Back in 2021, there was a thing on Bell of Lost Souls about Dystopian Wars, a naval miniature wargame set in like an alternative-history 19th century. Apparently the game has been around for a while, but I've never heard of it, so I went to their website to have a look. Frankly, it's all a bit Scythe, and as with Scythe, I don't entirely get the point of doing a sort-of-alternative-history thing where you give European countries or areas slightly different names, but it still looks like it might be interesting. So I wanted to take a look at the starter set.
Now, it may be that this was because I'd just finished two months of somewhat stressful work on top of a pandemic year, but Helsinki Markov is the most hysterical thing I've seen in ages. This is straight up Masters of Teräs Käsi level shit, not least in that it's just terribly wrong linguistically: the official Russian name of Helsinki in czarist times was Gelsingfors, so for to make any sense whatsoever he'd have to be Gelsingfors Markov - an utterly absurd name. It also sounds like something straight out of Diego Marani's delightful Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot, which is a bonus in my books.
It's still absolutely hilariously stupid, and given that Games Workshop were being assholes and alienating their fans again (I've been in this hobby since the 90s, this is a core part of the GW business model but no-one knows why), I decided to buy the Hunt for the Prometheus starter set instead of their stuff. Helsinki Markov, here we come.
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As it's a two-player starter set, there are two factions represented in the box. One is the Covenant of the Enlightened: they're a bunch of deranged super-scientists with a cog-themed logo, which all sounds very familiar. So I think I might be painting them red. And we're going to start with the Prometheus.
The bigger ships are in resin, and it's very crisply cut with almost no flash. The smaller bits also needed very little work, so so far, this is a very high-quality purchase!
The round holes are for generators and gun batteries. Slightly confusingly, the assembly guide gives you no hints whatsoever as to which generator is which; for that, you need the entirely separate Generator Guide, which doesn't come with the box but can be found on the website as a PDF. Looking at the rules booklets, I think there aren't meant to be any generators on board for the opening scenarios? So maybe we'll leave them off for the moment. I did, however, decide to magnetize the guns, starting with the tiniest possible magnets for the turrets.
I then drilled holes in the hull for their opposite numbers.
I have to say that this was one of the fiddliest things I've ever done, and to be honest I'm not that keen on repeating the experience! But it works though.
I then spray-painted all the bits, and got started painting the Prometheus in machine cult colours: Burnt Cadmium Red, Gunmetal Grey and Old Gold. I got started with whatever that thing at the back is, that gets covered up so it needs to be painted before assembly.
I've decided that the Prometheus's pennant number is 05.
I think those are meant to be windows but I'm not sure; I painted them Light Green with a dab of Fluorescent Green anyway to be appropriately scifi. Anyway here she is:
I'm really happy with how the Machine Cult color scheme worked out!
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To play the first scenario in the Hunt for the Prometheus campaign, we need the Prometheus, and an Enlightened fleet that's trying to stop Helsinki Markov from stealing it. This consists of two cruisers and four frigates, and I think I'll start with two Lovelace class cruisers: La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames, pennant number 26, and the Shùsuàn Jiǎncún (27). Those are SRS (short-range squadron) tokens next to them. The cruisers themselves were hard plastic, and a breeze to put together. So far, I'm very impressed with these models.
At this point I realized that my starter set had only come with two Enlightened ship sprues, instead of three like it was supposed to. We got in touch with Wayland Games, and they have an entirely unnecessarily byzantine process where you have to create an account to communicate with them at all, even on a simple matter like this. However, after we negotiated that hurdle, they very kindly sent us the missing sprue!
Here are the cruisers:
And the SRS tokens:
Then it's time for our first frigate unit, the Merian class frigate squadron Prodromus astronomiae (P42-45).
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Meanwhile, I was surprised to find a Finnish retailer stocking Dystopian Wars, and to encourage them, I bought a copy of the Islands and Archipelagos terrain set. Again, the resin is excellent quality, very clean and crisp; I love it. Also the little islands are really cute!
I got started by painting up the smaller sandbars with a base coat of Tan Earth and some Iraqi Sand and Tan Yellow drybrushed on.
This was so much fun, I made two more.
And then some.
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So yeah, I had a really good time building and painting these! Actually trying the game is on my very long to-do list; the next time I pick this up, I'll try painting the whatever it was they called the Russians.
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