Dystopian Wars (Steampunk Naval Combat!)

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**chaos0xomega**

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.

**chaos0xomega**

I really don't understand how people can say they like these mini's... it just doesn't make sense. They look like chibiships to me...

**chaos0xomega**

Thats just it, I LOOOOOVVVEEEE steampunk... this is NOT steampunk, at least not to me. It lacks the certain refined grace necessary to be steampunk.

Really, thinking it through the best way to describe the minis is 'Rivetpunk'. They are really industrial looking, even the airships look more industrial than your usual steampunk fare.

Add to that the fact that the larger ships are, and are going to be, about the size of Rhinos, and you'll see they aren't really 'chibiships', as you call them.

Chibi has nothing to do with the size of a mini. Yeah, I've seen these minis in person before. The ships look cartoony and misproportioned, hence chibi. Either that or the guns in this game are REALLY frackin' big.

**chaos0xomega**

As it turns out, according to the rulebook the FSA battleships and cruisers are armed with a 38-inch gun in their turrets...so yeah, REALLY fracking big .

...okay, maybe the minis aren't that chibi...

I dunno, in light of that revelation, maybe I'll pick it up one day, but I already have too much stuff to work on, and I rarely play Firestorm/Uncharted except once in a blue moon. If they had more airship based units maybe then I would jump into the game.

**chaos0xomega**

Dez wrote:There are a bunch of Airship releases coming next month, bombers and fighters for each faction.

Yeah, thats another thing I find issue with. Bombers/Fighters make the game too much like WW2/post WW2 style combat, which further detracts from the steampunk feel. It wouldn't be too bad if they were toned down, but from what I've been reading, they have a big impact on the game.

**chaos0xomega**

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!).