Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Anyone else seen/heard about this? It is the new hotness from Spartan Games. Here is the link:

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/dystopian_wars.html

It looks like it is kind of a mix of Uncharted Seas ("wet" naval combat) and Firestorm Armada (fighters, bombers, etc). Reading the website, it sounds like there will be a land component to this game as well at some point, although it looks like the initial releases will be naval only.

So, what do you guys think? I am moderately excited about this. The game supposedly leverages the mechanics of US and FSA (range bands, exploding dice, etc), so if you like the way those play you will probably like this. I haven't played US yet, but I do like FSA a lot. And honestly, the look and setting of this game appeal to me a lot more than US does! What's not to like about a Zeppelin aircraft carrier?

A guy in our gaming group posted this up on our boards. They do a very good priced Mega starter bundle for £125 so we may look at picking this up. I must admit the models look absoloutely fantastic.

News about this has been around for awhile. I already have the FSA stuff preordered from a FLGS, the release schedule is reported to be alittle wonky though. The big test for me with this game will be weather or not its different from Uncharted or Firestorm in any way other then name and looks.

That is the big question. It is purported to be similar, but just how similar is hard to say. I would hope that it would be at least as different from US and FSA as those two games are from each other, but I haven't seen a lot of discussion on the game play yet.

Super excited about Dystopian Wars - just took advantage of TheWarStore's 5% off offer and bought the Prussian battleforce and the Air Fortress. I'm particularly interested in the air and land combat they're promising in the future... it'll be interesting to play a game that takes land, air and sea all into account.

Its pretty awesome looking... I'm eying up that Prussian fleet right now.

Cool looking minis, might get into it sometime...then again I say that about a lot of games.

IILeiBlazeII wrote:Super excited about Dystopian Wars - just took advantage of TheWarStore's 5% off offer and bought the Prussian battleforce and the Air Fortress. I'm particularly interested in the air and land combat they're promising in the future... it'll be interesting to play a game that takes land, air and sea all into account.

Just to play the Devils advocate, Spartan Games has a very Wonkey release schedule. don't hold your breath waiting for them to realease something, but it will come out...eventually.

Eh, I don't think they are any more "wonky" than any of the other companies out there...WotC has pushed back War At Sea sets multiple times before, and GW? Who knows; they won't tell you what is in the works!

From what I have seen, Spartan Games seems to be pretty consistent at releasing games fairly quickly once they have done the big splash announcement via email/website. Granted though, this might be because I've only been paying attention to them for about the last 8 months or so. It is possible they weren't as consistent prior to that.

Ruckdog wrote:Eh, I don't think they are any more "wonky" than any of the other companies out there...WotC has pushed back War At Sea sets multiple times before, and GW? Who knows; they won't tell you what is in the works!

From what I have seen, Spartan Games seems to be pretty consistent at releasing games fairly quickly once they have done the big splash announcement via email/website. Granted though, this might be because I've only been paying attention to them for about the last 8 months or so. It is possible they weren't as consistent prior to that.

Talking to an owner of my FLGS, the Models and boxes for the first four factions arre scheduled to release before the rulebook....

Models look great, but I don't care for another Spartan "whoever rolls more 6s wins" game.

lord_blackfang wrote:Models look great, but I don't care for another Spartan "whoever rolls more 6s wins" game.

I shoot your battle ship with my frigate.

Thats 4 shots at 4+.

I get 30 hits, thats a double critical!

The Exploding dice mechanice can get alittle carried away some times.

Catyrpelius wrote:

lord_blackfang wrote:Models look great, but I don't care for another Spartan "whoever rolls more 6s wins" game.

I shoot your battle ship with my frigate.

Thats 4 shots at 4+.

I get 30 hits, thats a double critical!

The Exploding dice mechanice can get alittle carried away some times.

While I suppose its possible, it never happens (at least in none of the exploding D6 games that I've played, Spartan included). IMO, the usual cause of insane numbers of 6s seems to be the way the dice are rolled (picked up sixes are dropped and end up on sixes again). Rolling extra dice from the cube, and making sure the actually roll some across the table really seems to solve the oodles of d6 stuff that I've seen other players end up with.

I got over 20 hits on 8 dice last week. And that's on regular GW dice all shaken properly in both hands cupped together.

Sadly, I was shooting at an Escort. But when my opponent realized I could have one-shotted his battleship with two frigates, he put all his Sorylians in a box on top of his closet next to the WHFB and 40k stuff he hasn't used in 5+ years.

lord_blackfang wrote:Models look great, but I don't care for another Spartan "whoever rolls more 6s wins" game.

Whoa, so if you roll better than your opponent in a game that uses dice, you win? ASTOUNDING!

I keed, I keed.

Actually, this discussion is interesting to me, I've seen it come up a couple of times elsewhere online and with a few of the gamers at my FLGS. It seems like the whole exploding dice mechanic is a very polarizing thing...people seem to either love it or hate it.

I like it myself, as to me it helps keep the game interesting and unpredictable. It seems your friend looked at the example of getting 20 hits off of 8 dice and decided that there was too much luck involved (and lets be honest, getting 20 hits on that many dice is pretty lucky). The corollary to that is the notion that there is no way 2 frigates should be able to destroy a battleship, for "fairness" reasons. On the other hand, I like the narrative opportunities that a couple of frigates overcoming long odds to fell a larger opponent provides.

lord_blackfang wrote:I got over 20 hits on 8 dice last week. And that's on regular GW dice all shaken properly in both hands cupped together.

Sadly, I was shooting at an Escort. But when my opponent realized I could have one-shotted his battleship with two frigates, he put all his Sorylians in a box on top of his closet next to the WHFB and 40k stuff he hasn't used in 5+ years.

I think you might have made a mistake in that game; AFAIK the most dice you can get out of two frigates in a single linked-fire salvo is 7 (the Relthoza, Directorate, and Dindrenzi can do this, to be precise). And your friend definitely sounds like he isn't a fan of games with certain degrees of luck, as in one-shotting a Land Radier with a lascannon or a Guardsman killing a Terminator with a lasgun (both of which I suspect are actually more likely than getting 20 hits on 8 dice!). Out of curiosity, what games does your friend like to play?

A happy compromise on the exploding d6 mechanic is to allow a single die to only explode once. Thus a single 6 could never be more than 4 hits (6, 6).

Catyrpelius wrote:

lord_blackfang wrote:Models look great, but I don't care for another Spartan "whoever rolls more 6s wins" game.

I shoot your battle ship with my frigate.

Thats 4 shots at 4+.

I get 30 hits, thats a double critical!

The Exploding dice mechanice can get alittle carried away some times.

The chances of getting 30 hits from 4 dice is pretty darn small. We're talking 1-2% range and that's probably being generous. It is an interesting matter of perception though. Technically you could fire 5 (or 6) missle launchers at a land raider and kill it. First you hit with all five shots, then roll 6s for all your penetration rolls then all 5s and 6s after that to kill the three weapons, immobilize it and get the last hit in. Sure it can happen but it's extremely unlikely. The difference is that the exploding mechanic people see it and think they will get the exponential results several times per game when in reality it isn't that common. People won't remeber the dozen or more times they rolled 16+ dice and got 10 or less hits. They remember the one time they got 25-30. What is more likely is to get a luckly 2 or 12 on the critical hit chart and sink that expensive battleship / carrier / whatever and that's still only a 6% chance or so. Getting lots of dice on a frigate is meaningless. On a cruiser simply kills it in one shot which is not a game breaker. If you're lucky you'll get two crits on a big ship. That will go a long way to crippling it but with 8-10 hull points you won't be killing it very often with sheer brute force in a single turn.

I can understand why people do not like the mechanic but I will politely disagree that the three spartan games are simply a matter of of 'who rolls the most 6's wins.'

Looks like Spartan is showing more renders for some of their ships. Holy Flying French Battleship, Batman!

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/dystopian_wars_previews_french_battleship.html

More new pictures of some flyers

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/dystopian_wars_previews_medium_flyers.html

I really like both the FSA and Prussian air ships...I've always had a fascination with Zepplins .

Pretty wicked looking figures, but then again I'm a sucker for Steampunk (who isn't?). The concept and timeline vaguely reminds me of Aeronef, but who knows how the rules are.

I'll be picking this up on Thursday.

So far from everything I've read, it's more of a game than simulation, which is fine by me.

I definitely didn't want just a naval game, so the future inclusion of land, sea, and air makes this very interesting.

I'm wondering if infantry will be handled in any way in the land war. Probably just small tokens like the fighters that have transports, and can try to board the landships to do damage.

Infantry are not handled in any way in the rules, it's abstracted into an AP value for vehicles, representing boarding actions by Marines etc. That said there are robots for some factions and there is talk of having large creatures, that have been bred using Darwin's new science. The only one in the rule book is a giant squid for the Rising Sun faction, but I'd expect to see more in the future.

True, but in the future there could be tokens for things like Tiny Vehicles (similar to Tiny Fliers or other Tiny Tokens) that represent infantry scale units.

I like KoB, but also like the FSA's modus operandi.

The KoB ships look great with the dazzle pattern, and their land vehicles, including the WW1 land raider-like tanks really, really appeal to me. So, I know I'll be getting sea and land forces for KoB

Meanwhile, the FSA paddlewheels look a bit strange to me, but the turrets, tougher battleship, and extra shield generators sounds fun to use. Even the double decker carrier the FSA have looks awesome despite the paddle wheels, I like it slightly more than the Prussian zepplin carrier. Sadly, they haven't shown any FSA land vehicles.

I've ended up ordering both starters so I a friend and I could play.

I too am anxious to see the FSA land units... I wonder if they will look like giant Shermans? The paddle wheels are a little off-putting, as even in the "real" time line by 1870 screw propulsion was well established as a superior technology, especially for war ships.

I can't wait to get my hands on the rules and minis (they are on my Christmas list)!

Hidden away on the site is this link which has some cad drawings of FSA land units. One tank and the amphibious land ship.

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/dystopian_wars_federated_states.html

Alright, those amphibious land ships has made be interested in the FSA again, especially since I can use those in naval engagements. Park them on some island somewhere and bombard ships with it.

Thanks for the link! Those amphibious ships look pretty neat. I also like the looks of the flying carrier. I'm guessing that the flying carrier will be usable for both land and sea games...

Sadly, the FSA does not have a flying carrier. That is actually the top deck of the FSA naval carrier that's been removed to show the internal details of the model. It's on a flight stand for show, not to indicate flying.

Huh. I didn't notice that . I was thinking I had read somewhere that each faction was going to have both a "wet" carrier and a flying one, but I may have made that up in my head.