Taking the plunge: New game picked!

I've done it.. I've committed myself to a little meander around the oceans of Dystopian Wars.

In my last post I discussed my options for a new game (til Hawk Games unleash their awesomeness on us!..oh and that "6th ed" thing hits) and I've chosen to engage with some maritime bantering.

I've picked out the Empire of the Blazing (read: Rising) Sun and gone all native like Samurai William... Japan in a Victorian era, steampunk, alternative history earth. Bring it.

I took a visit to my local independent store (Inner Sanctum Collectibles, Cambridge) and grabbed a copy of the new Rulebook and picked up a Naval Battle Group for both Bringer of Death and myself.

Bringer went for Kingdom of Brittania, staying true and patriotic. I went with the Japs cause they have a giant, submersible, metal squid!

Got them home, finished marking my essays for the weekend and then unboxed those bad boys.

I was amazed by the amount you get for £30 in a box.. sure the models are small in scale.. the Cruisers being a little 'taller'/longer than Terminators, but not as bulky and the Capital Class, Battleship being ..um...Dark Eldar Venom size...almost.. but still.. you get 9 Frigates, 3 Cruisers, a Battleship, 2 flying Bombers and 10 'tiny flyer' tokens - essentially spitfires in groups of 3 on a base.

You can Steve the Space Marine for scale comparison here.. The tiny flyers you can see are truly 'tiny' and the Frigate, being the smallest of the boats, is still not that small. It has rivets and all sorts to paint, individually picked out sections of decking etc. These will be both quick to paint, but also fun and detailed.

The other thing is that there is very little, if any assembly to do..these guys can be taken out of the box and stuck into straight away.

Steve the Space Marine with a Cruiser/medium ship

I really do feel that what Spartan Games have put out is really good value for money, inside the box you also get all the turning templates, mine templates, damage counters etc that you need to play the game..it's very cool.


You get 3 Cruisers to get started straight away with, these are not a bad size either.. with plenty of details from the Rocket Batteries to the Broadside Cannons, rivets, decking and the steamy, power-things.. technical term that.



The largest of the ships are the Battleships and these bad boys are cool! Each fleet is different of course and each "Class" of ship in each fleet is different.. this is the Japanese Sokutsu Battleship..

Big ass guns fore and aft, rocket batteries all over the place, windows, ladders, port holes, rivets, decking.. the details are superb on these little guys.. and as you can see from Steve the Space Marine.. they are not that small.. allowing for detailing to go on these important lil' mo fo's..

Now, my camera is just on my phone, so the detail is not great in them, but hopefully you can pick out how cool these little dudes are..

There is plenty of detail for me to pick out. I can't wait to try and paint these guys..

They will of course just be getting a simple base coat to start with and a wash.. but I think they will look really good like that..

The rules? I'm half way through the book and have watched 2 x 1/2 hour videos on getting started with Dystopian Wars on Beasts of War website.. it is, so far, very simple to get stuck into..game turn goes something like:
- Roll for initiative each turn..
- Activate and complete the movement, shooting, boarding etc for that unit
- Opponent then does the same for one unit
- Back and forth this way. The alternate activations work just like in Malifaux and other games..so I'm used to that.
- End of the turn occurs when all units have activated.
- Roll for initiative and go again for Turn 2!

Shooting is the big thing with this game as with most of ours.. and it is pretty easy..guns have a range and a number of shots (which can change with LOS and Cover)..shots hit on 4,5,6 most of the time, with 6's counting as 2 hits and allowing a further roll (like Blood Talons on a BA Furioso Dread)..if you roll equal to or over the Damage Rating (armour) of the ship you are shooting at...well you damage it..
Simples.

There is also, from what I read, interactivity in a similar way to ARO's in Infinity.. the principal part of this is Ack-Ack.. you know, the sound the guns make (apparently)..Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack... BOOM!
So if some flying cock comes too close... get the AA guns out and Ack-Ack his ass!

Anyway, that is it for now.. I'm going to do some educational/learning posts like I did for Infinity..although Kraggi has a load of them on his Varcan Cluster blog.. so I may just steal them! Tonight, hopefully I'll get to try out a very simple starter game and see how it all works! Now to build a water table..