Dust Tactics

I picked up the boxed set today for Dust tactics. It's an alt WWII skirmish board game (With a full on miniatures version coming out soonish) and it's pretty wicked. It's by FFG, and there stuff is always quality.

SPECIAL BONUS!!! All the mini's come preassembled and primed in an appropriate gaming colour. Green for Americans, Grey for Germans. I did not expect that at all!

The plastic is the slightly bendy kind that is good for gaming as it won't break in a fall, but not quite as awesome for painting. The mini I am painting first took the primer fine enough though.

All in all I was VERY impressed once I opened this box. Not quite as impressed as when I opened Space Hulk (That's my all time high water mark for being impressed in a game), but the preassembly of the mini's was quite unexpected. And they've been cleaned decently of all flash too! Attaboy FFG!

I was concerned about how well the plastic would hold paint, as it's a little bendy. Turns out it holds the paint excellent. The mini's come painted in a flat colour (grey for germans, green for yankee dogs) and whatever spray they use binds to the plastic really well. I re-primered my test guy just in case, but no real need. I use grey primer so the Germans are ready to go but I will prime the Americans as I don't like painting over that green they used. I painted this guy as he came right out of the box, so you can see the bend in the barrel and the mold lines on the mini. For gaming, I think it's more than acceptable. The paint job is no great shkes but it was done quick (maybe a couple hours) and I think will work for the table. Even though the mini's are wearing winter style uniforms I decided to paint both sides in a more sort of traditional WWII outfit so I didn't have to tie myself to painting all my collection in a winter camo scheme for as long as I collect the game. It'll look a little odd as some mini's are CLEARLY wearing winter coats. Anyway, here's what I got with a straight out of the box mini and a couple hours...











Things I found painting this kind of plastic...



-Be careful with the hairdryer! As I was painting quickly I used the hairdryer quite a bit. At one point the mini got pretty soft. Watch out!

-The base. I was stuck thinking what I could do for the bases. They come with a sort of metal industrial texture to them and a sort of stylized bolted down rivet look around the edges. In the end I decide to just go for a plain black base. I can always come back to this but it'll work just fine for gaming I think.

-The torso's all come joined to the legs so you can twist the upper body at the waist. I just superglued them in place. I don't think this has ay relevance on game play at all.



So that's it. A little mini report on what I found so far.

thats more of a chemical weapon suit, the gloves looked sealed off and so are the pants, so no way any type of chemical can affect the skin,

plus the gas mas

i like the look of the minis, was tempted to get into flames of war back awhile ago, but changed my mind when i found out the different years to different armies meant you couldnt have certain types of tanks/weapons/infantry

Flames of war is still an awesome system. They have the breakdown into three periods, early, mid and late war. It's a good system with most people around here opting for mid to late period stuff. The change isn't night and day between the periods so a mid war army could mostly be used late war, with very few exceptions. It's just that equipment that is from a mid period is much cheaper points wise than a "modern" equivalent in late war. e.g. an American Sherman is around 120 pntsish mid war, and around 100ish late war. It's slightly less effective with the better armour penetrating stuff etc.

If you still want into FoW I have several armies I could sell, cheap. Many more armies worth NIB too.

15-20 per side, plus 2 tank mechs per side. And a couple small pieces of terrain.