Dystopian Wars 24/12/2011 (Tom)

Prussian bombers

I’ve been a bit of a man on a mission lately – the Dystopian Wars fleets had been sitting unpainted since I got them for a present last Christmas, so after Tom and myself agreed that we should get a game of DW in over the holidays I set about painting 2 fleets up in 3 weeks. I picked the Empire of the Blazing Sun fleets (as I thought I could do a quick paint job on it with washes), and the Prussian Empire because of the awesome Sky Fortress model – with the addition to the EotBS fleet of some scout gyros picked up at Salute, we were all ready to go.

EotBS Heavyweights

Tom picked the Prussians (that Sky Fortress again), and the fleets were just about even on points and consisted of everything I’d painted:-

Prussian Empire

1x Imperium Class Sky Fortress
1x Emperor Class Battleship
3x Reiver Class Cruisers
3x Arminius Class Frigates
1x Metzger Class Robot

Prussian Heavyweights

Empire of the Blazing Sun

1x Tenkei class Sky Fortress
1x Sokutsu Class Battleship
2x Ika Class Mechanical Squid
4x Uwatsu Class Frigates
2x Inari Class Scout Gyros

We both had an assortment of 16 Tiny Flyers each, and represented the fuel left by using dice of the following colours:-
Red = Fighter
White = Recon
Yellow = Torpedo Bomber
Blue = Dive Bomber

EotBS Gyros

Terrain was non-existent and the mission was to cripple the enemy fleet before we ran out of time and the table was turned over to takeaway dinner with the in-laws. We started in opposite corners of a 6’x4′ table, which was probably a mistake, as the slower moving craft barely got into action before we called time.

Frigate on frigate action

The main fight was between the opposing frigates and the cruisers and gyros. There was some appalling dice rolling where sixes often make the difference between damaging a target or not. The 3 critical hits we did roll only halved movement in 1 case and firepower in the other 2 – no magazine explosions taking out half a fleet as happened in Uncharted Seas. Rockets seemed pretty ineffective, the big damage being done by the frigates when they closed to within range band 1.

EotBS Squid

I managed to take 2 hits off a cruiser with my EotBS frigates, which meant that he had no AA, so I launched my Torpedo bombers off the carrier against him. More bad dice rolls left the cruiser undamaged and a couple of Torpedo bombers in the drink, made even worse when they got bounced by the Prussian fighters. We need to brush up on tiny flier combat, as it was getting quite complex with linking AA fire and who can or cannot put down AA fire if within range.

EotBS Sky Fortress

I probably had the better of the battle when the Chinese (takeaway) arrived and time was called. The game (and the effort that went in to getting it ready in time for Christmas) was worthwhile and I’m quite pleased with the rules. For next time we need to brush up on the EotBS Altitude Skimmer ability and also the submerged rules for the squids – I suspect I used the squids completely wrong! Also, although we toyed with the idea of boarding, as we only had frigates and cruisers within range, no-one took the risk so that will have to wait until another day (by which time, rumour has it, the boarding rules will have changed – oh well…)

Dystopian Wars 19/02/2011 (Tom)

A try out for the rules and some initial thoughts. We are big fans of Uncharted Seas, and these rules take the complexity up a notch, but will it be worth the effort? I took the Empire of the Blazing Sun fleet against Tom’s Kingdom of Britannia – I’m not sure being familiar with Uncharted Seas was a good or bad thing, as there are subtle differences. These rules see the addition of rockets which can be shot down by ship’s intrinsic AA and torpedoes which can be saved by concussion charges effectively give saving throws against non-gunnery attacks. Also gunnery attacks can now be saved by shield generators, but not all models have these, and in our game only the battleships had.

Bombers seem quite difficult to shoot down with weapons systems or with fighters. I sent in 6 EoBS fighters against 2 KoB Doncaster bombers after the bombers were climbing out a torpedo attack where they had badly damaged 2 of my cruisers – when my fighters bounced them I thought I had them, but no – my fighters were driven off with 1 casualty before I could even get an attack in. Tom tried shooting down my bombers with his battleship’s weapons, but again they weathered the flak and carried on.

I wanted to try out the tiny flyer rules, so sent a wave of unsupported dive bombers against Tom’s carrier which had fighters on CAP. After the AA and CAP had down their job, the dive bombers were either destroyed or driven off. In the future, I’m thinking I need to send in some fighters first to draw off the CAP, then soften up the carrier’s AA with some rockets, so there are some tactical combinations making sense already.

Morale tests are introduced in the rules, but we’re not yet sure if these are worth the effort. We dealt out the cards to play with, but were so caught up in the rules that we kept forgetting to play the cards, so ditched them after the first turn – we’ll try them again when we’ve mastered the rules. First impressions are very positive – lots more tactical option than Uncharted Seas, but more rules to remember – we didn’t even try out boarding actions, as in Uncharted Seas, ships have to be in contact, but in Dystopian Wars, the boarders have jet packs, so can jump from ship-to-ship to board, and we forgot this.

No pictures of this as nothing’s painted yet…