Having undercoated the Britannian Flyers the next stage was to paint the base coat. I have been thinking about the colour scheme for my two large Dystopian Wars Kingdom of Britannia airborne models, the Illustrious Class Sky Fortress and the Eagle Class War Rotor.
I thought very early on that I didn’t want to follow the same colour scheme I had used for the naval vessels. They had a dark grey basecoat, followed by a dark brown wash and then successive light grey drybrushed onto the models. I was quite pleased with the end result.
The Illustrious and the Eagle though flew in the air, they did not sail in the sea. Even though the “fluff” from Dystopian Wars talks about a combined armed forces for the Kingdom of Britannia, I still liked the idea of a slightly separate naval air corps. I was inspired by a conversation I had with Simon about the current US Navy where the East Coast Atlantic Navy think the West Coast Pacific Navy are beach boys who can’t handle cold weather and are too relaxed, whilst the Pacific Navy think the Atlantic Navy need to loosen up and chill a bit! In a similar vein many in the British armed forces in 1914 thought that the Royal Flying Corps was full of crackpots and madmen.
I have this idea that though there are combined forces in the Kingdom of Britannia, there are still issues and there are those who command the naval ships thinking that those who fly about in the air are a little “weird” and not quite right in the head!
On the Spartan Community forums there are a fair few pictures of painted models, which have given me a few ideas.
Initially I did think about a camouflage scheme as used by the RAF in World War Two, light egg blue for the under surfaces and khaki and dark green two tone camouflage on the top surfaces. I then did consider using the RAF night camouflage, so with black under surfaces. However upon reflection I did wonder if this was too “modern” for Dystopian Wars and so went back to thinking.
I then remembered I really enjoyed reading The Ministry of Space comic, which describes an alternate reality in which the United Kingdom won the space race.
It is written and drawn in the style of Dan Dare and the Eagle Comics.
As a result I am now thinking bright shiny aluminium with aircraft markings. So for the basecoat I used Citadel Boltgun Metal.