SPARTAN GAMES ENDS THIS DAY

There were  promises in the lingering in air about a new game of naval combat from Spartan Games, I thoght no one was really believing them. Now, after a short mail I got from Spartan we can be sure these promises will never be acomplished, as Spartan ceased production and closed, and of course the forums closed with it, including the forum dedicated to Uncharted Seas that had very little activity but sometimes there were newcomers with some questions to ask (surprisingly!)

I am still without a word to say about that, but needed to write some lines about the sudden dissapearance of SG. They made a lot of games, there were kickstarters, beta testing teams, the new edition of Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, HALO, new models and even new factions, and suddenly it all banished in the wink of an eye. I can´t imagine what did they so wrong that caused the undoing of the company.

From my part I will continue writting from time to time about the game I love: Uncharted Seas. It won´t be daily, nor weekly not even monthly but sometimes you will get battle reports, rules, tactics model painting (sitll have an entire fleet to piant!) etc..

Hope we recover soon from these sad news :(

IRON DWARVES TACTICS

So this is it! As I promised here are some in dept dwarven tactics to have an advantage against the rest of the Uncharted Seas factions. Let´s see: We have dwarves, their ships are the slowest moving ones of the game, limiting your maneuvering with them; also, they also are not good at boarding so they crew slow moving ships that are easy to board for other fond-at-boarding factions. Their guns are short ranged, so those evil factions can just stay at range and bombard your dwarvs while getting nothing in return, and/or close for the kill or just outmaneuver  your poor dwarves. I almost forgot to mentinon the dwaves have no magic, so they can also zap your little dwarves from time to time....


AAARGH! WHAT CAN WE DO?!!

Are the dwarves the underdog faction of The Uncharted Seas? How can they win? If you still like the Iron Dwarves I welcome you to the most challenging faction of the game. Let´s talk about their strenghts: mostly, all the Iron Dwarves have in their favor is their ingenuity and hard working. Unlike the other factions their ships are steam-powered and are heavily armoured in iron plates. They also developed turrets that allow to fire in any direction and they also built submarines that safely sink in the surface and emerge to attack their surprised preys. They also even have airships. Their fleet is one of the most advanced  of the Uncharted seas (and the other more advanced is dwarf too) This all means their ship is not dependent on the wind (despite some may say they are so slow they count as being against the wind all the time) and is difficult to damage at range due to armor. Their guns might have short range but they tend to hit harder than other factions guns', and they offsett magic with the famous dwarf counter-magic. Their ships seem to be as headstrong as their owners and sometimes they refuse to sink in more than one situation (they have lots of repair cards).


TACTICS

OK, your fleet is slow so there is no room for fancy maneuvering around. You might want to flank with your frigates or use sea monsters for that, but your deployment is more imortant than any other thing, and the most direct and easy route towards your objective is the one you should take. Don´t worry about being predictable, that's the dwarf way!
Let´s take a look at your ships:
 -The frigates are the only ones that allow you to efectively react to your enemy or flank him, but you also need them to block boarding routes towards your more important ships. They have turrets so you don´t really need too much maneuvering to hit your foes, just make sure you don´t block the movement of your other ships.

- The cruisers and heavy cruisers are the backbone of your fleet and are the point form you will put the hurt on the enemy fleet you can use the frigates to screen them from the enemy fire from an angle, so they arrive to the main gunfight untouched when it starts. Again, make sure the frigates do not block their movement or firepower. Speaking of their firepower, it is located mostly on their brodasides. The heavy cruisers have turrets, but those are ancilliary weapons. This means, the dwarf cruisers have to form up a battleline which is done as follows: first approach the enemy fleet in line abreast formation (see the picture above). Once they get within range they all turn 90 degrees to one side, changing formation into line astern (i.e. making a queue), so the broadsides of all three ships are pointed at the enemy. I have found is useful not to link if you are firing at other cruisers, as this will weaken them individually , but against battleships link with everything you have to crit them. If you need to board, your heavy cruisers are your ships for the job (also your troop transports for obvious reasons)

- Submarines: they are your scouts, the eyes of your fleet and also they are your most important key for victory. They come in squadrons of  one or two and each small sub costs like a frigate, which means they make the CHEAPEST squadrons of the game if they come in squadrons of just one sub, which translates in the following: if you fight against Iron Dwarves, you don´t out-activate a clever Iron Dwarf admiral. He out-activates YOU, and the submarines are the perfect tool for that, as they submege and are very difficult to sink (even if they are sunk they are not revealed as that until their next activation) Your best submarine for that is the Kraken, as the only reason for being in squadrons of two is linking, and they have no weapons to link and they cannot board, so there is no sense in making squadrons of two. The Kraken is also harder to destroy than the Belcher (they are like sumersible destroyers). The Belcher needs to deploy in squadrons of two in order to damage cruisers or destroy frigates they are your anti-frigate weapon (working alongside with the destroyers in that role). Make sure you deploy the belchers next to each other. If you want a Belcher in each flank in order to react against flanking enemy frigates, make two squadrons of one. Bear also in mind submarines have a 360º degree turning rate, but only when they are submerged, on the surface, they use the small turning template , so the orientation when they are submerged MATTERS if you plan to surface them in the next activation. Remember they also need to move at least 2".

- Battleship/Flagship: is your long-range ship. You can try to hurt/sink frigates in the early game, but is very slow, so don´t do that if  it will position you outside of the incoming main fight. Is preferable to place your admiral in the flagship, the battleship is too vulnerable to boarding and the flagship has more crew, more speed and a nasty red ram rating. Use the ship in the same way as the cruisers, turnging to bring broadsides, but be carefull against boarders (remember my last battle in this blog) stay miles away from them, never plot a course that would bring your most important ship near them and if you can´t avoid that use frigates, submarines and troop transports to block any ramming course against your ship from boarders. If you have a flagship you might survive a boarding action against enemy battleship but you won´t survive against heavy cruisers or any boarding-dedicated squadron. The Iron Dwarves also have a floating citadel, but I don´t have it, so I can´t tell how effective is it against boarding actions.

-Airship: this is the meanest ship in the dwarf fleet, a squadron of two are really intimidating, specially the bombs they carry that can decimate a frigate squadron or heavily damage a cruiser. Also, if you fly them over the enemy you may make him guess about what to do:  using crew to fire at it or man the guns, but is preferalby to stick them to the main fleet and move them to react to the enemy move, because they fly they won´t block your movement or firing, and the proper way to use them is the same as cruisers, because their main guns are in the broadsides too. Wacht out for enemy flyers!

-The fleet in general: as I said, dwarf fleet is predictable in the deployment but not so afterwards if you brought with you enough submarines to out-activate the enemy fleet (but don´t get too carried away with them, after all they only are a threat against frigates, mostly, and the occasional destroyer) plot a route for the fleet that will bring your broadsides at a range, and when you turn the fleet to make battlelines, make sure there is no islands or obstacles. Ideally you might also want to make your opponent to move against the wind, but be watchfull about their boarders, and have a plan to deal with them. The enemy battleship is also a boarding threat, but not as dangerous as other dedicated ships. If you brought rockets with you, rememeber to weaken the crew on board the battleship. Also take the simplest and most direct way, you just don´t have place for too much maneuvering. Make sure your card deck is "in movement" in order to get your repair cards and probably you will be in good possition to earn the glory of the day!

That's mostly all. Dwarves also have piston ships, but I do not own them, so I can´t tell how effective they are.

Hope it helped!

Dan

THE BATTLE OF THE BOOK

Finallly I managed to borrow some time for posting a battle that took place the last month when I was abroad learning German. I played at Hahnc's house and was a battle between Ralgard and Iron Dwarves just as it is shown in the last Uncharted Seas Rulebook.


DEPLOYMENT

The battle took place in an archipielago and the deployment is shown in the following picture. The ships involved were the equivalent of each faction, except the Ralgard included a Battleship and I included submarines and an extra heavy cruiser and a destroyer squadron instead a frigate squadron.

EARLY  TURNS

The dwarves suffered a crippling blow when after suffering a second hit, the Bellows airship was destroyed by a double critical hit thanks to the Ralgard Warballoons that scored a bucket of exploding dice. So the airship was destroyed without contributing to the battle

The submarines and destroyers managed to sink a frigate here and there, I decided to attack in two waves. First one: the flagship, then followed by the Anvil Heavy cruisers. The hammers were badly damaged by shooting from the Ralgard Assault cruisers and war balloons but managed to sink many frigates and put some damage in the assault cruisers.

ENDING TURNS

The Dwarf flaship damaged the Ralgard battleship and the cruisers with experimental ammunition and in return, the cruisers and one of the submarines were sunk, and destroyers were badly damaged....

... When the destroyers were finally sunk by surviving frigates and the surviving submarine attempted to turn around (the submerged token has 360º turning rate, but once you surface they need the small template to turn from the last position they moved surmeged) so it took it another turn to turn around and fire the enemy frigates. The real problem was in the middle of the board. The Dwarf flagship found itself surrounded by enemies after sinking the last Ralgard cruiser and destroying the surviving war balloons. Also, the Anvils, that were almost untouched had no room to maneuver in support of their flagship....

... so the Flaagship was rammed by Ralgard Assault cruisers and slaughtered all the crew and the Admiral :( giving the Ralgard the victory.


AFTERTHOUGHTS

It was an interesting battle, I learned a lot. Hahnc told me about battlelines, but I had difficulties in making these maneuvers with so many islands around, and dwarves have not specially agile ships :( It also was a bad Idea to attack in separate waves leaving my flagship unsuported. I ended up blocking my own movement and firepower. Also, the destruction of my Bellows airship was a decisive blow (It could have bombed the assault cruisers), so I feel myself out-activated, and out-gunned the rest of the battle.

I will talk about dwarf tactics in the next entry on this blog. I promise... ;)

Dan

SHIP PAINTING: STEP BY STEP

Today I am going to write about how I paint a squadron of Iron Dwarves  "Anvil" class heavy cruisers

Step 1: Assembling and primming.

First of all I based the ship (see "Ship basing tutorial" in this month of the blog) and primed it with a brush, but it is possible to prime it with a spray. The base was also primed. The Anvils have a turret that I did not decide to glue becuause it will prevent me for painting the deck and the front side of bridge of the ship, so the turrets will be painted separately and later glued. If your model has parts that will make diffficult to paint the main body is preferable to paint them separately before assembling.

Step 2: Basic colours.

The basic colours of the hull and cannons are added to the ship. Also small details are painted because when I dip the model in the next step those details will be remarked. I re-check the ships to see there aren´t any colours that run into zones painted in another colour, and correct the mistakes before proceeding to step 3.

Step 3: Selective Dipping

It is called "Dipping" because the original procedure for it was to dip the model into the quickshade can then swing it until the shading stuff is gone from the outer zones of the model, but, because I do not have a place to swing the ships (no garden) and the ships are too big for that (and swinging could damage the base) I used a brush, to selectively paint the zone where the shanding liquied will be required, in this case the decks of the ship and lower hull (wich is "made" of wood planks) Then I use anothe brush to remove the  excess of shading stuff from teh zones. I do not cover the pannels in the upper hull because it will then require to paint each pannel separately and will consume a lot of time that is why I call it "selective" (the panel will go darker). The metallic details (except guns) are covere with the shader to remark the details and separate it from the hull.

The dipping or Shading process requires at least 3 days of drying then you can continue painting the model. The details of the lower hull should be perfectly remarked. At this step also add a black wash to the funnels of the ship.

Step 4: Panelling, part 1

In this step I paint the upper hull (the blue part). first covering the remains of the shading stuff that ran into the blue zone and then paintig the lines separating the pannels with a fine brush. I try to paint a white line thick enough to reach the two adjoining pannels using a brighter colour used to paint the hull. I also add lights to the edges of the blue zones of the ship.

Step 5: Panelling, part 2

I use even a finer bursh to paint a black line inside the white (or brighter) line that separate the pannels of the upper hull of the ship. The effect is a upper hull "made" of independent pannels. Sometimes I have to repaint one or"thin" a line with the hull colour. Some othe details are added like lights and shades to the metallic parts,  like the ram.

Step 6: painting the base, part 1

 I forgot to mention I paint the edge of the base in black using as less water in the paint as possible to protect the base from bending this can be done as early as step 2. Then, in this step I properly paint the base with a "base" colour of navy blue, covering the edges of the base, but you can leave them black. At this stage I also glue the turrets to the ships, as the zone they block for painting is already painted. It is possible to magnetize the turrets, but in my opinion the Anvil's turret is quite small for doing that.

Step 7: painting the base, part 2

Then I mix white with blue in a 3 parts of white , 1 of blue  to paint the "waves" in the base, starting with the ones at the aft and the prow of the ships then I add more waves in the middle zone trying to paint them as symetrical as possible.

Step 8: painting the base, part 3

Finally I add the white colour to the waves, on top of them, painting half  in white along the line of the wave, except in the prow, that is painted to look as realistic as possible, painting the upper zone of the wave and leaving the lower zone of the wave in light blue. In case of the Aft waves, I add a wash of  dark blue to separate the lines of the trailing waves first. Within the prow area I also add a little more lines to make the ship look "cutting" the waves.

Step 9: painting the base, part 4

Thinning. In this last step, I thin the lines representing the waves with navy blue to give the model a smoother look. Sometimes this may make the wave to be smaller but its OK as long as you keep them symetrical with the other side of the base. It is possible to drybrush some of the base to give more "texture" to it, but the models are just finished and I barnished them with a coat of matt varnish. except in the metallic zones where i mix gloss with matt varnish (50%) to make them look metallical and not just a tone of grey.

And that is all!!

I hope you liked the tutorial :-)

Dan

SHIP BASING TUTORIAL

As promised I am going to tell how I based my ships.

Step 1:  Materials

For bases, I use the thick card that come the last in an A4 pages bookbind. You can ask in the shop for them if they sell them separately (or just ask them to have some blank pages bookbinded then get thick card for the basses.

The thick card has the advantage of being easy to cut but you have to be carefull and prevent it to get wet in the wrong zone such as the edges, because it can bend. The other alternative is plasticard but I did not use that.

besides the thick card for the ship's base you will need: green stuff, PVA glue, filler and super glue.

The tools required: some pincers, scissors and a cutter (or modelling knife)

Step 2: Adjusting the base size

Use the model to get the desired size for the base. Some models may require a base larger than usual if for example have metal sails that can cause the ship to be accientally knocked over the side easily.

Step 3: Glue the ship to the base

For this step you will need both the PVA glue and the Super glue. The first will be doing the main gluing and the second will hold the ship in place because it dries fasther. Otherwise, if you only use PVA, the ship can "move away" while drying,  and if you only use superglue the ship can be easily rip off from the base in an accident.

In order to use the superglue correctly, just add two little drops at the prow and the aft of the ship's bottom. Wait some seconds and then let the PVA dry. Make sure you center the ship in the base before pushing it onto the base!

Step 4: Adding the waves, part 1

Take a bit of green stuff and place it next to the hull, where the hull "cuts" the waves. Make sure the ammount of green stuff is not too much to give it a realistic look. Once it is nex to the hull separate it from it a bit with the modelling knife and shape it into a "rising wave" from the prow of the ship.

At the aft of the ship, add the "trailing waves" with green stuff too, and shape it them with the knife until you think they look OK.

Some ships may have complex patterns of trailing and cutting waves.

Step 5: Adding the waves, part 2

Let's add some texture to the base, so it can be drybrushed a bit later on. You will need the filler this time and the pincers (and some water). Make sure you also have something to dry the thick card because if the water gets to its edges it may bend if you don't dry those edges often.

First use your fingers to extend the filler, but do not approach too much to the model. Use the pincers and the modelling knife to extend the filler towards the hull, to avoid touching the model with the fingers and removing some detail from it! If you touch the model accidentally wait for it to dry and remove it with a modelling knife.

Finally you may add some detail with the pincers (more waves) if you want.

All that is left is is to wait until the filler dries, and here you go! the base is ready for painting. I usually add a base coat to the model and its base. I also paint more waves to the base, and if you want how I paint the  model wait for the next tutorial ! ;-)

Hope you liked it!

Dan

IRON DWARF SHIPS

Last entry there was the picture of the whole fleet but I think it could be more interesting if you can see the models more closely. When I have more time I will post a tutorial about how I painted those ships and the basing of the models but at the momment I have a German exam next week and have to prepare it. When it is done and I get a moment to do it I began to post the tutorials.

Now let's see those ships individually:

Dwarven submarines

(closer look)

Mixed squadron:  regular cruisers (Hammer class) and one heavy cruiser (Anvil)

The flagship of the dwarven fleet: a Chainmail class (modified battleship)

(front view)

And finally a Heavy cruiser squadron (full of Anvil class) These are the latest models painted by me before the exams

I hope you liked it!

Next: basing tutorial

Dan

DWARF FLEET AHOY!

The Gate of Suns keeps going Cap'n!

I have been busy with the Directorate Fleet and models from other games (one of them has been a Dwarf army) so I decided to keep painting my lovely dwarf ships until they are all finished!

I will be posting pictures of the separate models but for the momment here is a picture of all my painted Iron Dwarf fleet!

See you soon! ;)

Dan