Guns of the Porte - Ottoman First Impressions

Well after having got some games in with the Ottoman Empire I feel like I am beginning to understand them a bit. So I will give you my opinions on the fleet so far (not the individual ships!).

HMS Sphinx's figure head.

All your small and mediums have a DR of 4. This means your smalls are quite hard to damage but will go down to a critical quite easily. However the cruisers, armoured or normal, are quite easy to damage. And with no access to shields you must be careful. Good use of your Firtina is imperative. Which leads to:

Beware the French and their tape measure of DOOM

 Beware the early activations. Your Firtina generators fog effect dissipates at the end of every turn and this can strand your ships, especially your Fettah cruisers who will go down quickly without that protection. Mine seem to be made of Semtex and I have lost one a game to a magazine explosion. The storm Impedes the opposition so hitting on 5+( your fog effect already does this so is of no use here but can save your frigates), it also slows them down by an inch and ensure that they have a turn limit of 2 inches. This all helps as the longer they take to get across the better and they are not so manoeuvrable.

Sir those mines look awfully close

 Do not get too close! The Ottomans have great long range and middle ground fire power and have truly appalling AP. This is what balances the fleet. So do not allow your enemy to close. We are fast too! Well our skimmers are. with the exception of the Penguins and the Italians everyone will get more AP than you and our AA is very ordinary. If they get close they will prize you. CAP your fighters to your battle ship all the time, you will need them. However they must brave your guns first.

In amongst it.

   Mines are great for area denial. Smalls have alot to fear from them due to the Stirginium mine effect. However so do your own small and mediums. Put them down and forget about going near them. I made the fatal error of using them as a screen and then attacking through them as a lone tiny flier recon did for one Fettah and got another crit on another! And the bastard survived! The Zuhaf is expensive for a small with no ordnance but they can pump out those mines quite fast while flying around close to your lines.

The Sadrazam is feeling a little lonely

   The Ottoman damage output is high till the end. A Fettah cruiser that has lost 3 hull still has 8/6/4/2 broadsides with 2 re-rolls due to Sustained Fire, an FSA Lexington has 6/4/1/0. Any damage from your bombards and turrets is Corrosive so during the endgame with alot of limping ships those extra hull point losses will be important. All our bombards are fixed channel so movement and correct angling is important, the Sinop is not a fast ship so must be correctly positioned.

The RC close in.

   So in summary keep away from everyone, get your fog up early and do not for the love of all that is holy go into your minefields. These are only my first impressions and I will expand on them as the Empire sees more action. Feel free to ask questions or correct me! For the Glory of the Sublime Porte!

Guns of the Porte - Bad Pictures of Tiny Fliers

  I am away from my light box so my the pictures are a bit poor, poor light conditions in my room. I had my first game with the Ottomans and thoroughly enjoyed them. Next one is in a week so I have to get them all painted up!  So here they are:

Fighter Wing

Dive Bomber wing

CAP wing 1

CAP wing 2

Zuhaf Small fliers

   These little guys were great fun and worth every point, for something with no ordnance they are the bane of small ships.

Flying to protect the vital orange juice carton

  Oh and Dystopian V2 is out for Christmas with new boarding rules and air rules! Woo and Hoo!

Guns of the Porte - Tiny Fliers

Had my first game for a while this week and used my FSA. I however got destroyed but had fun and I am getting back into the swing of things. So onto the Ottomans tiny fliers.

   For these fliers they will be detached from the base and put in a more dynamic flying position. This involves a bone saw and patience.

   Ottoman tiny fliers, although in the lower right corner there is an RC interloper, ready for the operation.

A picture of me sawing stuff. This happened 20 times in between Civ 5 turns. I still have sore fingers from catching myself and it was quite fiddly. Eventually you end up with this:

Here we have all the fliers cut off the base and cleaned. The saw creates ALOT of fine resin powder that gets everywhere. I had to brush them down and cut off some edges but they all survived and are ready.

I put a small hole on the underside of the flier, with a craft knife, for the wire. The wire is just ordinary locking wire, easy to manipulate and cut. The wire is however tough enough to not bend when knocked.

 Here is a lone recon plane.

   The dive bombers, no torpedo bombers though for the Ottomans so no low flying fliers!

   And some plane old fighter planes.

   Points of caution are:

• Be careful with the bone saw it is easy to slip. I quite like the ends of my fingers and on occasion was close to thin slicing them!
• The fliers come off quite well just do not blow the dust off your saw as the fliers are small and will go too, searching on the floor for your missing plane is not fun and leads to odd questions by members of your household.
• When putting the hole in the bottom of your flier do not go too far they are not that thick.

  And now to finish them and arrange into wings!

 Later.....

Guns of the Porte - Sadrazam Class Battleship

I will not bore you with the paints I used, they are exactly the same as before. This Battleship is a twin hull monstosity. The superstucture on top is massive and looks awesome.

I shall leave my thoughts for a quick over look post I will do later, first impressions only though. So all I have are pictures today.

   Next up is the Dreadnought and then the fliers. I hate the tiny fliers and so always leave them till last. And I have no colour scheme for them, they are supposed to be Sipahis. If anyone has a good idea what uniform they had please tell me, as all I can find is that they had no centralised colour scheme. Thanks

Guns of the Porte - Fettah Class Cruisers

Now onto the first of the surface skimmers and the ships that give the Ottomans their unique look.

The usual Balor Brown hull with 2 washes of Agrax Earthshade. The superstructure is Dheneb Stone and washes of Nuln Oil.

   The dome is done with glazes, which I am learning to love as they give a nice colour to white surfaces.  These were done with GW's blue and green glazes.

   Above we have a slight list to port. I think that the ships are still too hich on their stands and need trimming back a bit to really give the surface skimmer look. I love the way these ships look as a model, I am quite happy with the paint job too, they look so different and have real character.

Later.

Guns of the Porte - Sinop & Avci class Ottomans Painted

Today I got the first Domes and Minaret ships painted up. Th Aci class Destroyer and the Sinop class Armoured cruiser

I really must clean the felt, cat hair gets everywhere!

   For the Armoured cruiser instead of the wooden look I went for an Ironclad type feel. So Tin Bitz was used and washed with Agrax. The superstructure was again Dheneb and black wash.

The domes, which look very washed out in the photos, are done with a blue glaze followed by a green. This gives a nice turquoise colour to them.

   Here we have an unfinished part on the back, this is for the CAP all armoured cruisers have. As I have yet to decide on a scheme for the fliers I will leave this out till later. 

   Onto the destroyers. Nice small ships with two big guns. That is all, move along now.

   Balor brown hull, washed twice with Agrax boltgun metal guns and Hashut copper pipework.

   The last picture came out very blue for some reason. These ships were a joy to paint and came out quite well with little faffing around. Next up the Cruisers which promise to be a bit more fiddly.

    I have however got all the colours sorted now so it should be a bit easier.

Later...

Guns of the Porte - Mizrak class Frigates painted

I decided to concentrate on the frigtes and get them out of the way.

After painting the hull Balor Brown, the superstructure Dheneb stone and the decking Tausept Ochre I painted the guns with Boltgun and the pipework with Hashut Copper. This gave me my baseline. Next up was to wash the superstructure with Nuln Oil.

   This gave detail to the roof lattice and darkened the colour after 2 washes. Then came 2 washes of Agrax Earthshade to the hull and everywhere else to darken the hull and hopefully give it a wooden feel.

  

   Then details were highlighted (guns and the roof) and it was done. It has the feel of a flying wooden barge to it which is what I was after. Now I will see if it carries over to the larger ships.

Later.

Guns of the Porte - Ottoman WiP

Having some time off is nice to get back into some painting. If only the weather was worse then I would not feel the urge to go into the real world. After wracking my brain for a colour scheme I settled on a wooden look, even though the ships are metal and flyAnyway onto the pictures.

   The base colour is Balor Brown. This is supposed to be a replacement for Snakebite Leather by GW. However it is a shade lighter so I can only assume that GW hate me as SL was a favourite of mine. First they kill Flesh wash years ago, this hurt me alot, and now this.

   This is my test piece to darken the brown with some agrax earthshade. So It seems it just may work.

  The superstructures painted a pale grey, Deneb stone, for darkening later.

   Frigates with darkened hull and without.

   Armoured cruisers with a metallic hull as they are armoured.

Comments always welcome.

Later.....

Terror from the East - The Ottomans Arrive

(Or the West depending on your viewpoint)

   Hi all it has been a while. Life and work has curtailed all my gaming habits but it seems to be returning to normal. I have been dragged out of my funk by the Ottomans for Dystopian Wars. The look of the ships is amazing and very unique in the DW universe. As an Alliance nation they do not have access to a full suite options. They have a great navy but no Airforce beyond Tiny Fliers and the small Minelayers who have no gunnery options. What they do have are broadsides that make my FSA weep at RB4, airburst mines, weather control and turrets that shoot industrial waste at you.

   So we get the Naval Battle Group. This contains the Battleship, 4 Cruisers, 6 Frigates, 3 Small fliers, 8 mines and 10 tiny fliers.

   As usual with Spartan models the majority is resin, the frigates are metal which surprised me. All the minarets and volley guns are metal.

   The support group is the other box release containing the Dreadnought, 2 Armoured Cruisers, 4 frigates, 4 destroyers, 3 small fliers and 11 tiny fliers.

   Here they all are taking a relax after a little bath. Usually I would say that I do not wash the models but last time with my russians I did not and I had a few that the paint peeled off. It was more likely my spraying but I was not taking the chance.

   What i did forget to do was cut the stands down before adding the magnets. The Ottomans have surface skimmers and here it is not so much a skimmer as a flier, next to the Tunguska which is a flier.

    Here is the full support group undercoated. The dreadnought is a beast of a ship and is very imposing, as it should be really. The Islamic architecture on the ships carries through nicely and give the ships that Eastern feel.

    This is the Naval Battlegroup. Lots of surface skimmers so no barnacles to clean off these hulls.

   So now to paint these Yeni Cheri so they can defend the Empire from the Infidels!