Dystopian Wars - steampunk TT wargame

[Erloas]

So does anyone play Dypstopian Wars? (http://www.spartangames.co.uk/products/dystopian-world/dystopian-wars)

It has been around for about 5 years now and they have recently updated to a 2.0 ruleset (available free online, along with all of the army books) (http://www.spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads)

It is the 1870′s, and war rages between the world’s great powers on a scale never before seen!
At sea, mighty Battle Groups clash; lines of giant smoke-belching Dreadnoughts and Battleships hammer one another in mortal combat, supported by flotillas of smaller craft. Between the thunderous engagements of massed war fleets are dozens, if not hundreds, of lesser skirmishes. From the war lashed North Sea to the most remote of backwater trade routes, roving packs of cruisers, Destroyers and Submarines hunt down the merchant shipping of the enemy.

On ravaged battlefields across the globe, huge armies take to the field, spearheaded by mighty armoured behemoths the size of fortresses. Bristling with cannon, rocket batteries, and even more devastating weapons, packed with battalions of assault troops, these massive juggernauts loom over legions of lesser land ironclads; clashing in massed battle amid raging maelstroms of steel and thunder that shake the very earth itself.

In the air, the most extraordinary conflicts of all split the skies over the warring fleets and armies below. Whole wings of aeroplanes swirl and tear at one another like battling swarms of angry hornets, while Medium and Heavy Bombers empty their deadly payloads onto their hapless earthbound targets. But dominating the skies, as their armoured and naval counterparts, are the mightiest of flying engines;packed with cutting-edge technology and awesome firepower, these sky-giants are the airborne equal of any naval dreadnought or Land Ship, and sport armaments to match.

This awesome new power is the product of advanced industrial technology and revolutionary new science turned to belligerent ends. However; the causes for which the world’s great powers and their allies have sent their armed forces to warfare the same as they ever were; greed, pride, the hunger for power and resources and the unquenchable lust for dominance over all others.

These are the Dystopian Wars!

I haven't played it yet, but I've read over the rules and I'm looking at picking up some models for Christmas. Most reviews says it plays like a mix between Firestorm Armada and Uncharted Seas, both games by the same company but I haven't tried either of them for that to mean anything.

I wasn't actually looking for a new game, I was looking for Steampunk airships and that lead me to Dystopian Wars, so far the only company I've found making any models. My wife is really into steampunk so I figured finding her some models she loved would also give me a chance to paint and collect models too. And if the game was good, all the better. Having read the rules it seems like a fairly big undertaking to get acquainted with the rules, like most wargames, but it seems like it should play well once you have the concepts down.

The game is a mix of land, sea, and air units. Generally with an agreement with your opponent on which will be the primary focus of the game and the others can be taken as secondary units.

The starter box is Operation Shadow Hunt and includes naval models from the Empire of the Blazing Sun and the Federated States of America.

The models look amazing (and for reference I think the biggest airships and battleships are around 5-6" long, it took me a while to find that, I haven't actually got my hands on any models yet).


http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/aerial-web.jpg
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/plc-WEB.jpg
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/OE-WEB.jpg
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/DWRC51.jpg
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/DWBS523.jpg
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/DWFS51.jpg


So far my wife likes the Eclipse Company aerial models the most. (http://shop.spartangames.co.uk/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=DWEX15) They are a mercenary group, but it seems you can field an entire army of mercenaries if you would like.
I'm still trying to decide, I like the look of so many of the models I can't really decide.

The models look fairly reasonably priced. Not cheap, but not GW either. I'm under the impression a starter battle group is around 1000 points, which is a small-medium sized game, and 2000 or so is a fairly large game. Which would put the costs around $150 for a larger force which is pretty good for table top wargames.

So does anyone else play?
Have I just caught anyone's interest?

[Castaras]

I and my boyfriend play, as do a couple of people at my local gaming group. I play Empire of the Blazing Sun and Chinese Federation, and the boyfriend plays Covenant, Black Wolf and Polish-Lithuanian. He's a bit more into it than I am. :smalltongue:

It's a fun game, and the rules are free on the Spartan website and kept updated. If you have any questions about stuff I will definitely be able to answer. :smallsmile: Same goes for anyone else who's interested.

[Erloas]

Yay the thread won't die in complete obscurity.

I have decided on Blazing Sun too, from guidance from the official forums. They said their air units are fairly straight forward and should be a good match for my wife's Eclipse Company forces.
I also decided to pick up a set of the Australian naval fleet, there is an even number of models in the fleet to split between the two of us and since there are two versions that use the same models it will be a legal addition to any of our forces (not that we are worried too much about legal lists right now). That will also give our bombers something to do, as quite a few air forces focus on taking out surface models.

We won't have the models until Christmas, so now my task is to learn the game, without actually being able to play it, well enough to teach my wife in a way that is fun and easy to understand.
Any advice on that? I haven't played any of their other games to know the mechanics really well, and there is always a gap between reading the rules and actually having a chance to play. But she doesn't have the time or inclination to read the rules so it is going to be up to me to simplify things enough that she can have fun without being overwhelmed. Being a relatively seasoned TT wargamer I know a lot of the concepts, but I know it will be a lot to learn if you don't even have a base knowledge of the genre. LOS should be pretty easy, but why exact measurements for movement matter and why weapon and turning arcs and limitations matter and why they need to be followed will be a bit harder.

Going to leave off boarding for a while, and probably leave off SAS for a few games. Just remembering the damage mechanics and how certain effects change things will be a lot going in.

[Castaras]

I would highly recommend getting some naval or land alongside your air units. Air units are fantastic but don't really make a good game as a list on their own. They work better and make a more interesting game if they're supporting naval or land. Generally I find that I never do Air Core games, but when I do a naval or land game I am taking air anyway.

Blazing Sun has plenty of choices for both land and naval (primarily - squid + train ships, or floating squid + walkers). If I remember correctly, Eclipse Company only has air, but with them being mercenaries you could point your wife towards looking for interesting things among any major or minor faction.

If you do want to play only with air stuff - don't bother looking at Bombers or basing army lists off of Bombs - they only affect naval or land units and as a result bombers are useless against air.

Basing off of memory of introduction games that we have done for others:

- Don't worry about Commodores, Cards, or Mission Objectives for the start. Aim to do 3/4 turns and see who killed the most stuff. Introduce those later on.
- Go for around 650-700 points. We've found that 665 is a surprisingly easy number to fit naval games into for introductions, and it's just over half the size of a normal game (1000-1250).

Otherwise, we go through each stage step by step:

Setup:
- Roll for advantage - whoever gets Strategic Advantage puts down terrain first (islands or hills) and chooses which side of the table they wish to deploy. Operational Advantage (not strategic) chooses who puts their first squadron down
- Squadrons have to be deployed largest to smallest. That is - all massive, all large, all medium, all small, tiny flyers

Then, each turn is nice and simple:
- Roll 2 dice for initiative, highest has to go first.
- First player does an activation, then Second player does an activation
- keep doing this until both are out of activations. If one player runs out of activations then the other just does the rest of their activations
- check for any bad stuff that needs to be repaired (Fire, Corrosion, Critical effects)
- Count up how many points each side has, to see if one side has won (completed their objective). In an intro game, we go for the default one of kill 70% of the opponents force pointswise, or ignore it and go for counting the final scores after 3/4 turns.

I've copied our little intro sheet with how one activation of a squadron works for your perusal in the spoiler. We generally have it printed out for the person who's learning.

Move > Shoot > Board

Move

Move Minimum Move straight forward (unless the model has Sharp Turn)
Move up to the listed maximum move (Adding +X” if the model has Advanced Engines(X”) and does not turn)
Turn at any point during movement by placing the turning template at the middle of the model's side and moving the model to the next side of the template. Each increment of turn costs 1” of move. You may turn less than the full amount.


Shoot
Choose targets to shoot at. Each weapon may fire at a different target.
Similar weapons may Link Fire. Choose one weapon as the “primary firer”- all other weapons add their AD together, half it (rounding up) and add it to the dice of the primary firer weapon.

Primary (P) weapons can link with other Primary (P) weapons.
Secondary (S) weapons can link with other Secondary (S) weapons.
Tertiary (T) weapons can link with other Tertiary (T) weapons.
The following linking rules override the previous ones: Rockets can only link with other Rockets; Torpedoes can only link with other Torpedoes; Energy weapons can only link with other Energy weapons; Particle Accelerators can never link.
Roll dice. Usually, a 4+ is a hit, but some conditions may apply- E.g. Capital (Like Battleships) models suffer a -1 to hit against Small Target models (Like frigates).
If the number of hits is greater than target's DR, inflict a point of damage. If the number of hits is greater than the target's CR, inflict a critical hit. If the CR is doubled, inflict two critical hits. If tripled, inflict three, and so on. DR cannot be beaten multiple times.
Critical Hits are rolled on the Critical Hit table in your rulebook. 2d6 per critical hit, see what happens.


Board

Choose a target within 4”. If you fired any ordnance, you cannot board a model you shot at. Robots, on the other hand, may only board a target they shot at, if they fired.
Assign AP to the target model.
Target squadron can defend with their AA values, requiring a 5+ to kill an opposing AP. AA may link, and is divided between each attacking model as the defender wishes (if more than one). Against Robots, AA attacks the robot's DR/CR, not AP, and works like a shooting attack.
AP that survive the AA board the enemy ship. Defending AP are divided between each attacking model's AP. Robots just start punching the hull, and their AP works like a shooting attack against the target's DR/CR. Hit numbers are based on crew type (4+ for Regular, 3+ for Elite, 5+ for Conscripts.)
Consult the rulebook table for results. As a guide, if you have AP left and the other side doesn't, you win.


Exploding Dice
An important note: In almost all circumstances, any roll of a 6 counts as two successes and grants a re-roll/extra dice. The places where this does not apply are:

Any shooting at Support Aircraft (tiny planes)
Any event where multiple successes would not have an effect (e.g. repairing a critical effect, activating a non-shield generator).



Our intro games generally end up just going through these steps and helping remind the new player of the maths.

[Erloas]

That looks like a good list, I'll keep in handy for when we start playing. The wording on linking guns made it seem more complicated than I suspected that it was, the way you have it written is much more clear.

I wasn't trying to base the list off of bombs, but I noticed that most units have bombs along with aerial weapons. I figured we would mix a few naval ships in with the aerial forces to make sure those bombs have a use.

I was curious how our armies compared in terms of points and how much we would have from splitting the Australian naval battle group. Eclipse Company comes in at 605, Blazing Sun comes in at 525, and the Australian navy comes in at 1150, so 575 each. Which really surprised me, I would have thought they would be more balanced than that. So I checked a couple other naval groups, the BS flotilla is 775 and the BS naval Battle Group was 925, so I would reason that most naval groups have more points.

That wouldn't actually make a legal army list either way, not that I'm too worried about that now, but an 1100-1200 point game is probably too big to start out with anyway. Probably drop a few of the ships.

I've picked up that most people play naval battles the most but considering we came to the game for the cool airships I think we'll start there.

Generally how durable are the units? The large and massive ships seem like they could take quite a bit of damage, I'm guessing more than most armies can put out in a turn unless everyone can shoot them. The mediums even look like they could take 2 rounds from everything but the biggest ships. It seems like even the small ships have a good chance of damaging larger ships so long as the squad is still mostly in tact and can all join their fire together. Is that accurate?

[Castaras]

yeah, 1200 point lists aren't good to start with when learning the game. With regards naval games, it was less me worrying about you playing aerial rather than naval, more some of the air units not being as useful due to lack of other models - airship battles with support flotilla sounds excellent to me.

With regards your questions on durability of units, I have passed your question onto the boyfriend (who is much better at the game than I am!) to answer (although from the perspective of mostly naval over aerial as that's what we have most experience with):

Righty-ho, most models in Dystopian Wars can take a fair beating from anything smaller than them. Depending on your fleet, it may vary as to what models will be dishing out the hurt. Anything hanging around within Range Band 2 of an intact Russian battleship will be lucky to escape the experience with more than half it's hit points left. And no amount of shields can save you if a full squadron of Blazing Sun frigates gets a full salvo off at close range- chances are you'll be losing at least 2HP off a battleship. Very few units can brawl effectively- Dreadnoughts are usually fairly good at this, as is everything in the Russian fleet. Submarines are pretty much immune to damage while submerged, and a Sky Fortress flying at the obscured height level is very tough. Small stuff often disappears after a single shot from a naval turret. Mediums vary in toughness- the +1HP going from light cruiser to a full cruiser makes a big difference, as two crits no longer kills them instantly. Anything up to a light cruiser has a fair chance of being gone in one lucky shot, while you can expect battleships and sky fortresses to stand up to a couple of rounds of shooting. Dreadnoughts are fairly unlikely to go down at all to shooting- most get taken out by boarding attempts.

[Pilum]

If you're looking at Shadow Hunter, I'm sure I remember the campaign booklet having a very computer-game-esque 'hand holding tutorial' set of scenarios: game 1 -move across table, game 2 - shoot at disabled target, game 3 - shoot at 'live' ships and so on. Unfortunately I can't check as I've had to pack stuff away recently due Real Life Reasons (sigh) and guess what one of those things was!!!

I know you've not expressed much interest in an American fleet but you do get a good amount of stuff for them and the Japanese in the box.

PS re 'alternative' steampunkish stuff, a company called Brigade Models makes what they call 'aeronefs' - best described as flying ironclads. Not the same scale as DW and frankly nowhere near as pretty (can be quite basic really) but if you want that sort of stuff on a budget, it's a possibility. They really really really won't fit in with DW though, I MUST re-emphasise that.

[Erloas]

I had happened upon Brigade Models once before but didn't look too closely. They are really pretty plain looking ships, just on flying bases. But they do have some pretty good looking scenery at the right scale, might look at that more if everything goes well.

I could definitely see how having an odd number of HPs would help the medium sized ships survive, especially against anything big, since they're likely to be taking a lot of crits.

Looking over the numbers again with many of the large+ models, I guess the difference between DR and CR is quite a bit farther than I thought, so they really are likely to see a lot of fire coming their way before they go down.

I'm working on my much slower second pass of the rulebook now. Have enough of a base idea to go through it again and figure out the parts that didn't make sense or didn't mean much before because the parts it was pertaining to I hadn't got to yet.

I'm just lucky my brother still has his wholesale contacts in place so at least for this first purchase I can get stuff at a really good price.

[Leon]

I don't play but i bought a small amount of the Covenant of Antarctica that was cheap once. I used to play Uncharted Seas and after much screwing around with the rules from Spartan i lost all trust in any product they made as a playable game.

[Erloas]

What did they do? I've only caught parts of it in passing, mostly it seems that as they have newer ideas some of their old games get forgotten. I haven't heard anything about the rules though. The general feel I get from their forums (and I haven't been following them long enough to have any first hand experience) is that the company is still small but has a lot of big ideas so everything seems to really slow down on old systems when they start working on something new. Kind of a business ADHD.

I've seen nothing in DW yet that makes me question their ability to write rules for a game system. I didn't see version 1 of the game, but most indications put the majority of the community in agreement on the changes in 2.0, and considering the types of comments usually seen for games of this nature on new version releases, that is a practically glowing endorsement of the changes.

[Erloas]

So anyone have any models to post pictures of?

I'm looking for inspiration for my Blazing Suns army.

I need to figure it out sooner rather than later so I can get the paints ordered. My last paints/brushes and everything else model related ended up in my brother's shop. But considering that was 4 years ago, I'm counting it all as a loss. What wasn't used would probably be dried up by now and there is no hope for the brushes. But since his shop is closed now I've got to figure out what paints I want and order them online (bonus that I also get to get Vallejo instead of the GW he carried). But there are too many to get everything so I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want so I can get them.

I did some bold colors on my 40k Eldar, and a few on some Battletech models, but it just doesn't seem right with these models. Blazing Suns seems like it is calling for red, but red is such a fickle color to work with and so far I'm just not really feeling it. I've really liked some of the white models I tried on Battletech but white is also a hard color to do well. I'm thinking I'm going to do a lot of more traditional steampunk colors, brass, copper, and rich browns. But I'm just not sure how I want to put it together yet. Going to check out CMON and see what they have that catches my eye. And Camospecs (battletech site) has a lot of good color schemes.

Also trying to keep some interest in this thread so I don't have to necro it when I finally get my models at Christmas.

[Pilum]

Well, here's samples of mine. Hope they turn out ok, not 100% happy with the upload preview but we'll see... Apologies for size too, they're ok on a monitor but not sure on a mobile, but shrinking the size made them look really poor.

Also sorry that I can't remember the class names - it's been a while! I think the frigate is an Uwatsu, but the others have disappeared from Spartan's store.

Frigate:
http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q791/Steh2012/IMG_0555_zpsotbk6ebr.jpg (http://s1359.photobucket.com/user/Steh2012/media/IMG_0555_zpsotbk6ebr.jpg.html)

Cruiser:
http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q791/Steh2012/IMG_0556_zpsogr5rdad.jpg (http://s1359.photobucket.com/user/Steh2012/media/IMG_0556_zpsogr5rdad.jpg.html)

Battleship:
http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q791/Steh2012/IMG_0557_zpsl61gofo0.jpg (http://s1359.photobucket.com/user/Steh2012/media/IMG_0557_zpsl61gofo0.jpg.html)

'fleet'
http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q791/Steh2012/IMG_0558_zpsue3k7mb5.jpg (http://s1359.photobucket.com/user/Steh2012/media/IMG_0558_zpsue3k7mb5.jpg.html)

I've finished them off a bit more since I took those, added 'wakes' around them on the base and such.

I really will have to take a more updated pic one day soon. And the fliers. And the yanks :smallbiggrin: Not quite as happy with them though; I had real joy painting the Japanese, I just didn't 'feel' the American ships - though I like the actual design of them, that's why I got the box in the first place - and I think that came out in the way I finished them. Ah well, that's life, eh?

As for alternative paint schemes, I will, one day, should I find some cheap frigates at a show or ebay, paint them all up as Thomas And Friends. Because I must.:smallcool:

Edit: agree that brigade looks a bit basic, shame when some of their newer spaceships and 6mm ground stuff look very nice (new British, Indonesian and South African kit, for instance). Pity they don't go back and redo a lot of their earlier stuff.

[Erloas]

Looks good. I think a little bit of dry brushing for highlights would really make them stand out a lot more.

As for the models, according to a dev on their forums, at the request of many retailers they have simplified their product line a lot. So instead of having blisters for every single model instead the majority of models are only available in box sets.

I'm now leaning towards a military green sort of color for the primary but with heavy use of the traditional steampunk colors for the details. I'm thinking some sort of bold red bit for Blazing Sun, but I don't know exactly what yet. Not sure if maybe a single panel, a strip, maybe the bridge. I'll have to get the models in hand to decide that. Just have to make sure it doesn't come across as chirstmasy at all with the red and green.

I also didn't realize the bases were that plain, I guess that comes from mostly seeing them in display type pictures, so I guess I'll have to pick up some water effects too.

[Pilum]

They're actually a *wee* bit brighter in the flesh, the pale blue you can just about see on the cruiser is a little more noticeable than in the photos, but I was trying to keep them a bit grimier than I usually do anyway.

As for the bases... They're mine! The ships don't actually come with any (apart from submarines, and they do have moulded wave effects, if I remember correctly), I just knocked up some from plasticard because I didn't want to damage my paint job 'in game' sliding then across the table (and to have something to hold on to while painting them).

[Erloas]

So a thread on the official forums was talking about what can and can't kill SAS. I was wondering how you guys played it. It seems like some "carry over" ideas from the old edition are still being used but that the current rules do not support that interpretation now.

The question was about indiscriminate attacks and if they can kill SAS or not. RAW I'm pretty sure they can, you can't target the SAS with an indiscriminate attack (as SAS can only be targeted by AA) and they won't trigger things like mines (they are too small, mines don't detonate for tiny or smaller), and they can't be rammed or part of a collision. But if they happen to be in range of a mine going off by something else triggering it, or close enough to some other model that is targeted by an indiscriminate attack that happens to hit them too, or a magazine explosion, then they will be hit too.

To me it seems pretty clear, SAS are not listed as not being hit by indiscriminate attacks of any sort, and not being rammed or triggering mines is clearly stated. It also clearly states they can only be targeted by AA. Everything else should affect them as normal.

Some people on the forum seem to think they wouldn't be hurt by indiscriminate attacks of any sort. Not having played 1.1, it seems implied that SAS where very unique in that edition and weren't treated as actual models. And their justification for this seems like little more than "we play with this interpretation because we've always played with this interpretation" than any actual rules to back it up.

So how do you guys interpret it?

[Erloas]

So I got the models in the other day, and I opened one to look at it. Only had a minute to see it before my wife saw me and threatened to stab me with scissors because they were Christmas presents and even if I know what they are going to be I can't open them even to look until then.

I really liked what I saw so far. They are pretty substantial sized models (at least the massive Tenkei that I got to look at briefly) and the details looked great. Very little mold lines, no signs of mis-casting so far. Got my new paints, brushes, and everything else I need to get back into model painting too. Not sure exactly when I'm going to have time to do it, but at least I have all the stuff now.