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Since the new rules are coming out soon, anyone else play this?

 Daba wrote:
Since the new rules are coming out soon, anyone else play this?

I've got some EotBS stuff (both starters, the sky fortress, squid, dreadnought, and gunship blister). But unfortunately, despite a lot of interest, it never got going at my local store. It's not so much "people tried it and didn't like it" as "people talked about trying it, but somehow the first games never got played".

I do, and have been since a few months after its release.

There is not a large group that I've fully found in my area, although I have about 3-4 players I know of, and I've been told there's a larger group at one of the local game stores but I haven't seen it played there.

Played a bit of the first couple editions, which were all different variants of v1 I suppose if this is v2 (however it was I know our group had at least 3 different main rulebooks...).
Anywho, lost track of the game a while back, but the land battle supplement, Armoured clash, had some good improvements I liked. Mainly the detachment aspect to list building and activation and the different coloured attack dice. Hopefully those are making it into the new version of the game.

roadkizzle wrote:
I do, and have been since a few months after its release.

There is not a large group that I've fully found in my area, although I have about 3-4 players I know of, and I've been told there's a larger group at one of the local game stores but I haven't seen it played there.

Roadkizzle, if you have a moment could you highlight the differences between the two game editions?

Got the 1st edition rulebook and only played a handful of games but would be keen to give it another go if the changes to the rules are for the better.

 Pacific wrote:
Roadkizzle, if you have a moment could you highlight the differences between the two game editions?

Got the 1st edition rulebook and only played a handful of games but would be keen to give it another go if the changes to the rules are for the better.

I suspect what he's referring to in his mention of different editions is the 1.5 rules, which were an update to the original rules.

He also mentions Armored Clash, which was included in one of the scenario books, and is available for free in PDF form on their website. Armored Clash is a a game that uses the same figures, but is focused exclusively on the land aspect of the setting (with air included, of course). Battles in Armored Clash are larger, and the rules are designed to help the game run faster as a result.

Eumerin wrote:
He also mentions Armored Clash, which was included in one of the scenario books, and is available for free in PDF form on their website. Armored Clash is a a game that uses the same figures, but is focused exclusively on the land aspect of the setting (with air included, of course). Battles in Armored Clash are larger, and the rules are designed to help the game run faster as a result.

I think it also used Spartan's new-er mechanic of different colored dice, which i believe were a major source of concern from the DW fanbase when the idea was suggested (not by a company rep) that DW2.0 would be based off it. I don't think the 2.0 rules are, though.

Not a bad game, although certainly with things to fix. There was some definite power creep, as the core nations were initially a bit bland and often weren't particularly good at their specialty.

I'm having fun with the Firestorm 2.0 and the factions seem pretty balanced so far (not played it too much yet though) so hopefully the 2.0 revamp for DW will be similar.

 Pacific wrote:

roadkizzle wrote:
I do, and have been since a few months after its release.

There is not a large group that I've fully found in my area, although I have about 3-4 players I know of, and I've been told there's a larger group at one of the local game stores but I haven't seen it played there.

Roadkizzle, if you have a moment could you highlight the differences between the two game editions?

Got the 1st edition rulebook and only played a handful of games but would be keen to give it another go if the changes to the rules are for the better.

I believe you were actually meaning to quote wana10. That's the person who actually mentioned something about other editions and Armored Clash.

Since the initial release there's been a 1.1 edition. Edition 1.1 added Fleet Orders which provide random victory conditions for each opponent, such as Destroy or Capture at least 50% of the points of any opposing Fleet including all Medium models, or Capture the Fleet Commodore's Vessel of any opposing Fleet.
They also updated the command rules with fleet commodore abilities and streamlined the tiny aircraft token and boarding rules.

Armored Clash is a primarily land based version of DW with some small aerial support sections designed to allow for very large games of DW with multiple large landships and squadrons of medium tanks acting in combined formations. This game also uses command points, game cards, and activation sequence mechanics similar to Dystopian Legions. All this makes for a quicker paced game ideal for very large engagements.

That said, V2.0 of Dystopian Wars will be arriving within a week, which promises to provide many more changes to the game with much more well balanced fleets, even more streamlined and enjoyable support aircraft squadrons, improved robot rules, streamlined linking mechanics, and much more.

There were two versions that had the same cover art. My gaming group found this out when we were debating how a rule applied and found that my friends book had a paragraph that explained it whereas the one I had didn't.
Then there was v1.5 which my group helped beta test for a while. In think this edition had the change to tiny fliers giving them a group fuel pool and changing how attack runs played out. this was very nice as before it was just too fiddly. also introduced the wiggle move mechanic which wasn't really thought out.
Then came armoured clash which we also beta'd for a while. Though that was admittedly kind of a joke as they sent out the beta info and then announced it was going to print almost immediately after.

The squadron buying system from Armoured clash is wonderful and needs to be in DW proper. Also, with armoured clash available stripping the land aspect from DW would be nice. It never meshed as well as Spartan probably hoped.
The coloured dice differences worked very well in practice and would help speed up games as people wouldn't always go for the long range one die shot that just might possibly develop a string of sixes. Also simplifying the firing systems of models helped a lot. Taking the top gun of the british land battleship from 4 guns each firing with different 180 degree arcs and turning them into one attack profile helped speed up the games because it wasn't a constant shuffling of models to make sure every last gun lane was occupied.

I'll look over v2 in the shop but we haven't played the game in a while and I've sold my Japanese so I'll probably pass on it. Unless they changed a lot I'll just stick with the occasional game of armoured clash.

Before the tail-end of the current edition (where they started using an active play test/design group to vet things) and especially before Firestrom 2.0, I admit, I wouldn't have given this a second look.

After a little while the previous editions left me cold and felt like a lot of wasted potential. But they have made a damn good showing recently of creating games that seem to mostly work out of the box as well as proving that they will not shrink back from making balance tweaks on the fly if needed (Firestorm got several aftermarket balance updates in the FAQ and rolled in to the recently published fleet books, which will hopefully be uploaded soon).

Their late-era Dystopian Wars stuff was not only fun and imaginative in terms of using the gonzo setting to create less bland feeling units. But a lot of it was designed in a way that let you know the folks that did it had read the rules. Even the late Prussian stuff is fantastic while still capturing the (intended) feel of the faction.

Either way, FS2.0 finally knocked the Dindrenzi stranglehold from the game and made all of the factions interesting and playable while also delivering on a fair variety of potential lists. DW's biggest issues are wonky internal and external balance to the lists and a fairly poorly explained an laid out book that makes noticing the horrible balance even harder. Not only were some fleets able to spam a larger amount of better units, but there were large swathes of each army list that were no-go zones in terms of getting an effective force on the field. In a lot of ways, it felt like the units were designed with only half an understanding of the underlying rules.

But with the advent of the newer factions and the upgrade packs to older ones, they started showing of more robust design decisions and it actually got me back in their games to give FS2.0 an honest shot, and I don't regret it in the slightest (having skipped FS's v1.5 because the DW side of things left me cold and somewhat bewildered.

So on the strength of their new design and playtest crew, I plonked down for the new edition and I'm kind of excited to see how things pan out. It feels good to say that Spartan is one of the few companies that started in to a downward spiral in terms of QA but have pulled their arses out of the fire and earned my dollar back. Not a lot of companies manage to deserve a second chance like that. So good on 'em, they listened to the folks that were getting discouraged by their over-aggressive growth rate and lack of quality rule design (resulting in half-formed books littered with typos and bad editing) and did better. FS2.0 is damn good, and the big playtest thread shows that they are giving some real thought to the new edition. It still has a chance of being bad, but they've at least earned a second look in my book.

I'm looking forward to having it in my hands now.

I played and had good fun with 1.5. Then lost a little interest mainly due to other shiny games like Infinity. When they announced 2.0 seeing what they seemed to have achieved with FSA 2.0, I was pretty stoked.

Lo and behold, I was delighted to find out that two close friends are part of the playtest group and thus I was able to play DW 2.0 twice now. I can´t go into specifics due to NDA (and Spartan does indeed enforce them I was told) but I can say the new edition is very good imho. They ironed out the kinks very well without making it a different game. Many things have changed though, imho for the positive. Tiny flyers for example became so much easier to use, calculating dicepools as well. Very easy to calculate now. They spent intensive work on properly balancing the factions from what I can tell.

So the baseline is, take a look and see for yourself in two weeks. I think it is well worth it. :-)

Thanks very much for the info guys, very useful.

Think I will definitely be picking up a copy of version 2.0, now I just need to source a good looking sea-coloured gaming mat

So the general opinion is that after 10 or so versions of essentially the same ruleset, they will surely get it right this time?

Except for the fact that 10 versions is a completely unecessary exaggeration, that would be a yes.

Firestorm 2.0 was a big change, and worked very well.

Earlier revisions would be more of errata/faq on the 1.0 rules.

As opposed to 7 editions of a certain sci fi game blackfang?

Anyway. My group got heavily into this during the last edition but we seem to have petered off from it. The focus shifted to the land units for armoured clash and the newer alliance factions, and after getting sick of throwing my EotBS at the Chinese to realized the micro faction was better at my niche than me...yeah. Wasn't helped by some definite RL goings on.

We'll likely throw in for the new book and see how it goes. I'll probably sell a good bit of my EotBS stuff and try to stick to a core snapfit tac list depending on how it goes.

I think they have been looking to balance the old Core factions and get them all up to par now.

EoBS have incendiary special rules on their Rockets and Primary Guns, so add on fire markers if they hit the DR of the target.

 Daba wrote:
I think they have been looking to balance the old Core factions and get them all up to par now.

EoBS have incendiary special rules on their Rockets and Primary Guns, so add on fire markers if they hit the DR of the target.

They were toying with the Incendiary rule when the new Eotbs dreadnought came out, ended up being on the AA at one stage too if I recall.

The 'Fleet Upgrade' boxes have add-ons for every fleet (in addition to the new ships). For example, the Brit upgrade box is all about subs, but the rules booklet has some rules that make all of their torpedo attacks a little nastier as I remember. I think these are downloadable, but I'm not sure... Some looked a bit messy, as you had to remember which models the bonuses applied to and this was about the time they stopped offering the unit cards.

(These upgrade boxes also have 'special characters' in them, which annoyed a few people. Mainly because at least one was useless unless the optional cards are in use.)

Wouldn't most the new stuff in the upgrade boxes be useless now with the new coming edition seeing as they've apparently revamped nearly everything? Can't see people being happy about that.

Is this the new one?

2-player battle box

http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/spartan-games/dystopian-wars/dystopian-wars-operation-shadow-hunter-two-player-battle-box/prod_27524.html

Yes, that's the new rules. They're also releasing a seperate hard cover rule book. The two player box will have a mini-rulebook that contains all of the rules. The hard cover rule book is supposed to have everything in the mini-rulebook along with lists and background information.

I'm guessing the guideline in play is the same one that GW follows with its two player starters vs hardcover rulebooks.

Also, everything in the two player box is a new model - aside from the tiny flyers.

 doc1234 wrote:
Wouldn't most the new stuff in the upgrade boxes be useless now with the new coming edition seeing as they've apparently revamped nearly everything? Can't see people being happy about that.

Most likely. I'll probably get the rulebook to see how it is. Does Spartan do any digital support (PDFs?) yet for the main rules?

I feel like they're at least trying between the 'Upgrade boxes' and the new rules toincrease differentiation and such between the factions, which was an issue with the older rules.

 Balance wrote:

 doc1234 wrote:
Wouldn't most the new stuff in the upgrade boxes be useless now with the new coming edition seeing as they've apparently revamped nearly everything? Can't see people being happy about that.

Most likely. I'll probably get the rulebook to see how it is. Does Spartan do any digital support (PDFs?) yet for the main rules?

I feel like they're at least trying between the 'Upgrade boxes' and the new rules toincrease differentiation and such between the factions, which was an issue with the older rules.

Er I don't believe so yet, i'd imagine the new rules will be up in pdf a month or three after the full release.

And as far as I was aware the Upgrade Boxes were simply to help the core factions with the power creep of the alliance nations (not that it did an amazing job of it, but it was an effort).

 lord_blackfang wrote:
So the general opinion is that after 10 or so versions of essentially the same ruleset, they will surely get it right this time?

As odd as it seems? Yes. I think they may manage it this time.

FS1.5 was... well, not great. It was fairly bland, poorly balanced (with Dindrenzi and Sorylians ruling the roost) and loaded with badly written rules (defending against torps was particularly bad) with little reason to choose it over any other generic fleet game. FS1.0 was worse in most ways.

FS2.0 is a wonderful game. Awesome sub-systems, its rules feel like they are for operatic sci-fi space battles (rules for disabling systems, varied weapons with neat effects, fleets work completely differently). The new card system is also really interesting (trade off victory points to try and achieve a long term advantage).

The DW fleet upgrade packs also showed loads of promise. The Prussian box actually got me to like my Prussians again and gave them a personality and tactical profile beyond the rather haphazard and limited one they started with going back to the first edition.

But most importantly, they have finally realized balance may not be perfect out of the box and seem more willing to actually change things now that army lists are living, online affairs. FS2.0 had a few slightly problematic tactics that were quickly rectified and the game (that was already head and shoulders above its previous versions) was even tighter for it.

And I can't reiterate enough, FS2.0 was the first Spartan game I read through once and understood how to play quite clearly. They have gotten a lot better on that front.

They basically did something with their company that I keep praying for from folks like Dream Pod 9. They pulled away from drowning in their own refuse and bad decisions and started designing good games to go along with those nice minis. I honestly thought they would never do that, but FS2.0 and latter DW stuff turned me around on the issue. And moving more toward having things like army lists being a living entity rather than set in stone until you publish a new pseudo-edition (after 2 years) is a much better model for things.

I'm not saying that DW2.0 will have a 100% chance of not being , but I have heaps more confidence in their ability to do it than I ever have before. It seems their design staff pulled their collective head out of its arse and started really looking at the mechanics and how things fit together (and are actually testing things... rather than whatever it is they did before). Spartan barely even feels like the same company anymore, and that is definitely a good thing in terms of game design.

I playtested 2.0 so obviously I'm a bit biased but I think this is the best edition of rules they've put out so far. Spartan basicvally hired a couple of really intelligent players to help design it and they went through the rulebook, found all of the stuff that was borked and attempted to fix it. Most of the confusing rules are gone (like tiny fliers, my god were they a pain).

Also every model that has been released is getting a rules update, so it will be usable in 2.0 and has a defined purpose. I even found myself using prussian cruisers when play-testing (which were probably one of the worst units in 1.1)

I'm looking to get into the game. Can't wait for the 2.0 book to come out so I can check it out.

 djphranq wrote:
I'm looking to get into the game. Can't wait for the 2.0 book to come out so I can check it out.

Its a lot of fun, maybe find someone else and go halfs on shadowhunter, unless you don't like any of the factions featured in the book.

One thing i just did was buy a bunch of the stuff thats in stock now because a lot of suppliers are selling it cheap to make room for new stock.

I've had the 1.0 rulebook for some years now so no problem upgrading to a new one, it's fair enough that they have had gradual upgrades and balancing of the rules.

And, at least you get the feeling with this (going on Firestorm Armada 2.0) that they will fix more problems than create new ones..