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I got myself a CoA-naval starter set. Been painting up the models lately. Going against the Eotbs this Wednesday. Starter VS starter. Anyone got any good suggestions? I think we're going to play on the dreadfleet mat, with 12X12 opposite corner deployment. Mission: killem alll.

Well, from what I have seen so far the CoA tends to be a close-range fleet with their standard weapons equipped. Standing off with your energy turrets might not be a bad strategy, although you will sacrifice a significant number of AD at RB 1 & 2. Against EoBS, though, your cruisers will have a decided advantage, as they all come with shield generators. This means that you will have a decent chance of being able to get into close range with your opponent in one piece!

Do anyone have any experience with the land based warfare in DW? I've just bought the starter set for CoA and I'm going to run some tank/walker action soon.

I've played a couple of games on land, and I think it is pretty fun. The only thing you have to be careful about is that air power dominates land units pretty badly, so you might want to institute order of battle rules to prevent that.

So, there have been some fairly major rules changes on the Spartan Games blog. Anyone had a look and have any thoughts about them?

Personally, I find the change to how Tiny Flyers work to be quite the breath of fresh air. We've house ruled flyers in my group to tidy them up a bit, and these new rules go even further, clarifying what I found to be a very muddy mechanic.

So....
Obscured units still cause hits on only a 6, but get hit on a 56?
When boarding, you keep going until someone is at 0 or do you just pull remaining boarders back after one go around?
Do you get cc against diving robots that board?
When you destroy a diving robot via boarding, do you bring your remaining men back?

Spartan has declared the crab-walk 45 degree turn abuse legal now, adding only that you take damage from doing so.

Tiny fliers are still hit on a 56? Do you get another roll from a 6 like normal?
Do you still get ackack counterattack against tiny fliers?
Does each token in a wing need to be in range to attack, or just any part of the wing? Vice-versa for shooting at the wing, can you kill models out of range?
A single abort result keeps the entire wing from attacking? Right...

So nobody can have a core aerial force, as there are no small fliers?

I think those are the biggest things I see right now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ahhh it says simultaneously resolve attacks from tiny fliers...does that mean that you can't prevent being shot by them at that moment, even if you can put some damage on them for the attempt?

Still working my way through all the PDFs, so I haven't gotten through the tiny flyer one yet. As for the others,

Spellbound wrote:
Obscured units still cause hits on only a 6, but get hit on a 56?

Looks like. Makes it less of a defensive bonus.

When boarding, you keep going until someone is at 0 or do you just pull remaining boarders back after one go around?

You now pull them back after one go around. This is a pretty big nerf to boarding, as now if you do not take the ship in the first try, you wind up having to face the defensive AA again on the second.

Do you get cc against diving robots that board?

I would say yes...I see nothing in the revised rules PDF that would prohibit it.

When you destroy a diving robot via boarding, do you bring your remaining men back?

Again, I would say so based on the PDFs not saying otherwise.

Spartan has declared the crab-walk 45 degree turn abuse legal now, adding only that you take damage from doing so.

I saw the movement clarification, but I'm not sure what you are referring to though...

Someone made a post on the spartan forums that the CoA crab, their large land unit, has to move 0" between each 45 degree turn. Since it is much wider than it is long, that 45 degree turn wheels the outside edge WAY far around. Alternate 45 degree turns and its 6" move now becomes like 12" of movement as it wheels its outside edge much further than normal with each inch of movement. People were debating how to go about this, since it was perfectly legal to make 6 45 degree turns, but it ended up moving much further. People house ruled it [or just didn't do it], but it seems Spartan Games noticed it as well.

Rather than say it's illegal, though, it appears like they've said you can go ahead and do it, but you WILL take damage if you try. The squid can do it too, but I suppose as long as you make an inch of forward movement between each turn, then you're safe.

I'm not that worried about cc against my squids when they board. Most ships have very little cc. A dreadnought would likely have like 6, maybe 2 more with escorts, and after rugged construction would be taken down to 7. It might get a point of damage, but that won't reduce my AP at all.

I'm sad that the squids can't derelict ships anymore by reducing them to 0 AP in a boarding action, though. It will however cause a crit, and then I can continue boarding every turn, automatically winning, and getting further critical hits.

Still, makes it more involved than just wrecking the thing.

Ahh...I had missed that whole discussion about the CoA walker. Interesting.

I wonder if there is supposed to be some exception for boarding by robots...it seems like you should still be able to derelict a ship with one in a boarding action.

Well with RAW, you can't at the moment. What I can do, though, is get my squid going 9" instead of 7 by doing two alternating 45 degree turns, moving an inch, then doing two more turns and moving two more inches forward.

I think my opponents will be guilting me into not going that, though, at risk of losing said opponents. Simple fact is, though, that if I make a single turn, I gain 1/2" of movement. I honestly see it as a bit of a trade-off for not being able to make a 180 degree spin and drop a mine on someone anymore, or line up nicely next to a ship I want to board so that I can fire my fixed channel forward guns at something else.

I'm just glad it's only 100 points still. The theme for the Japanese fleet seemed to be "Make it easier to kill, reduce its firepower, but up its point cost". At least the war gyro is finally here. I'm expecting good things from him, and the gunships should nicely replace my cruisers.

For all interested in this game, the models look great on the tt, the game has sensible rules (with the exception of the lack of balance of the antarctic army, time warp generator thing is SOOO OP) Check it out, its a real good game

Great to see some decent discussion of dystopian wars on this forum.
It really is a good game that I recommend people get into. I play with a small gaming group based at the Darksphere store in london.

amplebob wrote:Great to see some decent discussion of dystopian wars on this forum.
It really is a good game that I recommend people get into. I play with a small gaming group based at the Darksphere store in london.

Hey, I'm not so far from there and have some Dystopian stuff but haven't got in a game yet. I've not got my things with me as I've just moved house, but I'd like to try a game to get started.

amplebob wrote:Great to see some decent discussion of dystopian wars on this forum.
It really is a good game that I recommend people get into. I play with a small gaming group based at the Darksphere store in london.

Especially since the Spartan forum has degenerated into 5-6 players constantly making circle jerk threads about how unbalanced the game is and how you sacrifice orphans and puppies if you disagree with them or play FSA.

I am running a big demo/mega battle to gin up more interest this spring. I want to do a Blazing Sun raid on New York City during fleet week with about 3500-4000 points a side. I am curious to see if anyone has used instillation yet and how they fared.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

amplebob wrote:Great to see some decent discussion of dystopian wars on this forum.
It really is a good game that I recommend people get into. I play with a small gaming group based at the Darksphere store in london.

Hey, I'm not so far from there and have some Dystopian stuff but haven't got in a game yet. I've not got my things with me as I've just moved house, but I'd like to try a game to get started.

Hi, we're having some games down at darksphere this sunday from 12 till 6. Always good to have another player. If you're up for it, just pm me or reply on here.

Dice Monkey wrote:
Especially since the Spartan forum has degenerated into 5-6 players constantly making circle jerk threads about how unbalanced the game is and how you sacrifice orphans and puppies if you disagree with them or play FSA.

Hee hee,I think I know who you are talking about; I'm sure they mean well, but I can't help the fact that my experiences with the game just don't match theirs.

]I am running a big demo/mega battle to gin up more interest this spring. I want to do a Blazing Sun raid on New York City during fleet week with about 3500-4000 points a side. I am curious to see if anyone has used instillation yet and how they fared.

Awesome! I have used the airfield and coastal defenses in a couple of games, and they did OK. In one game, the coastal defenses got a critical from a DN at RB4, which then resulted in a double six insta-kill . Outside of flukes like that, they seem relatively hard to take down for their points.

Ruckdog wrote:
Hee hee,I think I know who you are talking about; I'm sure they mean well, but I can't help the fact that my experiences with the game just don't match theirs.

I was actually cursed out by one and accused of being a troll when one was trying to use his knowledge of 40K as a point for balanced games. It is usually two Prussian players that do 90% of the whining and it is like they can't grasp the concept of how nasty Prussia small ships are. Fast harder to hit and ridiculously nasty if they close into rang band one. The local player uses a horde of the smaller ones then mops up with his big capital ships and wins the majority of his games. They are so thick headed things like that never occur to them.

Ruckdog wrote:Awesome! I have used the airfield and coastal defenses in a couple of games, and they did OK. In one game, the coastal defenses got a critical from a DN at RB4, which then resulted in a double six insta-kill . Outside of flukes like that, they seem relatively hard to take down for their points.

Good to hear they are tough because my FSA fleet is going to be small with some Britannians on a diplomatic good will mission. The EoTBS will have 3 full Carrier groups (whenever they come out), an entire air division, and a land division basically trying to sink all the carriers, fortifications, landmarks, and what air and ground forces can scramble out. If it goes well we may do a Doolittle Raid this summer.

Sounds neat! I'm working on doing a D-Day style amphibious assault scenario to combine land, air, and sea games into one.

I just started dystopian wars and got a britanian and prussian starter set. The game seems like a lot of fun, but there are some rule stuff that confuses me, like damage. What exactly happens when ships get hit? from what i can get from the rule book, the ad, aa,and cc all get damaged, but what about the ap? Boarding actions also confuse me. I was playing my britanians and was mauling the prussian battleship with my battleship, and had him to 2 hp left, but he just boarded me and with his superior ap overwhelmed me. Is that how it should be? and im also confused of how boarding works with the melee dice and creating critical hits.

Albeezie,

AP is not reduced by damage, unless the model receives a critical hit that causes the loss of AP.

Boarding is quite powerful in the game; you need to be on the look out for it at all times, as it can bite you in the rear when you least expect it to (like the example you listed above).

The causing of critical hits by boarding is a bit different now under the latest rule book updates. Let's just walk through an example boarding action to see how it would work. these stats are just made up, so bear with me:

A battleship with 10 AP conducts a boarding action on another battleship that also has 10 AP. The defending battleship gets to roll its AA, in order to try and shoot down some or all of the attacking marines. These dice hit on a 5 or 6, with a 6 resulting in two hits and another roll.

The defending battleship only has 3 aa left due to damage, and rolls three D6, getting a 2, 4, and a 6. This gives an additional die roll, which results in a 5. This is a total of 3 hits, reducing the attacking AP from 10 to 7.

The two sides now roll their melee dice, which is a number of D6 equal to the AP of each side. So, the attacker rolls 7 D6, while the defender rolls 10D6. These dice will hit on a 4, 5, or 6, with the 6's counting as two hits and allowing another die to be rolled.

After the dice are rolled, both sides add up the total hits they achieved, and subtract that from the number of AP they had going in. So, if the attacker got a total of 8 hits, the defending ship would be left with 2 HP. There are 3 possible results from this:

1. The attacking model has 0 AP left, while the defending model has more than 0. This means the boarding action has failed.

2. The attacking model has more then 0 AP left, while the defending model has none. This means the boarding action has succeeded, and the defending model is now a derelict.

3. Both the attacking model and the defending model have and their AP reduced to 0. This means the boarding assault has failed.

The critical roll you refer to is a Sabotage roll, and that roll is made independent of the 3 results above. To go back to our example, if the attacker scored 8 hits while the defender rolled 7, the assault would have failed because the attacker now has 0 AP and the defender still has 2. However, because the attacker scored more hits than the defenders did, the defending model now suffers a critical hit.

Hope that clears it up for you!

I was sold by the british land ship there lol

thank you so much ruckdog! That cleared up all the questions I had. This makes my prussians so much better.

Hi guys, a load of freinds and i have started this game recently and we're loving it. SO i came on here to ask more experianced players a few questions. I picked up the CoA naval box and am loving how smexy the ships look.

First question: which turret option is the best for my cruisers, the standard or the energy tuirrets? from the few games i've played, energy seem more suited to to long distance fighting, while standard reward in your face tactics. My battleship rocks both, with energy weapons in the upper turrets so i can blaze away then surface at close range for more dakka.

Second: expeanding the fleet, i'm torn between a carrier and a handful of escorts (possibly throw in that medium flyer) and the smexy beast that is the CoA Dreadnaught, which would support the starter fleet better in larger games?

Not intimately familiar with CoA yet (our CoA player only started recently as well) so I will help as best I can.

Overall energy turrets tend to not be as good for one big reason. They usually only provide a bonus to firepower at range band 4, are usually equal at range band 3 and then quickly drop of in strength, CoA has good long ranged firepower as it is without the need to gimp their RB1/2 damage. Though getting early damage on the enemy is good (i.e. long range bombardment), if you can't keep the pressure up at close range then things can get a little harry since a lot of factions will be able to get under your guns quickly and put the hurt on.

So on your cruisers it is fair to ignore energy turrets since they only provide you a damage boost in RB4 which may mean a whole extra turn of fire that is later counteracted when you get to RB2 and are doing the exact same damage. General concensus from a good deal of CoA players seems to be to leave energy turrets at home unless you are playing larger games and can have a group of front line units to take the brunt of the attack and leave some fire support guys back at RB4 where they are at their best.

As for what to pick up next, each Faction's dreadnought is usually a good, solid bet. Dreadnoughts are very efficient choices for their cost and add a great deal of punch. This is mostly just general advice since I have yet to face down a CoA dread but unless something went very wrong it will likely be a nasty customer. I also hear that time dilation orbs are pretty nice to have around for quick fleet maneuvering. So I'd probably go for dread first and then fill it out with the orb and some escorts.

I too would take the dread over the carrier; they are pretty rock solid, and put out a lot of firepower. The carrier can be a good support unit, but it wont work as the centerpiece of a flee the way a dreadnought can.

'tis decided then, the Dreadnought will be purchased soon. I just need a name for her.

Danica

Hmm, always thought Bombastus would fit the CoA theme well.

Well, i named my Battleship "Clarity of Thought", so for the dreadnought i'm thinking either "Stalwart Mentor." or " Guardian of Knowledge."

I would have named them after philosophers, but all the good ones are taken by ship classes and the rest i can't pronounce.

Well, have you used "Bruce"?

Best philosophers from the University of Wallamaloo ...