore ship armor allow it to take on tough ships and do major damage.  Second, it's very maneuverable, and can dance around ships like the Heldenhammer.  These two attributes combined make for a ship easily able to dance around larger, bulkier ships while pouring out significant damage.  

Painted Dreadfleet: The Flaming Scimitar

Our local player Bart painted up The Flying Scimitar, and through a great paint job I've come to really enjoy the ship.  The elementals were very well done, and add real character to the piece.  This is also the first ship where you can see the etched sails painted, and how they really look like freehand work and make the sails look fantastic.

In game, The Flying Scimitar has been my favorite ship to play as so far.  It's fast and pretty maneuverable, although it doesn't pack a ton of guns.  The Djinns allow you to move faster or shoot an extra flaming gun, so you can choose how to upgrade your ship each turn to best improve your game.

Dreadfleet Painted Ships: The Curse of Zandri

Our local terrain painter and all around 40K Guru, Dale, picked up the Curse of Zandri to paint.  I like how he added a lot of contrasting colors to the model in order to really make the different parts stand out from one another. 

In game, we don't have a lot of experience with The Curse yet.  It featured in Scenario Two, but was rammed to death by the Swordfish immediately.  Whoops! 

Dreadfleet Painted Ships: Grimnir's Thunder

Our gaming group has gone to work at painting up Dreadfleet, and the results are pretty cool.  We divided up some ships, and I started with Grimnir's Thunder, the Dwarf Ironclad.  I started with this one because I thought it was probably the easiest to paint out of all the ships and would be a good warm up, as it doesn't have a lot of the etched drawings or sail painting that many of the other ships have. 

In game, Grimnir's Thunder is what you'd expect a Dwarf ship to be:  tough and slow.  It did do some real damage to it's opponent in the third scenario, which we played on Tuesday, as it managed to put a few good broadsides and boarding actions into The Black Kraken.

I tried to add as much color as I could to the detail of the ship, using emeralds, bronzes, and greens, in order to make it a bit less dull than it could have been.  An ironclad doesn't lend itself to a colorful nature, but I think in in the end it turned out pretty well, and strikes a contrast to the other ships on the table. 

Initial Dreadfleet Thoughts

Yaarrrrggh!  I finally got a chance to play the first two scenarios of Dreadfleet the other night.  Here's my initial thoughts:

*  It's random!  This probably isn't a game to really bring the big competition guns to, as it often involves rolling a small number of dice and looking for high numbers of each die.  There's a good amount of tactics in maneuvering, but once those dice roll there's a lot of chance involved.  As long as you're aware of that, and in the game for a good time and not to omgstompface, you'll enjoy the game!

*  It's a lot of fun!  We had one of our group read out the scenario fluff in his best pirate voice, and there was a lot of joking around and general silliness during the game.  The rules are easily picked up by wargamers and won't be too much trickier for non-wargamers, and let you get down to sailing, shooting, and looting quickly and efficiently.

Short Dreadfleet Unboxing Video

I received an iPad as a gift, and have been wanting to test out the video function.  I'm liking the ease of use, and hope to make some good Video Battle Reports and Game Reports for the blog.  My first video is a short overview and "unboxing" of Dreadfleet.  The contents of the box are incredibly high quality, and a real joy!  Please excuse the poor sound quality, as it's my first time making a video on the iPad.