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Hello dakkadakka

Last night I had my second game of dystopian wars, so far I'm loving the game. The mechanics are easy and the models are beautiful, and it makes a nice change from playing flames of war. I have a Russian fleet, which consists of the starter set, a carrier, the subs and of course dreadnought.

Unfortunately in last night's game, I lost my dreadnought early on thanks to some wicked rolling on my opponents behalf, that made we think that the outcome was a done deal and I focused on taking as many Prussians with me as I could. My battleship was awesome and could have done a bit better if I'd remembered the mimic generator (but I forgot about it)

As far as I could tell with my dread out of action, there was not much I could have done in to hurt his dreadnought, so I left it alone.

That got me thinking, does every game of d-wars end up in a battle to kill off each others dreadnought and not much else? Hopefully, that's not a correct assessment otherwise it'll be a one dimensional game. if that's not the case, how do you deal with opponents dreads?

Any advice is appreciated

Dave

From my experience in Firestorm Armada which is probably applicable since the rules are the same, I think it's important to neuter an enemy dread early by getting a few hp of damage on it just so it can't annihilate your stuff with impunity.

For example an undamaged retribution will probably be able to destroy a cruiser every turn or crit a battleship, but with 3 points of damage (25%) the odds of that are much lower, so if you dedicate a little bit of firepower in the early game to reducing the impact of these heavy hitters you then have more chance of all your ships being effective.

Just don't make them your white whale; in a lot of the games I've seen and played so far, people see a dread and are consumed by the need to kill it even if it is either a terrible ship to start with or has nothing to do with their victory conditions.

 Widowscar wrote:
Just don't make them your white whale; in a lot of the games I've seen and played so far, people see a dread and are consumed by the need to kill it even if it is either a terrible ship to start with or has nothing to do with their victory conditions.

Exactly, I can see it becoming a bit like this and I don't want it to or at least have some strategy for dealing with it. I guess as you say deal some damage so its not quite as effective and then re-evaluate.

Thanks for the reply.

Hmmm not entirely. Boarding as far as I'm aware is a much bigger threat in DW than in FS:A. As such I actually ignore the dreadnoughts unless its within boarding distance of my Ika/Medium squads or I need to bring it down for my objective (in which case it still gets boarded). Other than that I will only opportunistically attack them, in my experience they're too armoured up to really bother trying to kill on off through gunfire and still complete your objective.

Oh really, you tend to ignore it. So far my 2 games have just been straight out slug fests, no missions involved. Perhaps that will change the tone of the game.
Thanks doc

Fleet Orders really help the games tone and focus rather than just slugfest. Slugfests tend to turn a little unbalanced with no downside to size spam. With fleet missions you really need to practice at your all comers lists and such.

And yeah, with my dice I dont even bother trying to shoot battleships like that short of some early game fire rockets if i can get them in. Don't think i'v ever killed a large except once or twice by AD, just derelicts and prizes.

Are fleet orders the things that say "kill 70%" or "capture the commodore" ?

yeah, so unless your orders come up "Capture/kill the commodore vessel" You don't even need to look at the dreadnought, and even then you can just default to the number 1 order. (Though capturing commodore ranges in difficulty depending on the faction, for me its never been a problem being able to put out 22AP, or 19AP and halving their AP)

So lets say you want to board a dreadnaught. You'd use something like a squadron of 3/4 crusiers. Ram with one of them so that the dreads AP is halved. Then assault with the others. You take AA going on on one of the assaults, or split across them.

Is your AP combined at all, or do you resolve each one independently?

 Hangfire wrote:
So lets say you want to board a dreadnaught. You'd use something like a squadron of 3/4 crusiers. Ram with one of them so that the dreads AP is halved. Then assault with the others. You take AA going on on one of the assaults, or split across them.

Is your AP combined at all, or do you resolve each one independently?

You can still assault with the one you rammed with, that one though will just be at half AP same as the dreadnought. The AA gets worked out and you just take the losses off your cruisers/gunships as you like, then the dreadnought has to split its AP between your attackers.

So to give you a Goliath example, take the Enterprise, widely thought of as the toughest dread in the game. While it IS fearsome with dual shields and high stats, boarding it has 12AP. Lots for a large. However its not hard to get my squad of 2 Nakatsu and 2 Tanuki near it, yes they take fire, but they move fast. I get close and lets say still have all my ships, so 22AP vs 12AP. So. I nudge it with the cruiser and that takes the Dreads AP down to 6, and my total AP to 19 (The Naks AP is 5 normally, so halved down to 2). Now they get their AA, and I take any losses off. Assuming no losses, the Boarding action gets worked out at 6AP split against 2AP, 5AP, 6AP and 6AP. Remembering that casualties carry over. However do remember, killing 6AP isnt a prize, they may use 6AP, however you still need 12AP worth of successes to prize the dread.

While the dual Ika option is safer, Ika can't prize and thats the key thing. You mange to prize a dreadnought, you're suddenly sitting on at least 400+ VP ontop of the 150VP "Strategic objective" MAR bonus all dreadnoughts come with. Plus its fun to gloat

Thanks for the example doc, i'll sit down with the rulebook tonight and work my way through it to make sure I fully understand it, so i'll probably have further questions if that's okay.

One quick one, you can take a squad of 2 Nakatsu and 2 Tanuki...is that 1 squad or 2?

Thanks for the clarity about when its a prize or not.

So in the above example, you'd roll 2 dice and resolve...then 5 dice and resolve, then 6 dice and a final 6 dice.....does it make any difference if you just roll them all together?

No problem, I tend to take alot of the DW questions on here anyway, gets awful quiet down this end of the forum heh.

It's one reinforced squadron. You reinforce a cruiser squad to up to half its number rounded down. Most factions have squad sizes of 3 cruisers and 2 gunships (or 3 gunships for the KoB), so normally the reinforced squads are 2 cruisers and a gunship.

EotBS and RC on the other hand have cruisers in squads of 4, and gunships in 3, so reinforcing that squad bec can become 2 cruisers and 2 gunships (or 2C and 1G, or 1C and 1G etc.) Just depends what points you have to spend since that one EotBS one comes to 270 points just for 1 activation of mediums. So a bit of a points sink, but a powerful one as you have to take into account the different ways the cruisers and gunships help each other.

No problem again, our first few times using the collision rule like that we got it wrong (I'm not exactly a fair fighter heh).

And yes, it does. Casualties caused in the actual boarding process get applied directly to the parent ship. So iv you rolled that 2 and the dread rolled two 5's. then the cruiser would lose its 2AP (after causing its own damage of course).

Anyway hope that helps, keep up with the questions if you need 'em.

You mentioned that damage carries over.

Is that true? If two 6's board my 6 AP ship and I divide 3 and 3, one set rolls three 1's and the other rolls 3 6's followed by 3 6's followed by 3 4's, don't I just kill that ship's 6 AP and the other is fine?

Each faction has different methods to killing a dreadnought. As the russians if you can get close you can literally pound it into submission with your excellent close range gunnery. A full squadron of cruisers also has more than enough AP to board one as well.

However, there is another way to kill a dreadnought, the way the good lord intended. By bombing the crap out of it with TFT. Blast its escorts first of all, then try to get a crit. It isn't too hard, most nations can alt least get one crit on a dread if they try hard enough. This will reduce the dread's AA enough. Then hit it with 3 waves of dive bombers.

Will it work? Probably not, most opponents will figure out what you are doiung and try to stop you.

Is it fun? Hell yeah it is. Dive bombers are the great equalizer and are guarenteed to get a crit each time they bomb. If you play your cards right you can take a dread down to 2HP left in a single activation.

Also bear in mind this important fact, not all dreadnoughts were created equal. There is a holy trinity in DW of Blucher, Majesty and Enterpirse and these are the three most powerful units in the game. Other dreadnoughts are more speicalized in their use. The russian one, I believe, is a bit sub par in comparison.

Spellbound wrote:
You mentioned that damage carries over.

Is that true? If two 6's board my 6 AP ship and I divide 3 and 3, one set rolls three 1's and the other rolls 3 6's followed by 3 6's followed by 3 4's, don't I just kill that ship's 6 AP and the other is fine?

If you roll that, then yes it counts towards 9 casualties. Damage must always be allocated (like how you keep rolling those 6s even if a vessel is already dead, you can still get up to a crit/double crit and theres the chance of a double 1 or 6). Even if you fudged that first batch of 6's, you still kill 9. The collision only lowers their ability to fight BACK for the turn, it doesn't stop you from killing that other 6AP. Think of it literally as you ram them and half the crew are on their backsides.

That's not what I mean. I know if you're boarding a 12 that's been reduced to 6 you still kill into the 12 not just the 6.

Different situation. Two 6 AP ships board a ship with ONLY 6 AP. The victim divides his AP between the two attackers, 3 and 3. One set of dice rolls nothing, the other set, allocated to the other ship, rolls amazing and gets 20 hits. Doesn't it only kill the 6 attacking AP from that ship, and the other ship's 6 AP make it through unscathed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Japanese dreadnought is sub-par as well. It's pretty, but not very effective.

I really hope they adapt the new Armoured Clash rules for naval fleets.

 Thorn678 wrote:
I really hope they adapt the new Armoured Clash rules for naval fleets.

Why do people keep thinking this is a good idea. Armored clash is not suited to naval combat and the rules would end up over complicated, clunky and awkward. No, just no.

Good discussion thanks guys...

I played last night against a Prussian fleet. Because I prized his gunships, they became floating los blockers and I wasn't able to bring my guns to bear...then we got into a mess with a gunship that drifted into his dreadnought, which had no choice but to ram my battleship. The disengaging rules are a tad confusing so we ended up pummelling away at each other at half dice.

Fortunately my carrier managed to prize a cruiser and that took me over the 70%...woot.

Thanks for the advice on tiny flyers, I tend to use them as fighter CAP, but perhaps I should re-think.

I now have tonnes of questions, should I start a new thread do you think?

 EmilCrane wrote:

 Thorn678 wrote:
I really hope they adapt the new Armoured Clash rules for naval fleets.

Why do people keep thinking this is a good idea. Armored clash is not suited to naval combat and the rules would end up over complicated, clunky and awkward. No, just no.

Actually they've already said their working on the rules for the French skimmers, and naval vessals as if i recall support elements Have them sit on the coast in a scenario, launching support fire onto the mainland etc).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hangfire wrote:
Good discussion thanks guys...

I played last night against a Prussian fleet. Because I prized his gunships, they became floating los blockers and I wasn't able to bring my guns to bear...then we got into a mess with a gunship that drifted into his dreadnought, which had no choice but to ram my battleship. The disengaging rules are a tad confusing so we ended up pummelling away at each other at half dice.

Fortunately my carrier managed to prize a cruiser and that took me over the 70%...woot.

Thanks for the advice on tiny flyers, I tend to use them as fighter CAP, but perhaps I should re-think.

I now have tonnes of questions, should I start a new thread do you think?

May as well keep asking them here. It's usually best to use your TF's to your faction specialty. As an EotBS player theres rarely any point to me using bombs, as my TF MARs are on torpedos, the KOB though have specialist bombers on the other hand. Just remember even though they only have 1 MAR to set them apart, it usually makes your TF's MASSIVE pains for the other guy.

Okay, so one thing I don't get is the Russian Coalition TF MAR for Dive Bombers, which is More Machine Guns..."Each Tiny Flyer in this wing increases its Ack Ack (AA) by +1"

Wouldn't it have been easier to just make the AA stat 2, instead of 1? Or is there some difference I am missing?

Edit--Forgot to say that you were right about playing fleet orders...really took the pressure of "I have to kill the dreadnought" and focussed instead on getting to 70%. Also we used the deployment rules, so found it easier to get my big ships into range as they started in the advance force.

 Hangfire wrote:
Okay, so one thing I don't get is the Russian Coalition TF MAR for Dive Bombers, which is More Machine Guns..."Each Tiny Flyer in this wing increases its Ack Ack (AA) by +1"

Wouldn't it have been easier to just make the AA stat 2, instead of 1? Or is there some difference I am missing?

Edit--Forgot to say that you were right about playing fleet orders...really took the pressure of "I have to kill the dreadnought" and focussed instead on getting to 70%. Also we used the deployment rules, so found it easier to get my big ships into range as they started in the advance force.

Depends, the provided stat card stats always show the numbers BEFORE the MAR modifiers, its just how they're laid out. YLLAN's redone statcards on the SG forum have the MAR included in the statline for TFs. It's just a layout thing more than any kind of game effect.

And i'm glad you're seeing the difference. Dreads aren't meant to be some big be all end all deathstar (not accounting for stats mind *grumbls*enterprise*grumbles*), they're a nice flashy bonus to your fleet and a centrepiece, that's all