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So im thinking of starting Dystopian Wars and ditching 40k/WHFB after number crunching the costs.

Can anyone give me a rundown of each of the fleets/armies and their pros and cons.

Also how does the cost stack up for a ready to play army?

 Eetion wrote:
So im thinking of starting Dystopian Wars and ditching 40k/WHFB after number crunching the costs.

Can anyone give me a rundown of each of the fleets/armies and their pros and cons.

Also how does the cost stack up for a ready to play army?

Ready to play is £30, literally the "starter fleets" give you 9 frigates, 3 cruisers, a battleship, 10 TFs and 2 bombers. Thats a small, medium and large naval model (basically your mandatory bits) and an extra "toy". From there you can try out and proxy and add a bit of anything you want. The ships types are roughly the same sized in each faction (gunboats/cruisers for instance) so its fairly forgiving with proxying if you at least have the rulebook (about£19) for the stats or you can download them from the spartan games forum.

As for pros and cons il try my best

Federate states of america- Very forgiving army and newbie friendly. Not many special rules and can hit fairly well at all range bands to some extent. Their medium cruiser/gunship iv not seen do much against me but thats just me haha. Mostly turrets an rockets. Factionwide (mostly) +1 damage rating too.

Kingdom of Brittania- Shield and torpedo heavy army, seriously these guys can be more resistant than anyone in some cases, and they take torpedo spam as their main weapon to extremes. Pretty good bombers too, but id say joint worst boarders in the game >>

Prussian Empire- Boarding and short range guns. Hardest fleet in the game to play right, but if you do they can be hard to beat.

Empire of the Blazing Sun- Jack of all trades, we get a mix of turrets, rockets, torpedoes and can board pretty damn well, just cant do any one thing as well as the other factions. Fairly flexible in terms of being able to completely shift your strategy midgame too. Second hardest learning curve but again a pretty rewarding one. Next to no generators

Covenant of Antartica- lots of generators and fancy special rules, but the worst boarders. Think of them as the steampunk tau army, can be decimating shooting, lots of shiny weapons, but cant figure out how to build a better sword lol.

Republique of france- Hard to pin this one down, more like theres subsections in the main factions >> Id say a mix of the CoA type special rules, with a mix of broadsides, turrets and torpedos. Can have a fleet of floating boats -_- Also a fairly damaging close range turret unique to them (though due to my groups player weve renamed it the wet lance due to his rolls >&gt.

Russian coalition- Theyr russia, what do you think ;P Slow, hard to kill and with some insane close range shooting. Kill them before they get to you if you can Resistant to torpedos and rockets and can steal other factions generators, and even repair their ships.

Well my first thoughts are the Russian Coalition, but I suppose I will base my decision on which models I like the best and the least common army in my area after I do my research.

Many thanks.

Fair enough, the fleets are fairly well balanced against each other so aesthetic choice is a good way to decide

Oh forgot to mention, EotBS are also factionwide more more manueverable and harder to critical, and the french pretty much own the air in terms of AA fire.

Russia is a pretty solid choice, hard as hell to start shooting down, and pretty punishing turret weapons. Sort of poor AA fire, and their boarding is slightly...well russian haha, lots of AP (the "troops") but they hit on a 5+ instead of 4+ haha. stalin would be proud very nice large ships, and can have a scary medium unit. Poor air support though, only 2 remotely useful fliers, and the only carrier they get is a naval one (though it CAN create freaking icebergs every turn hahah)

I was just looking at Blazing Sun as it seems they are pretty rare in this area.

Brits and french are common as muck. So I may have a little look at whom I prefer. EotBS or Ruskis.

The EotBS are rewarding to get right, however we have easily the worst cruiser (unless its mixed with gunships) and the worst dreadnought. However Everything else is pretty top notch to be honest and works well at all ranges.

The only thing putting me off the Russians at the moment is a lack of a Dystopian Legions set so I can tie them in. But I suppose that gives me time to build a DW fleet.

Aye, theyv stated they will be releasing the DL factions in the order they did DW, so russia will be a LONG while off.

Should give me plenty of time to build up an army then.

If your thinking of russians as ever the starter set is a good buy, though you will want to think about either getting an extra cruiser or a gunship blister as your first buy (Russians like japan can use an extra model in mediums, so 4 cruisers or 3 gunships- the statcards say otherwise but they got FAQd). I say the gunship since you can use a unit of 2 cruisers and 2 gunships, mixing the 2 types of generator (deflecting torpedos AND rockets, each unit alone only gets the one type). It also give you the extra weapons and aux power.

The frigates are nifty too, plus they use the same model for frigates as escorts so you can mix and match depending what you want. The destroyers are pretty good too, not the most damaging but they can shunt enemy vessels 2" or so into each other.

The battleship is scary, as is the dreadnought. The carrier is more shenanigan based i think as it can keep generating more terrain that floats around and away >> Cant really go wrong to be honest, other than their small fliers and bombers being terrible no "bad" naval units i think. oh and come december they get a new small, basically a frigate size HP repair unit (meaning those medium and larges are even harder to kill off -_-)