Friday 13 April 2012

You Sunk My Battleship!!!

Hey guys as promised yesterday here's my hobby article. So its been a while so what have I been up to since my last post? Well other than worrying and revising for summer exams (I love Engineering... -.- lol) I've been dabbling in a bit of Dystopian Wars. Now I started briefly having a look at this game about 6 months ago but never really got into, however a new rulebook has just been released so I've decided to give it another go. Over this easter I've been playing a few games and painted a bit and to be honest I'm really enjoying it! To start with the models are gorgeous a real pleasure to paint! The game system has had a lot of its flaws fixed in the new incarnation of the rules, and to be honest I kinda missed rolling fistfuls of dice like I used to playing 40k.

So what's the game system itself? Well Dystopian Wars is a game where Air, Naval and Land elements can be used within your games, all at the same time if you really want. In the games I've played so far I've only played with the Naval and Air elements which have been really good fun. The tactics are quite important however pre-measuring is allowed at all times which definitely takes some getting used to. The power of the weapons within the game is dependent on which "range band" your target is in, in relation to your model. The Range bands are 8" wide and there are 4 of them with your ships getting more dice to roll against the enemy ship the nearer you get.

There is also and "exploding 6" mechanic within the game which adds a nice random element. A roll of a 6 in game
counts as 2 hits (where 4 or 5 is one) and also grants the roll of an additional dice, which means there is a possibility of rolling strings of 6's allowing ships which normally wouldn't have a chance against bigger ones the chance to damage them.

Dotted around this post are pics of my Prussian fleet, the Battleship, Frigates and Tiny Flyer tokens, the tiny fliers aren't the only airborne models there are full scale planes and for the prussians zeps and airships!

The Prussians are a very fast but fragile fleet with all of their firepower delivered up close in range band 1 as well as being great boarders.

Other forces are the FSA (Federated States of America) Which are mainly paddle steamers with huge guns and rockets.

The Empire of the Blazing Sun (Japanese) which again have rockets and are very durable.

The Kingdom of Britannia (I'll let you guys guess who this is ;) ) These guys are a mid ranged fleet with lots of Torpedoes and shield generators.

The Covenant of Antarctica these guys are super advanced tech wise with weaponised particle accelerators and energy turrets.

And finally the Republique of France again a close ranged fleet but with a definitely different playstyle to the Prussians.

If you want to know more about Dystopian Wars feel free to ask in the comments or check out Spartan Games' website and forum here

Stargazer out.

3 comments:

  1. This looks like a really cool game actually.

    Whats the sort of time you need for the games to play out etc ...?

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  2. Once you get all the rules down probs 2-3 hours max, if you push it and don't have to look up the rules at all (still not at that stage yet) you could probably get a game in 1.5 hours. Although to start it really was slow going. Like 5 hours lol but then again we were teaching ourselves so no one to help out etc.

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  3. this games looks very interesting, but again, i suffer from 'no-one to play with' syndrome :(

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