The bad new days?

 Hi all,

ECW progress . . . progresses.  I've got the infantry component of a Pikeman's Lament force sorted, and have made a start on cavalry and guns.  Once I get the matt varnish on them (they're still in shiny mode), and finish up the basing, I'll get a glam shot of the first battalia for the blog.  Yesterday, however, I came across some interesting news:

Diggity.

Those of you who've been reading this for a while, might recall that waaaay back in the Toronto days, I put together the start of a Blazing Sun force for Dystopian Wars.  I loved the game, had fun every time I played it, and bought into the expansion kickstarter that Spartan ran - just before they went out of business.  DW was a game that hit a ton of buttons for me (integrated land/sea/air, grand scale, steampunk, walked a fine line between cool and silly), and it gutted me that Spartan went south just as a local scene was starting to develop.

Show me where Spartan Games hurt you.

Yesterday, I found out that Warcradle, the people who do Wild West Exodus (another game I suspect I'd like, but haven't gotten into), bought the DW license, and are relaunching the game in the next few weeks.  They're starting with the Hunt for the Red Oktob . . . I mean Hunt for the Prometheus boxset illustrated above, but are planning a set of releases over the next year to expand the game.  One of the two factions for which I have ships (Russian Coalition), is in the starter box, and rules for the Blazing Sun are due for release later this year.  This has me, needless to say, just a wee bit excited.

Bombers, and frigates, and escorts, oh my!

I dug out all my stuff from storage last night, and knocked out a couple of frigates that had been sitting around, along with bombers and some escort ships.  Next up is the Ikko Ikki robot squid.  From what I gather, the game will be changing a little bit.  Warcradle is focusing on the naval stuff to start out, is planning to release the aerial stuff later, and is planning a rescale of the land game for some time in 2022.  I'm a little disappointed that I can't use my Tenkei helicarrier right away, but given how iconic the aerial stuff was in the game, I'm pretty confident they'll get to them in time.  The land rescale is a little disappointing, as I loved the idea of being able to run land and naval/air units in a single game, but that was always more of an aspiration than a reality, anyways.

If I get really organized, I'll paint a blazing sun icon on the bombers.

The other big news is that Warcradle has tooled up to produce new ships, which combine the old resin cast tech with plastic sprues.  Evidently, the starter kit battleships combine elements of both.  Carriers are still a thing, thank god, and the new stuff seems intended to supplement the existing range, rather than replacing it. Rules look to have been streamlined a bit, and I've tracked down a beta version to familiarize myself with what's coming.  I've got my existing Russian fleet primed up, and am playing around with colour schemes.

While it's unlikely I'll find local players who want to collect the range, I'm pretty sure I can talk several of my usual gaming buddies to play games with my stuff.  I can see some kind of DW Russo-Japanese thing developing.  Might have to look into 3d printing for some terrain flair as well.