Author Topic: Looking At Starting US  (Read 3735 times)

Ruckdog

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Looking At Starting US
« on: October 13, 2012, 11:42:57 am »
So, I've had the hardback rules for a while now, and every time I look at them I am once again tempted to buy a starter box! The thing is, I'm not sure which faction to go with. Here are my top three:

1. Iron Dwarves: Civil war iron clads FTW!
2. Imperial Humans: I've always been drawn to the basic human faction in the games I play. Plus, the wooden walled semi-historic nature of their models appeal to me.
3. Sky Pirates: They are pirates. In the sky. What's not to like? ;)

I'd love some advice from those of you that have actually played the game. I don't have a good feel for the tactical strengths and weaknesses of these factions.

Landlubber

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Re: Looking At Starting US
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2012, 10:58:35 pm »
Every time I see those sky pirates models, my fingers start creeping towards my wallet...
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama

Ruckdog

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Re: Looking At Starting US
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2012, 10:08:58 am »
I know! Sadly, I'll probably eventually have all 3 of these fleets, but I need to pick one to start. I'm really leaning towards the Imperials at this point, as I figure that Aaron will be one of my regular opponents and he already has the Dwarves ;).

MadDrB

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Re: Looking At Starting US
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2012, 10:13:47 pm »
I picked up a lot of the Imperial Human ships because of the historical theme and the idea of using them in more historical games at some point.  The basic premise of all the sailing factions is speed.  Those ironclad dwarven steamships ignore wind direction, but they are too slow for my taste.  I've been playing elves most of the time, some of the fastest ships in all of the Uncharted Seas.

The human faction also has a faith/religious element--I've been thinking of trying to paint mine in a yellow and red theme along the lines of the Spanish Armada because they have spells which feature a Catholic sort of flavor to heal wounded crew and stricken enemy ships with mysterious ill-fortune.  They also have those infamous martyr ships which sail in close among enemy ships and then... blow themselves up!  The new models are quite beautiful and received some well-deserved upgrades.  I'm painting a pair of frigates for the online painting competition and the new frigate looks like a Spanish galleon while the old frigate looks more like a sailing raft.

I haven't seen the sky pirates ships out yet, but why not?  Just stay away from the dwarves.  Slow, heavily armed and armored, sure, but so damn slow.  The battleship has 4" of movement and the frigates have 8" and once I got the models I just never felt inspired to paint them and gave them all away.  Compared to the other factions, the dwarven ironclads just look like... well, uninspired and boring Civil War ironclads.  You know, a lot of Civil War era federal ironclads were painted black?  Boring colors for fantasy ships.  But the bellows sky blimp looks cool, and you could use that with your sky pirates...

I must admit I still don't own the new hardback copy.  There was a copy at the game store where we ran the demo games yesterday, and I paged through it and almost bought it, but I told myself I should order it through the GV and support my own FLGS (especially since that other place really didn't help to promote the demo games day and the store manager and staff couldn't seem to care less that we were there trying to drum up interest among new players for some alternative miniatures games).

Ruckdog

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Re: Looking At Starting US
« Reply #4 on: October 15, 2012, 07:58:16 pm »
Thanks for the tips! It might be Imperial Humans after all then. I hadn't realized you dispensed with your dwarves, actually. A bit of a shame; I thought the weathered metal look you achieved looked fantastic ;).

Pendrake

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Re: Looking At Starting US
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2012, 05:51:28 pm »
I have some of the uncharted seas models. The faction I chose was one of the dwarf factions. I chose the models purely due to their steampunk looks. Honestly I was thinking about using them with some old Sky Galleons of Mars / Ironclads and Aether Flyers rules I picked up many years ago.

The faction I have is called the Dwarf Mages[?] Shroud Griffins[?]  hmmmm.

I never bought any version of the US rules so --- a bit fuzzy on the faction name. The models are mostly casemate ironclads with lots of exposed:
  • wooden planking,
  • cannon/torpedo tubes
  • unnecessary tubes/pipes plumbing
  • boiler tanks and smoke stacks.

And now they are OOP [out of print] because Spartan went back and digitally redid the whole line. So it is kinda hard to tell for sure which ship classes I have...

...but I don't care. I haz cool models.  :)
1:1200 - One inch equals One Hundred feet...

MadDrB

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Re: Looking At Starting US
« Reply #6 on: December 02, 2012, 06:30:09 am »
Shroud Mages, yes.  With all those boilers and pipes.  Not to mention the nice triangular prow designed for ramming.

I use them in the demo games I run--I've converted DW ship stats to work with Uncharted Seas.  They really are almost the same game, it's just that DW has more brass bells and steam whistles, so by removing some things (like AA and CC) and combining weapon systems, the models work well together.  And then we can have dragons attacking steampunk ships.   :)