A Tale of 2 Admirals - Introduction

In which backlogs will be cleared

Here begins the latest attempt to motivate me to get more painting done. See below for the rules, and the plan!


Painting backlogs - truly the bane of anyone in this hobby. As the lure of new shinies outweighs the time we have to actually paint things, our piles of bare resin, metal and plastic grows and grows... For many people, this isn't a problem: they wargame for the gaming side, and playing with unpainted models doesn't bother them. However for me the sight of two fully painted forces engaging on an in-theme battlefield with painted terrain is just as important as the rules of the game (or at least that's what I tell myself to justify my win-rate...) so I prefer actually having my models painted.

This is where this Tale of 2 Admirals comes in. The concept of a "tale of [x] gamers" has been around for years in numerous formats. My inspiration comes from the tale run on Warseer some 10 years ago which can be found here. The basic approach is to paint a set number of points every month for a year (or some other period of time) to end up with a finished force. Rather than starting new armies, as in the Warseer tale, this will be a motivator to clear the unpainted pile of Dystopian Wars ships we have.

The Rules

This tale will run for 12 months. Each month, we must paint a set number of points of models, and post photos in a blog post at the end of the month. Because real life gets in the way, we will have two "jokers" that allow us to take a month off, if we have not been able to get what we aimed for painted. For the purpose of this tale, we have assigned SAS tokens a value of 5 points each.

So who's taking part?

As the name suggests, there are a mere two of us attempting to get some painting done. Myself, and the interloper whose Russians made a brief appearance on this blog a little while ago. I will let him introduce himself in due course, but in brief, he has been a good friend for many years, and has been a regular opponent in Warhammer Fantasy, 40k, Battlefleet Gothic and Magic: The Gathering. I convinced him to take the plunge into Dystopian Wars last year, and he has continued the theme of these other games by comprehensively thrashing me every time we play...

What am I painting?

When Spartan Games went under a couple of months ago, I went on a bit of a search to try and find anywhere that had stock of items I'd been intending to buy. While I was happy that my Prussian fleet was in a good place and I had a Danish Support Box sitting unpainted by my desk, I wanted to expand both my Poles with some of their wonderful airships Fortunately I was able to get hold of what I was looking for before everything Spartan related disappeared from online stores. Unfortunately, I now have a lot of ships to paint, especially as I had still not finished painting the Kickstarter ships that I was fortunate enough to get...

I have approximately 2000 points of Dystopian Wars models unpainted. While that neatly works out at 200 points a month for a year with 2 jokers, I am quite keen to get this backlog cleared sooner. I am therefore going to be optimistic and aim for 400 points a month over 6 months, with 1 joker available. For the final 6 months of the year, I will then either set myself targets to paint terrain and a gaming board, or see if Warcradle have released any new shinies for their revamped version of the game.

The Prussian Empire:

I have the following to paint:

• 1 Gustav Class Monitor - 155 points
• 3 Brandtaucher Class Submarines - 210 points
• 4 Lahn Class Destroyers - 160 points
• 3 Wachter Class Escorts - 60 points
• 8 SAS tokens - 40 points

The Kingdom of Denmark

I have the following to paint:

• 1 Asgard Class Battle Carrier - 205 points
• 1 Konigsberg Class Battle Cruiser - 110 points
• 2 Fafnir Class Light Sky Fortresses - 200 points
• 4 Magni Class Assault Skyships - 120 points
• 3 Wachter Class Escots - 60 points
• 14 (!) SAS Tokens - 70 points

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

I have the following left to paint:

• 1 Zamiec Class Sky Fortress - 190 points
• 3 Grom Class Gunnery Blimps - 240 points
• 5 Szabla Class Light Interceptors - 125 Points
• 6 SAS tokens - 30 points

Total - 1975

For the first month, I am planning to make a big dent in my PLC forces, by painting the Gryf Gunnery Blimps, the Szabla Interceptors and 6 SAS tokens, coming to: 395

Pretend that the WiP Grom has no paint on it at all....

The end of first month post will be up on 1 November - that's my target, and I will hit it.

Thanks for reading!