CoA-Spieler werden ja richtig verwöhnt...
Covenant of Antarctica - Herodotus Class Mobile AirfieldWhen Lord Barnabas Draynes Sturgeon led his famous expedition to the fabled Vault, he took with him scientists and scholars from every nation, from every field of research and school of thought. Physicists, chemists, engineers, biologists, all of them taken to be a part of the utopia Sturgeon had envisioned, a future guided by reason and logic, free of nationalism and the petty squabbles of kingdoms and empires. Even after war broke out, and the realisation of that utopian vision halted for the time being, Sturgeon still remained faithful to the idea of a society guided by scholars.
In readiness for the world war, all branches of science were drafted into the conceptualisation of military vehicles. You need only look to the land vehicles deployed by the Covenant of Antarctica to see how the many entomologists who joined Sturgeon have lent their minds.
The Herodotus Class Mobile Airfield is truly a monstrous envisioning of the future of warfare, this arachnid behemoth strides across the battlefield on its four colossal legs. Its thick metallic carapace, infused with stabilised Sturginium ores, shrugs off the pattering of machinegun fire and the crack of artillery as it moves into position. Once there it raises its massive thorax, the armoured launch racks concealed within firing wave after wave of drones into the sky, a serpentine mess of machinery within replacing the drones almost as soon as they are launched. Nestled within the abdomen of the Herodotus is the telltale torus of the Covenant’s most deadly weapon; the Particle Accelerator, capable of launching deadly salvo strikes into battle.
It was quite a process making the Covenant Herodotus, since with the exception of the screw driven bombard, all their land vehicles are walkers. Not wanting to dilute the armoured crab design of the Land Ship we decided on a more arachnid shape for the mobile airfield, having the large thorax as the launch device made the most sense out of some of the wackier options that came up. Spider tanks are dotted throughout a lot of science fiction, seeping into almost every sub-genre, including Steampunk.
The final model is a unique mechanical beast and one that Covenant players will, I hope, enjoy crushing their enemies with. For me, this hulking mass striding across a tabletop, handing out death and destruction to all about it really does sum up land warfare in Dystopian Wars.
Prussian Empire - Seydlitz Class Mobile AirfieldSometimes, when an idea sticks in your head, you just can’t get rid of it. That’s what happened when we had the planning meeting for the Mobile Airfields. One excited comment, and I found myself designing the Seydlitz Class Mobile Airfield as you see before you. I mean, who would have thought that a comment like… “hey, why don’t we make it look like a giant Iron Cross rolling across the battlefield” would get the boss so excited.
As you can see, the idea stuck and I had to go away and make a giant Iron Cross that rolls over the battlefield, crushing all before it and launching waves of Kondor fighters to strike at enemy targets. The Empire of the Blazing Sun Mobile Carrier I designed is still my most complex model, but the Seydlitz, which I named after the Prussian Cavalry Commander Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Seydlitz, took a lot of thinking about! My sketchpad was well used that week.
The crossover landing strips slot together simply, creating the symbolic Prussian cross, and I went for a beefed up hull with nice angular edges. Plenty of Tesla weaponry and this behemoth is ready for action in the New Year. All in all I am really pleased with the model, and I managed to keep the boss happy.
