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bosky wrote: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.

Even more simplistic than the usual spartan mechanic.

I haven't looked at the rules yet, but thats what is really going to sell me on the game. I am a big fan of Steampunk and Victorian Science Fiction, and this does not strike me as either. The aesthetic design of the game is just... terrible. It's the bastard offspring of steampunk and dieselpunk, with a big tall glass of grimdark thrown in for good measure.

A little bird told me I'll be getting the Rulebook, cards, Prussian box + Carrier, and Blazing Sun box + Carrier for Xmas.

I'm stoked.

Ruckdog wrote: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.

You didn't. The stats for the FSA Savannah class Sky fortress are in the book. In fact there are stats for a land, sea and air carrier for all of the initial four factions in the book, as well as fixed airfields. There just aren't models for all of them yet

Good to see I'm not going completely crazy . Do they have reders for those in the rulebook yet? I remember with the first printings of the FSA rule book how the Direcotrate carrier's stats were in the book, but they didn't have renders yet. I didn't realize they were going to have landship carriers too...that is interesting!

I have the book, and played a quick learner's game where we pretty much did almost everything wrong.

Sadly, there's really only renders of stuff we've already seen in the book.

Overall, I like the game, the exploding dice mechanic may seem crazy at first, but the considering that each hit only adds up to either do 1 point of HP (if you equal or exceed his DR), or a critical damage (if you exceed his CR, usually 2 HP along with some critical effect), but not both, the amount of damage you take from one attack can't really get that crazy.

Technically you can take more critical results from doubling or tripling the CR on an attack, but the CR ratings are pretty high, so even if you have a perfect setup with all weapons in their optimal range bands you're still only likely to just exceed CR unless you're firing at a cruiser, and even then you probably earned the double or triple crit by wasting all your shots on one ship. The only way to get reliably get lots of damage in one turn, is to attack it with multiple squadrons/ships and that means those are things not firing at other parts.

So it works.

Yeah, that sounds just like the damage/crit system in FSA (and, presumably, US as well).

The system has a lot of complex interactions, but no more than say Warhammer or so.

There's just so many different unit types and sizes, that all do different things.

Boarding also seems like a pain.

Thankfully, they've done a decent job of cataloging most major differences in a quick reference sheet, handily included with the rulebook.

Once you read through the rules and get it into your mind, the quick reference sheet is enough of a refresher that you can play most games without worrying.

All those complex interactions does add to the game. It should be interesting to to see how it expands.

Edit: http://www.spartangames.co.uk/dystopian_wars_previews.html

Good grief, the FSA landship is amphibious and has the double barreled version of their crazy powerful battleship gun.

Ive already got my prussians painted up and geting reared up to go play a game against the FSA and Brits. Should be good times.

nieto666 wrote:Ive already got my prussians painted up and geting reared up to go play a game against the FSA and Brits. Should be good times.

Great! I would love to see some pictures if you get the time.

My cell phone doesnt like me however a friend of mine took plenty. As soon as he gets them up Ill get em posted.

A few pciks of our game yesterday, scroll to next as there are only three pics.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=31239992&o=all&op=1&view=all&subj=96244399385&id=1242646617&fbid=1526238236222

Neat! Your scheme looks pretty good. You should try to post some close-ups in the Dakka gallery .

My prussians turned out a little darker then i had expected. Im going to give them a nice drybrushing of a lighter grey. This should be done by the end of tomarrow. I'll be playing another game on Tuesday and Ill have my buddy break out his camera

So, I'm not liking the default tokens with the game. The 1" big tokens are just too big and glaring and can detract from the aesthetic of the table (which is one of the reasons why I play). The same goes for dice and tracking fuel, so I have a few ideas to at least tone down the amount of counters, or at least reduce their footprint.

First, the tiny fliers. On the Spartan forums someone posted this idea, which I like. Basically they're flight bases with a 1-6 dial on the bottom. You'll need two parts, the base and the dial:
http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/AFS/AFS025-10

Then you'll need a flight stand. The same post recommended the .75 stands since they're lower than the large slight stands included with various ships and stuff, but higher than most ships. Find those here:
http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/AFS/AFS007-10

Then if you don't want to perma glue your tokens to the stands, or buy extra magnets, there's these stand toppers, which you can actually glue to your tokens, providing a tight fit for the token to stand:
http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/AFS/AFS006-20

These are, of course, acrylic stands, but at least they're clear. The whole thing occupies only a little more footprint than the tiny flier token, the dial tracks the fuel, and the flight stand raises the fighters up off the play area to better represent them as fliers.

Then, since the most common tokens are the damage trackers, I have two ideas. The first is to create cards that track damage, similar to warmachine. Then put decals or some other markings to indicate which ship is which. There could also be check boxes for the various critical hits.

The other is to simply make smaller tokens, say 0.5" square tokens with a simple red or green number to indicate hull or assault damage.

Vertrucio wrote:
Then, since the most common tokens are the damage trackers, I have two ideas. The first is to create cards that track damage, similar to warmachine. Then put decals or some other markings to indicate which ship is which. There could also be check boxes for the various critical hits.

This is what I did for Firestorm. I created an excel spreadsheet with all of the different ships on it, and made squadron "cards" which I then printed out. Its really nice in large games where you can mark "activated" on the card as well, so you don't lose track of what has activated during a given turn.

Vertrucio wrote:So, I'm not liking the default tokens with the game. The 1" big tokens are just too big and glaring and can detract from the aesthetic of the table (which is one of the reasons why I play). The same goes for dice and tracking fuel, so I have a few ideas to at least tone down the amount of counters, or at least reduce their footprint.

First, the tiny fliers. On the Spartan forums someone posted this idea, which I like. Basically they're flight bases with a 1-6 dial on the bottom. You'll need two parts, the base and the dial:
http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/AFS/AFS025-10

Then you'll need a flight stand. The same post recommended the .75 stands since they're lower than the large slight stands included with various ships and stuff, but higher than most ships. Find those here:
http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/AFS/AFS007-10

Then if you don't want to perma glue your tokens to the stands, or buy extra magnets, there's these stand toppers, which you can actually glue to your tokens, providing a tight fit for the token to stand:
http://www.litkoaero.com/page/LAI/PROD/AFS/AFS006-20

These are, of course, acrylic stands, but at least they're clear. The whole thing occupies only a little more footprint than the tiny flier token, the dial tracks the fuel, and the flight stand raises the fighters up off the play area to better represent them as fliers.

Then, since the most common tokens are the damage trackers, I have two ideas. The first is to create cards that track damage, similar to warmachine. Then put decals or some other markings to indicate which ship is which. There could also be check boxes for the various critical hits.

The other is to simply make smaller tokens, say 0.5" square tokens with a simple red or green number to indicate hull or assault damage.

Interesting links! I'm a big fan of Litko...hopefully they will come out with some official stuff like they did for Uncharted Seas and Firestorm.

I've gone ahead and put in an order for the litko stuff. I'll let you know if it works well. I ended up buying 1" tall flight stands since my large fingers will probably have problems moving the dial on .75" and it's still 1/2 of the 2" tall flight stands for other DW stuff.

Anyway, another aspect that I both like and dislike are the effects of the Game Cards. I like them in some friendly games where they have such wild effects. It also adds some more randomness and mitigation to certain devastating effects. However, it also adds some of its own devastating effects. With 5 available cards on any turn, that's a lot of potentially powerful abilities to throw out.

I was thinking of creating another deck with the help of the community where the effects are still useful, but less powerful.

For example, instead of outright repairs to a ship, a card could simply allow a player to ignore the effects of HP damage X amount of times. Call it, extra crew or shifting crew. Another card could be Jury Rigging, which allows you to ignore points of hull damage for a certain time, but you have to roll at the end of your activation for it to go away.

Still powerful, but the ship is still damaged, and it's only temporary. It's not doubling a ship's firepower or make them somehow super effective. But it can allow for some more maneuvers.

I'm also considering a simple limit of just 1 card per squadron of non tiny tokens at the start of the game, no drawing more. Or to actually point cost out the cards somehow to be taken for points during fleet creation.

For some reason, the links aren't working for me. I went and dug 'em out of the website:

Stands and Dials:
http://www.litkoaero.com/products/6-Count-Numbered-Dial-and-Pointers-%28Set-of-10%29.html

Pegs:
http://www.litkoaero.com/products/0.75-inch-Flight-Pegs-%2810-pack%29.html

Toppers:
http://www.litkoaero.com/products/Flight-Peg-Toppers%2C-20-ct.html

--B.

Yeah, litko just changed their website a few days after my post, thanks for updating the links for us.

I should be getting this stuff in sometime in the next week or two. Considering all the stuff dealing with the holidays, it might be a while.

Back to the game itself, how are people liking it?

I'm finding it pretty enjoyable, although the writing on the rulebook could be much, much better.

I'm also finding the lack of scenarios, or objectives beyond straight up fights in the rulebook to be a big omission. Even Warmachine has the base caster kill scenario. As it stands the Sink the Battleship/Commodore is kind of an objective, but it needs more.

I'm thinking of using some kind of basic scenario that's similar to what you see in the Dawn of War series of PC RTS games. There's a set number of objectives (3-5) on the table, and you have to capture them by getting close, or even send AP to board. These could be something like Sturginium/Oil derricks. You can't destroy them, they're too valuable for people to shoot. Holding an objective gives you points at the end of the turn.

This seems to be a trend with Spartan...the FSA rulebook only has 4 very simple missions in it. I can only guess that they are trying to force players to be creative and come up with their own.

I like the idea of capturable oil rigs. I think that forcing the players to use AP to board them would be a good thing, as it would make for a nice dynamic where they can still switch hands thanks to counter-boarding. I've been tossing around a similar idea for asteroid bases in FSA.

Another way you could do objectives would be to use a system similar to Axis & Allies War at Sea. In that game, you capture an objective if you are on the objective sector, and there are no enemy units the same or adjacent sector. Maybe for this game, that can be changed to having a friendly ship within 4" and no enemies within 8"?

That could actually be two different scenarios.

But the problem with such large control zones and such a large area to contest with, is that it doesn't give definitely control to someone until after a battle is fought. So essentially, you're just playing the same kill everything game since everything is in the zone fighting.

With the Derricks/Sturginium Refineries, once you capture them with AP, you have them and they give you points towards victory, and you can leave that AP there and send ships to do other things, or recall the AP.

I don't play any of the Spartan Games (but, gosh, their minis are so very yummy)...BUT!

Here's a list of scenarios that might work, given the scale/size of the game and table:

Convoy Escort/Planetary Assault: Must protect transports moving across the board, the latter gives you the opportunity to make a line of 'defenses', like satellites.

Seek and Destroy: One side has a hidden cache/base/whatever, hidden in one of 'X' groups of asteroids. The other side must find it and destroy it.

Recon: One side gets X points, the other side gets 1/2 X or less. The lesser side has to survive 'x' turns (or 'scan' each enemy ship), and then escape off of their table edge with the data about the enemy fleet.

Desperate Defense: Same as above, but the lesser side has to do more damage than the value of their fleet in a suicide defense to stall the attackers, rather than survive and escape.

I would suggest perusing the various BFG books for more scenarios as well!

--Brian

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into those ideas.

I've been eagerly painting and reading my Christmas DW arrivals

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53352&id=1673186719

I still have not been lucky enough to have a game but I like the way the rules blend the interactions of air and naval units without giving overwhelming advantage to the aircraft. With such beautiful battleships, it would have been a shame if the rules gave airpower it's true dominance.

I also love that they have given us full stats for twenty plus you it's per faction and the knowledge that we have four more factions planned. I have not been this exited about a game since epic 40k fifteen years ago. I can only hop that this game survives better than my last favorite. I have been dreaming of a sic fi Flames of War for a long time and this seems to scratch that itch better than anything I have seen yet.

If there is anyone in the Philly area looking for games, I have the starter plus carrier for all four factions so I can bring whatever is needed.

I hate to be a downer, but this game just doesn't look good to me. When I look at a game of 40k being played with painted armies and on proper terrain, it generally looks awesome and evocative-- this really doesn't have that effect on me at all. Even if the rules are the best thing since sliced bread, it's going to be hard to get me past that initial "meh" feeling.

Fetterkey wrote:I hate to be a downer, but this game just doesn't look good to me. When I look at a game of 40k being played with painted armies and on proper terrain, it generally looks awesome and evocative-- this really doesn't have that effect on me at all. Even if the rules are the best thing since sliced bread, it's going to be hard to get me past that initial "meh" feeling.

No worries, everyone has different feelings about different scales and settings.

I always get that feeling more from games with a grander scale. To me a massive fleet of cruisers and battleships an painted up and beautiful will always give me more of a "shiver up the spine feeling" than a few tanks and a couple score of infantry. I guess that's why I loved Epic so much back in the day.

I wonder if its the scale you don't like, or just the setting?

Did you find the previous Spartan games like FA and US to be any more evocative?

Either way its totally cool, there is a reason that "Heroic 28mm" is by far the most popular scale in our hobby. Most people relate much better to it than when the scale is zoomed out to the more Strategic and Operational levels than the purely tactical.

Except that so far, you haven't really seen full sizes 1000-1500 point armies on proper, well made naval and land terrain. The game has been out for less than a month. I think you'll probably reconsider once you see full 1500 or 2000 point fleets on a table with land, air, and sea units duking it out for objectives.

Here's the current rules for my Oil Derricks Scenario:
2 Players

Place 5 oil derricks on the map at the start of the game. One must be placed as close to the center of the table as possible, while still accessible to both sides of the table. The remaining 4 derricks are split between each player, and you must place one of the 2 derricks you have on the enemy side of the board, and you may not place your derrick within 12" of your deployment edge. Alternatively, use a map template with preset derrick locations, terrain, and deployment areas.

These derricks cannot be attacked other than to board them. Successfully boarding one means you have captured it and it will remain under your control, even if you recall all your AP and leave nothing on the derrick, until your opponent captures it from you.

These derricks have no combat capability. Leaving AP on a derrick means that if an opponent tries to board, there will be an assault round. If there is enemy AP on a derrick, and you assault, but both AP are wiped out, control of the derrick goes to the attacker.

At the end of the round, you gain 1 point for each derrick you have under your control. Depending on the length of game you want, the first player to reach 5, 7, or 9 points wins. If both players obtain the set amount at the same time, the one with the higher count wins.

The good thing about this mission style is that it promotes fighting across the table, and you can scale it as necessary. If you have more players, add more derricks. You can even play this scenario as a free for all.

I also suggest having some derricks within locations that only air an small ships can get into, such as a cove blocked by a reef.

Sounds like a good scenario idea to me! I'm going to have to try a similar mission using space stations with FSA.

Vertrucio wrote:

These derricks cannot be attacked other than to board them. Successfully boarding one means you have captured it and it will remain under your control, even if you recall all your AP and leave nothing on the derrick, until your opponent captures it from you.

So...in DW you can call back your AP? Interesting....

That is a good one, I will see if I can get some nice Derrick terrain pieces and have tha scenario set up for dakkacon this month.

In DW, you can board from 4" away (this is done since all ships have Rocket Infantry) and recall your AP if there is any left on the enemy ship after you've won a boarding, the ship that the AP came from must still be within 4" when this happens.

More terrain types and interesting environmental events should add to the game. With all the sturginium use in the setting, enough to cause energy vortexes to suddenly appear, I'd assume it's got to have other effects as well.

Some friends and I were talking about how you could have the Dystopian Wars equivalent of a Space Hulk, or rather a Sturginium Hulk, where pieces or whole ships that were teleported into the ether reappear mangled, or mashed together into a horrific landscape. The crews are also found dead and often fused into the very walls of the ships they once crewed. Despite the horrific sights, within these hulks are large amounts of raw sturginium, making them worth fighting for.

Weather could also be a factor. I've got a cool idea for a weather deck, that not only generates a random starting weather via card draw, but uses icons to determine when there's changes in the weather, or weather related events happen, such as a sturginium laced storm cloud unleashing a massive torrent of lightning.