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I just got the newsletter and to my surprise Dystopian Legions is getting a new starter box release:



Covenant of Antarctica Forces
21 CoA Models: 6 x Commandos, 10 x Automata Robots, 1 x Monique Dubois Scientist, 1 x Officer, 3 x Drone Skimmers and Flight Stands.

Republique of France Forces
19 French Models: 6 x Armoured Marines, 8 x Legionnaires, 1 x Legion HMG team (2 figures & Gun), 1 x Veronique Dubois Medic, 1 x Officer.

Scenery
1 x large, multi-part HDF ruined building complex and Battlefield Objectives.

Other Materials
1 x Full Colour Rulebook.
1 x A5 Scenario Book that allows players to re-enact the tense struggle between the forces in Codename Iron Scorpion.
Dice, Templates and Tokens Sheets.

Though it's £90 so it's quite steep for just dipping into, but there are a lot of models in the box.

That comes out to $150 USD for 40 models and some terrain. That's not the worst price in the world, even if it's a little steep. I'm guessing by the name that Dystopian Legions is an army-size game and not a skirmish game, correct? I've seen the models before and they're lovely, but if $150 gets me all I really need to play that might be tempting.

This box really looks great. I've been loving playing Dystopian Legions for the two years since it was released. It's been my favorite game and I haven't had this much fun within miniature games since I was in high school playing 40k. (I also played it through college and for two years after until DL and out but the game just bored me.)

I've preordered this box and I'm looking forward to the French Foreign Legion and seeing what the included terrain looks like.

The value for money is great in any case.
I don't really need French, i want Covenant of Antarctica, but even i am in doubt.
I myself have Prussians and hope that there will be new players.

It's a real skirmish game and the 2 factions are even bigger than you need for a standard battle and 30% more models than the original "starter sets".

The DL game is balanced, fun, but not my favourite system (yet), ik look forward to 2.0.

Above all i want more pictures of the new miniatures...

Love the setting but not the scale although i bought some of their stuff for 40k

ORicK wrote:
The value for money is great in any case.
I don't really need French, i want Covenant of Antarctica, but even i am in doubt.
I myself have Prussians and hope that there will be new players.

It's a real skirmish game and the 2 factions are even bigger than you need for a standard battle and 30% more models than the original "starter sets".

The DL game is balanced, fun, but not my favourite system (yet), ik look forward to 2.0.

Above all i want more pictures of the new miniatures...

The game is not designed to be what people think of as a skirmish game.

The game is designed for squad combat at a platoon+ level. The activation order, commands, and cards never functioned well for me at the small levels, and I definitely am a firm believer that the forces in this starter set will still need another couple of squads at least before really getting into a very good game.

These forces would be approximately 150 points in the current ruleset, but to me that was the bare minimum to be willing to even demo the game to people, and it didn't start getting more fun until 200-250 points.

Models looks great I'm tempted to get this. Perhaps twice. My Americans just aren't doing it for me.

If it's the Americans rules that you don't care for then hold off because it looks like the rulebook will come with update army lists for everybody.

If you don't care for the look of the FSA models then nobody can fault you for that and I'd say go for it. I'm getting the box even though I already own a large FSA force, a small Prussian one, and I'm possibly going to buy my friends medium sized Britannians one from him.

Just the idea of a French Foreign Legion army for the game sounds to fun.

I play as the Covenant and the Republique in Wars, so the box set is perfect. I enjoy the look of the FSA, even if the rules are lacking. I don't play as them in War's which probably doesn't help, surprising as no one wants to trade for the EotBS.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Pics so it happened I guess.

Aww man. I love the fluff behind the Covenant and their models in Dystopian Wars, but these are a little disappointing. They're good, but they're not nearly as good as the French!

With these pictures it happened indeed!!

Allthough i don't care much for the French as a faction (is one of the few DW fleets i don't have), they do really look good!
And i like the covenant commandos and love the automata.
The Covenant are a no-brainer for me now...

And @roadkizzle: you are right off course.
it's indeed not the kind of skirmish game as, for instance, Infinity. You play on platoon level.

It's somewhere between Infinity and 40k in regard the number of models you need (and you don't need 100+ as with 40k Orks for instance).

Can someone describe the system in broad strokes?

System may change, but as it stands it's a d6 system. Each d6 has a colour and a different result on a 6. On most rolls a 1-3 is a fail and a 4-6 is a success, although various units and abilities change this. On a roll of a 6, a black dice produces a success, a blue dice produces a success and let's you roll that dice again and a red dice produces two successes and allows you to roll that dice again. Weapons also have different range bands, and going from memory each range band is 8 inches. That means a shotgun may have red dice in the first range band, but black dice in the third. Vice versa for an rifle. Weapons also have a different damage rating versus troops and armour. Units also have an injury rating, the amount of dice needed to hurt the unit, and a kill rating, where things outright die.

Though it's all subject to change with a new version.

That's close.

Black dice: hit on 4+, 6 is normal
Blue dice: hit on 4+, 6 counts as two hits
Red dice: hit on 4+, 6 counts as two hits and you roll another red dice.

For attacks you roll a pool of dice that is all the weapons firing combined based on their stats and the distance from the target.

The range bands are indeed 8" but each gun only has an Effective Range and a Long Range. You fire out to the maximum Effective range as normal, but to fire out to maximum Long Range you have to spend a Command Point resource and you go down one dice color (Red to Blue, Blue to Black, Black removes one dice per weapon).

After rolling the pool of dice you count the number of hits, and for every time you match the Injury Rating (IR) of your target you cause the loss of one Life Point. If they have multiple Life Points then there is also a Kill Rating (KR) which if you reach the model automatically dies.

The game plays out in alternate activations, but each unit has an activation card that each player organizes into their "Order of March", or activation order at the beginning of each turn, then the players take turns flipping over their next card and activating that unit.

There are also Game Cards that either allow your units to use special abilities, or make enhancements to their normal actions, or are used as reactions to enhance defense or make counterattacks. These are organized in a deck of 26 cards where each player draws a hand of five cards from each turn.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
But... As Zond said, the full rulebook is being released this coming September 24th along with this starter box. Nobody outside Spartan knows what is actually changing, although there have been some general statements of areas that have been looked at.

Specifically, the game designer stated that:
Command and Control with the officers and characters has been enhanced and streamlined
Melee combat has been redesigned
Ironclads (vehicles) rules have been enhanced.

They have stated that the "standard turn sequence" is in the game, although whether they mean the DL one with activation cards or the DW and FSA one of open alternating activations is unknown.
The starter set in this thread makes no mention of game cards, so they may have been removed from the game, but there were statements that the characters use of abilities have been redesigned to make more tactical choices so the game cards may have been replaced with character abilities.

There could also be the possibility of the removal of the colored dice mechanic replaced with the standard exploding mechanic that is the direction taken for the re-release of Planetfall.


Hopefully the new Element 270 podcast will be released very soon because they apparently have an interview with the game designer and owner of Spartan regarding changes made in Dystopian Legions.

Looks cool! Always liked the FFL.

Expensive for what you get and wouldn't go near the game. I don't like the rule system for this scale although have heard new rule set but doubt it will be much if any of an improvement

will stick with dwars and maybe planet fall when I see the rules for it

10penceman, I know you seem to have a lot of hatred towards Spartan as a company, and what makes rulesets enjoyable is a very subjective decision.

I do really like the original Dystopian Legions rules although I look forward to the command, melee, and ironclad rules to be improved and I prefer the Dystopian Wars game card mechanic.
But Legions has been my favorite game to play. I enjoy it much more than I've ever cared about my Warmachine or WH40k games because it requires setting up an overall strategy for each turn as well as more psychological elements of reading your opponents plan and trying to guess exactly how his units can respond.

But I am not sure why you say that this 2-player starter set is nearly expensive for what you get.

You get two armies with 20 models each. Two full infantry sections, characters, and support.
A full rulebook
A large building complex (their words not mine)
Battlefield objective models
All the templates, tokens, and odds and ends needed to play the game.

If you think the light infantry and heavy/elite infantry squads plus drones/HMG plus officers are only worth $40 dollars for each army, more than a deal I think on that.
The rulebook should be worth about $25-30 dollars.
The terrain building complex, objectives, templates, dice, and tokens only come out to about $40.

I think the models are easily worth $50-60 per faction meaning it's a better deal.

might have to get this box set the models look nice, if I recall from there previous offerings they are big 33mm and don't really fit in with other systems models but having said that my resolve is wavering as the designs seem great.

I have to say though. My Federated States infantry models don't look bad mixed in on the table with my 40k IG army. The Prussian Grenadiers are taller, but IRL the grenadiers were comprised of the largest and strongest soldiers so it works I think.

My Legions models are a little taller than my Cadians and Catachans, but because the warhammer models have such poor proportions and are so overly bulky you need taller better proportioned models to stand up to them on the table.

roadkizzle wrote:
I have to say though. My Federated States infantry models don't look bad mixed in on the table with my 40k IG army. The Prussian Grenadiers are taller, but IRL the grenadiers were comprised of the largest and strongest soldiers so it works I think.

My Legions models are a little taller than my Cadians and Catachans, but because the warhammer models have such poor proportions and are so overly bulky you need taller better proportioned models to stand up to them on the table.

is there anywhere with some good comparsion shots do you happen to know - I like quite afew of the models and don't mind a bit of difference in my models but not tooo much

 Mr Morden wrote:

roadkizzle wrote:
I have to say though. My Federated States infantry models don't look bad mixed in on the table with my 40k IG army. The Prussian Grenadiers are taller, but IRL the grenadiers were comprised of the largest and strongest soldiers so it works I think.

My Legions models are a little taller than my Cadians and Catachans, but because the warhammer models have such poor proportions and are so overly bulky you need taller better proportioned models to stand up to them on the table.

is there anywhere with some good comparsion shots do you happen to know - I like quite afew of the models and don't mind a bit of difference in my models but not tooo much

I love Spartan's fleet based games, and this looks like it's a good or better match for the quality of those.

 BrookM wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

roadkizzle wrote:
I have to say though. My Federated States infantry models don't look bad mixed in on the table with my 40k IG army. The Prussian Grenadiers are taller, but IRL the grenadiers were comprised of the largest and strongest soldiers so it works I think.

My Legions models are a little taller than my Cadians and Catachans, but because the warhammer models have such poor proportions and are so overly bulky you need taller better proportioned models to stand up to them on the table.

is there anywhere with some good comparsion shots do you happen to know - I like quite afew of the models and don't mind a bit of difference in my models but not tooo much

thanks - may be a bit big - might look at some of them thought - are the vehicles simlarly scaled?

From what I've seen the bigger vehicles are truly gargantuan.

 BrookM wrote:
From what I've seen the bigger vehicles are truly gargantuan.

The "small tanks" which are the Pioneer, Walze, Terrier, and Ke-Ho for the different factions are largely somewhere in between a Leman Russ and Land Raider.

Here's a link to the thread in Spartan Games forums where there was discussion on how large the tanks were when the Walze and Pioneer were being released.
http://community.spartangames.co.uk/index.php?/topic/5338-ironclad-size/

In this, I had received the Leman Russ and Land Raider from this forum.

A sponson-less 40k Leman Russ is 3 inches wide, 2 inches tall, and 4.5 inches long.
A sponson-less 40k Land Raider is 4 inches wide, 2.63 inches tall, and 7 inches long.
My Dystopian Legions Pioneer is 4 inches wide, 2 inches tall, and 5.5 inches long.
The Prussian Walze is also 4 inches wide, a little over 2 inches tall, and 6 inches long.

There was a blog post from Spartan with the size of the Britannian and Blazing Suns tanks.
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/ironclads-closer-look
The Britannian Terrier is 4.25 inches wide, between 2-2.85 inches tall, and 5.5 inches long.
The Blazing Suns Ke-Ho is 4.5 inches wide, 4 inches tall, and 5.7 inches long.

For anybody that has an interest in Dystopian Legions, the Element 270 Podcast just put up an episode at the end of last week that was an extended interview with the owner of Spartan games and one of their lead game designers.

http://element270.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/episode-16-legions-with-special-guests-neil-and-derek/

They discuss the changes coming with the release of the new rulebook, the upcoming DL release of the starter set, and the planned future releases.

In the podcast they don't necessarily go into great details on the changes to the basic mechanics other than force construction.

The game sounds like it will allow for some more narrative abilities with the creation of a scenario generator that from the basic description may be similar to the Dust Warfare one. The characters also all have additional extras through "sidekicks" that you can choose to field or leave behind. These look to be designed to add flavor and allow the choice between a fun characterful game or a more straightforward tactical game.

The force composition generally doesn't sound like it will be very different, each army will focus on the "Line Infantry", which are the Troops, or general grunts and objective holders which allow additional veteran, support, or character sections to be attached to the platoon.
These Line Infantry sections are said to have much increased flexibility, with the ability to field them in one of three configurations, Assault, Support, and another that I forgot. The Assault is explained as the ability for a couple of Specialist troopers with flamethrowers or other short ranged weapons, the support section allows heavy machine guns.

They also gave some good information on a generic change to the Ironclad rules to take them from being the impenetrable fortress's that they are currently, which hopefully will allow the smaller vehicles to be cheaper and more widely used.

Sadly they did not go into any details about the terrain that will be in Codename Iron Scorpion, but the show was a good listen.