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IHeart, the Mega-bundle is worthwhile even if you are not yet sure. You get all you need to play, a very good discount and free shipping worldwide. You can sell off two or more of the included Starter Fleets to recover much of your money to local players who collect those fleets.

Or you might have all four fleets grow on you, combined with the low general price and end up collecting all four.

Oh and by the way, thats how you get your rulebook and card deck, its included!

IHEARTLARGEBLASTTEMPLATES wrote:I live just north of Indianapolis. good idea ill have to find out i REALLY want to get my hands on the rule book!

Ah, you probably live near my sister then (Carmel). Small world! If I remember, there was only one major store in Indy, but it is clear on the south side, isn't it?

Haha yes very near! well yeah the only one that i really go to/ know of is The Fashion Mall Game Preserve. I dont think it carries DW but i still havent made it in to look, but online it looks like a no.... :( (Were getting CRAZY snow here) haha

I would just ask your store to carry it I bet they'd be happy to order for ya. So far only one local store carries it around here but they plan on getting all of the minis.

Ebay also has some pretty good deals.

I'm going to pick my stuff up tomorrow

I opened the Blazing Sun box, and I can't believe how detailed this models are. The fact that there are no miscasts for such tiny details I find pretty amazing. I found a few bubbles but only on the bottoms of the models, where they don't matter at all. Flash clean up was a breeze.

The box set comes nicely wrapped in bubble tape, comes with cards, templates and tokens printed on nice glossy paper. The paper is pretty thick.

I'm really impressed with the quality of the product, and I'm excited to start painting!

I know I became hooked once I saw an actual model it was amazing.

Product quality can swing from box to box. They use silicone molds (we know this because my buddy got a ship with huge chunks of silicone mold adhered to the resin.

If you're got an early run model, it's very probably near perfect. If you end up with a later run model, it probably has more defects just as the mold has broken down.

What's nice is that many of the models come in clear plastic blisters so you can eyeball the quality. For starter boxes, that's not as doable.

sourclams wrote:Product quality can swing from box to box. They use silicone molds (we know this because my buddy got a ship with huge chunks of silicone mold adhered to the resin.

If you're got an early run model, it's very probably near perfect. If you end up with a later run model, it probably has more defects just as the mold has broken down.

What's nice is that many of the models come in clear plastic blisters so you can eyeball the quality. For starter boxes, that's not as doable.

This is what I feared would happen.

sourclams wrote:Product quality can swing from box to box. They use silicone molds (we know this because my buddy got a ship with huge chunks of silicone mold adhered to the resin.

If you're got an early run model, it's very probably near perfect. If you end up with a later run model, it probably has more defects just as the mold has broken down.

What's nice is that many of the models come in clear plastic blisters so you can eyeball the quality. For starter boxes, that's not as doable.

Ehhh, not quite. Spartan replaces molds on a daily basis, so it is not like if you miss the first wave, you are SOL. Bad ships like the ones you mention (I've seen them as well) are just due to a particular mold being used for one too many batches before being replaced, I would guess. The mold replacement scheme means that quality should theoretically be maintained indefinitely, although it appears that a few leakers are getting through QC. On the fleet boxes, I would say go for it; if you wind up with any lemons in your fleet starter, I have no doubt Spartan will replace them for you.

I bought three Dystopian Wars carriers from Firestorm Games.

Two out of three were faulty in some way, one was miscast, another had pieces missing. I contacted Neil, on the spartan forums and he promised to replace them. In fact the third was also slightly miscast with the top deck of my FSA carrier uneven, but I didn't consider it bad enough to complain.

I will say this for them, they don't play all evasive on customer service. Saying that I have had good results from GW too on this regard.

Played a game yesterday as EotBS against a Prussian fleet. Most of my frigates got captured as prizes. Ouch. Gonna stay away with big ships and deck them with overwhelming firepower from now on.

Practically everything in the Prussian list is a boarding platform.
Don't just keep an eye on the big stuff, rocket marines can appear in large numbers from bombers and frigates too.

My Prussian opponent pretty much remembers the moment when he realized the his boarding was more effective than his gunnery. And then he began to win...

Oh, and if you're ever playing Brittannia, either take a lot of flying stuff or something with a lot of CC, the Brits love their torpedoes.

Still, well looking forwards to getting a Squid!

Just a quick rule I wanna clarify - in range band 1, your primary weapons get less accurate with a -1 modifier to hit, right? Meaning hitting on 5,6 where you'd be hitting on 4,5,6 without modifiers. The rulebook, being the sodding nightmare it is, was slightly unclear here, and we had arguments.....

Is there a rundown on how the factions play?

Daba wrote:Is there a rundown on how the factions play?

Each fleet has oddball units that are contrary to their own design doctrine or do unique things.

Federated States of America

Ship design: Paddle steamers with low to the waterline hulls. - FSA ships are harder to hit because they are low to the waterline, the paddle wheels also make th ships able to out-turn anyone else but are on only moderate speed. The FSA special design is a flying mecha, which is cheap and potent, we can expect to see a lot of them soon.

Weapon doctrine: Guns and lots of them. The FSA can out-shoot anyone, particularly at range, and almost all their guns are turreted for wide arcs of fire. FSA carriers have few supplementary defences so they are vulnerable but considerably cheaper.

Tactics: Cheap carriers means the FSA can try for air superiority if they want, however most players do not and try instead for massive long range bombardment superiority instead, notably by deploying multiples of the excellent FSA battleship. FSA designs have no weaknesses and simple to apply strengths , rely on range or wide fire arcs to apply firepower. This makes them easy to play and win with.

Prussian Empire

Ship design: Sleek modern hulls with relatively few weapon systems. Prussians enjoy a higher technology base and a better understanding of the science of electricity, expect to se a lot of cabling even to the main gun turrets. These ships are fast. The Prussians like airships too, including carrier airships, with lots of electricity of course. The unique Prussian design is a germanic warlord titan.

Weapon doctrine: Prussians like to have good ship defences and electrically powered large turrets, but what they really like to do is carry large marine compliments for boarding actions and outfit anything with 'Tesla Coils' which fire lightning at the enemy and is a technology unique to them.

Tactics: Lightning is short ranged, boarding soldiers need to get in range also t use their rocket packs, the main gun turrets are not short ranged but don't hurt for getting in closer. Prussians are fast especially thier lighter units. This makes Prussian tactics rather straightforward, to excuse the pun. The titan is less impressive than it looks, solid stats and a terror on land though less so in water despite a few gadgets it has which make is a good submarine killer.

Empire of the Blazing Sun (Japan)

Ship design: Enclosed hulls oddly resembling steam trains, though what you see is not all steam boiler but gun decks. Blazing Suns have solid ships, as easy to hit as anyone elses (except FSA) but harder to land a critical hit on. Defences are not as good as the first two fleets but acceptable. The unique Blazing Suns design is a robotic squid.

Weapon doctrine: As Blazing Suns ships are compartmentalized they carry a lot of disparate weapon systems including guns torpedoes and rockets, this can lead to problems in coordinating fire due to restricted fire arcs, however if you do get the guns in they hit as hard as FSA but have the versatility of toys the Britannians have.

Tactics: Considered weaker by some, they are not they are just harder to use than FSA and Prussiains both of which follow simple to follow albeit diametrically opposite tactical doctrines. Blazing Suns if handled well have everything going for them, range speed firepower and an answer to any attack type. But you need to play them well to get the most out of them. dont know much about the squid as yet, though ir purports to be effective.


Kingdom of Britannia

Ship design: The closest to a Victorian battlefleet, plenty of gun turrets big solid hulls boilers girders and rivets everywhere. Standard steampunk stuff really. The Britannian special units are submarines.

Weapon doctrine: The Britannians love their torpedoes, pretty much everything has them, in large numbers. Torpedoes being a system buried deep in the hull carry on firing right until; the ship sinks whereas other gun systems degrade with fire. This technically can keep the Britannians in the fight longer than anyone else. On top of this the Britannians have more large gun turrets than anyone, using one more per design class than the maximum of any other fleet. However British guns while having an impressive number of barrels have an unimpressive rate of fire meaning individually each turret is worth considerably less than those of other races, also Britannic torpedoes have long arming times making them useless at short ranges and being torpedoes have no effect on land or air forces.
This plus a general lack of anti air defences and poor marine compliments means that British ships are at best paper tigers and at worst deathtraps. All is not lost however , some of their unreleased vessels cover all the above weaknesses and are arguably the best units in the game.

Tactics. Technically all rounders Brtiannians suffer from 'bad codex syndrome' some of the units in the fleet lists are appalling however others are excellent. Britannians can win even with the weak stuff but have problems with air heavy lists, later Britannians will be a very tough to beat but will undoubtably suffer from 'cookie cutter' lists as everyone takes plenty of the odd few subchoices that are good designs.

Most notably of these are the Britannian escort, destroyer and drsadnought. every faction gets one desifgn of each. The destoyer is an upgunned escort sized vessel, most are powerful but the Britannian version especially so. as with most britaniic designs its torpedo based so spartan might have thought that it would simply be one amongst many torpedo vessels, however as it outclasses practically everything else many Brtannitc players are considering replacing most of their line fleet with destroyers.
Evey faction has an 'escort' which is an escort size vessel with supllementary air and anti submarine ddfences that it can lend out to surrounding ships. All are good the Britannian one is simply better asnd far more needed. This makes the design essential.
Every faction also has a dreadnought, each dreadnought costs about 50% more than thev next most expensive thing (a battleship) and is downright nasty. The Britannian design is the nastiest of the lot, at no extra price and as the Brtiannic battleship and cruiser are both laughably poor designs we can expect the dreadnought to be a staple of Britannian fleets in the near future, backed up with a horded of destroyers. In fact while their is nothing wrong with Britannian frigates except that they are overshadowed by destroyers the only component in the original release to have a guaranteed place in the eventual Britannic fleet is the bomber, which is admittedly a very good piece.
This is the only fleet with which I am disappointed with Spartan Games games design, for a new sysem three out of four lists right isn't bad.

Hmmm,
EotBS = awesome long range + hard to kill outright
Prussia = awesome in boarding + fast
Brittania = lots of guns and torpedoes
FSA = seem to have good long-range firepower as well as good defense

Should point out I haven't played against an FSA opponent yet, and Brittania are quite hard to grasp, they're a bit of an all-round force really. They have many, many guns compared to the rest, in simple number of turrets and torpedoes and so forth. FSA can use paddle ships to manouver better to shoot at you, have good DR, while the EotBS have probably the best frigates as well as the best medium bombers in the game, plus fire rockets to cause raging fires and whittle down those pesky Boarding crews. Likewise, the Prussians' teslas are good at depleting crew members to weaken them for the boarding assault as well as fast ships to get them there.
EotBS and Prussia are the easiest to summarize, take the former to be Tau and the latter to be Orks. If we continue with the 40k analogy, Britannia = Space Marines and FSA = IG (maybe), but Britannia is a hard one to get ahold of. If we go by favoured weaponry, then EotBS have their incendiary rockets and superior turrets, Prussians have teslas, Britannia is all about torpedoes and FSA is about a lot of guns, and more usefully the ability to turn those guns quite easily towards their intended target.
Just going by the rulebook on the FSA, and by experience on the rest. It's hard to score a critical hit against EotBS and hard to get a normal hit on FSA. So... yeah. My club all (well, 4 out of 16) just bought their respective battleforce equivalent box, so we all have the same fleet in the number and classes of ships but the faction variation makes so much difference to the tactics used by each general (or admiral I suppose).

Nice breakdown, Orlanth! I find that quite helpful, as I haven't had the time to dig into the book and disect the different fleets to the extent that I want too.

Not to kinda pee on the parade, but there's some real competitive issues with the game 'when you come down to it', with its current model line (which I figure is worth bringing up as we're now into 'how do factions play').

Boarding actions are much more effective at crippling ships of all classes than gunnery, in general.

Flyers can become, effectively, immune to most gunnery, only hittable on 6's by ascending into the clouds--something that they can do at will.

The 'big flyers' (Japanese sky carrier, Prussian Zeppelin) carry a huge allotment of boarding marines at a pretty low points cost.

Put that together and there's a horrible metashift to Death From Above armies that are both horribly resilient and have hugely effective offense. Oh, and they're carrier ships, so they also come with 6 Fighter, Divebomber, or Torpedo bomber airplanes.

The only reason I bring this up is because I bought into a WWI-esque naval game to find out that the massive ranged gunfights I was expecting had a far greater tendency to be decided at close range in boarding actions. The ships look like pre-dreadnoughts but the play was more like Age of Sail.

I still had fun with the system, but there's some real imbalances and the net-listing potential is rife. Just a heads up for those considering the game before spending.

sourclams wrote:Not to kinda pee on the parade, but there's some real competitive issues with the game 'when you come down to it', with its current model line (which I figure is worth bringing up as we're now into 'how do factions play').

Boarding actions are much more effective at crippling ships of all classes than gunnery, in general.

Flyers can become, effectively, immune to most gunnery, only hittable on 6's by ascending into the clouds--something that they can do at will.

The 'big flyers' (Japanese sky carrier, Prussian Zeppelin) carry a huge allotment of boarding marines at a pretty low points cost.

Put that together and there's a horrible metashift to Death From Above armies that are both horribly resilient and have hugely effective offense. Oh, and they're carrier ships, so they also come with 6 Fighter, Divebomber, or Torpedo bomber airplanes.

The only reason I bring this up is because I bought into a WWI-esque naval game to find out that the massive ranged gunfights I was expecting had a far greater tendency to be decided at close range in boarding actions. The ships look like pre-dreadnoughts but the play was more like Age of Sail.

I still had fun with the system, but there's some real imbalances and the net-listing potential is rife. Just a heads up for those considering the game before spending.

I have to agree with this, on the Spartan Forums some of us are trying to get the developers to errata the game before the imbalances get out of hand.

Orlanth wrote:I have to agree with this, on the Spartan Forums some of us are trying to get the developers to errata the game before the imbalances get out of hand.

If they do, I think it has the potential to be a truly great game. But never before on the forums have I seen the 'just use tactics/skill>list' apologist mentality that I experienced reading through the SG forums. Since retooling the game for boarding actions to be less decisive and gunnery moreso, and to bring the airships>sea ships dynamic back in line would require literally retooling the whole game, I really don't have my hopes up for the future of SG in my area. Great game potential, good models, but definitely borked for quasi-competitive playstyle.

sourclams wrote:
But never before on the forums have I seen the 'just use tactics/skill>list' apologist mentality that I experienced reading through the SG forums.

You should have tried the Rackham forums, they had zampolits to decry critics of game balance. I cant tell which killed the company more, Rackhams unrelaibility to stockists, Chinese manufacturers shenanigans, or the blatant failure to accept that some portions of the ruleset were unplayable (and had a number of people walking away from the first game).

sourclams wrote:
Since retooling the game for boarding actions to be less decisive and gunnery moreso, and to bring the airships>sea ships dynamic back in line would require literally retooling the whole game, I really don't have my hopes up for the future of SG in my area. Great game potential, good models, but definitely borked for quasi-competitive playstyle.

How true. Been trying that wake up call on the SG forums.

Privateer Press didnt break into the market long term because of awesome miniatures, though that helped, but because they got a reputation for playability and game balance from the outset.

Could the game balance issue be caused mainly by the lack of all of the available miniatures? From what Orlanth was saying about future releases the miniatures that are in the pipeline have the potential to change the game.

sourclams wrote:Not to kinda pee on the parade, but there's some real competitive issues with the game 'when you come down to it', with its current model line (which I figure is worth bringing up as we're now into 'how do factions play').

Boarding actions are much more effective at crippling ships of all classes than gunnery, in general.

Flyers can become, effectively, immune to most gunnery, only hittable on 6's by ascending into the clouds--something that they can do at will.

The 'big flyers' (Japanese sky carrier, Prussian Zeppelin) carry a huge allotment of boarding marines at a pretty low points cost.

Put that together and there's a horrible metashift to Death From Above armies that are both horribly resilient and have hugely effective offense. Oh, and they're carrier ships, so they also come with 6 Fighter, Divebomber, or Torpedo bomber airplanes.

The only reason I bring this up is because I bought into a WWI-esque naval game to find out that the massive ranged gunfights I was expecting had a far greater tendency to be decided at close range in boarding actions. The ships look like pre-dreadnoughts but the play was more like Age of Sail.

I still had fun with the system, but there's some real imbalances and the net-listing potential is rife. Just a heads up for those considering the game before spending.

This is generally what happens when you take a ruleset written for age of sail combat and adapt it to something else. With a few minor differences, large parts of the rules were taken verbatim from Uncharted Seas (which is awesome), and Firestorm Armada (which is pretty much Uncharted... IN SPACE!).

I have to agree, I have noticed how much boarding seems to dominate DW. It seems to do so to a much greater degree than in Firestorm Armada, in fact, due to the higher boarding strength and lack of a CP stat to add to the defensive dice pool. Also, the AA rules seem to make the tiny token flyers useful only for taking out other tiny flyers or finishing off the odd crippled frigate. Anything that is healthy seems to be able to drive them off with AA too easily.

Dive/torpedo bombers are very effective in fives, you can be rolling up to 15 attacks per wave, and its hard to abort that many.

They are very good (fresh) cruiser killers and can kill a half hull battleship.

@ Orlanth's rundown

Hmm, it's a bit of a shame Britannia has the imbalances as I like the look of their fleet.

Other than that, Prussians seem to have the play style I generally like.

The models of Britannia and them being 'all rounder' might make them my pick though.

I might have a look at some of the games at my local club when I next go and see.

Orlanth wrote:Dive/torpedo bombers are very effective in fives, you can be rolling up to 15 attacks per wave, and its hard to abort that many.

They are very good (fresh) cruiser killers and can kill a half hull battleship.

I have not been able to pull this off, unfortunately. I usually see at least 2 if not 3 tokens aborted/shot down, giving me only 6-9 attacks. Even if I get enough hits to score a point of damage, this is then negated with concussion charges :(. This, of course, assumes that I can get all 5 bombers into attack position; it seems like most of the time they end up getting pounced on by the enemy's fighters or shot up by a passing bomber. As for a attacking a BB...around my FLGS, battleships just about always have a 3-4 strong CAP to prevent them from getting boarded and captured. These fighters make it that much harder for my torpedo planes to get through.

Ruckdog wrote:

Orlanth wrote:Dive/torpedo bombers are very effective in fives, you can be rolling up to 15 attacks per wave, and its hard to abort that many.

They are very good (fresh) cruiser killers and can kill a half hull battleship.

I have not been able to pull this off, unfortunately. I usually see at least 2 if not 3 tokens aborted/shot down, giving me only 6-9 attacks. Even if I get enough hits to score a point of damage, this is then negated with concussion charges :(. This, of course, assumes that I can get all 5 bombers into attack position; it seems like most of the time they end up getting pounced on by the enemy's fighters or shot up by a passing bomber. As for a attacking a BB...around my FLGS, battleships just about always have a 3-4 strong CAP to prevent them from getting boarded and captured. These fighters make it that much harder for my torpedo planes to get through.

You need to be running the correct bomber type for your faction, and have no enemy CAP around. CAP cant be everywhere and of course ties up a flyer contingent preventing them from offensive use. If the best ships have CAP then swiftly bomb/torpedo some frigates and recall to carrier to reload and sortie again. Send them against capital targets in the late game when hull points are reduced or after a shredded defences critical (which is like rolling the ship in honey and setting it outside for the wasps). Dive bombers can hang back move very quick to exploit such a weakness.

Also Prussian dive bombers are particularly nasty because you have to reroll successful hits on them with ack ack, so they tend to get a good volume of bombs in.

Pael wrote:Could the game balance issue be caused mainly by the lack of all of the available miniatures? From what Orlanth was saying about future releases the miniatures that are in the pipeline have the potential to change the game.

To some extent yes, but there are some quirks as models come out that will simply make the game worse.

Submarines, for example. Marine boarders can't be targeted by AA, and Subs that travel underwater (can only be hit on 6s by gunnery) will again be some of the best boarders out there.

The subs also have rams so screening movement with smaller ships to force them to engage early won't really work.

What's really insane is that there's nothing that prevents marine boarders from boarding airships. I can conceptualize a flock of Boba Fetts flying down out of a Death Star, but Gungan Commandos flying up into one.... that's just weird.

I would really like to like this game, but their rules devs seem intent on not allowing that to happen.