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Dust has released the revised rulebook (I think mainly due to the divorce from battlefront) and it is currently available to download from their facebook group. I think a few typos have been caught, so I would expect that when it goes up on their website proper, they shall be fixed.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/303941853917/files/

I do like the layout It seems like they have made positive rules changes, and the ability to play it on the grid as a boardgame and then gridless as a wargame looks to have been handled nicely at a glance.

Revised cards are going to be uploaded in a few weeks time, then hard copies available some time after that. This is supposed to be the core rulebook for years to come they have said in the group comments somewhere, as it is self published.

Dust Warfare has not gone dodo, there is a new edition of that due to be finished in the next few months too. I used to play a lot of warfare, but I look forward to having a crack at the gridless version of the '47 rulebook, as they seem to have ported over many Warfare rules such as supression.

.... Its about credibility at the end of the day. That and good will squandered.

 Grot 6 wrote:
.... Its about credibility at the end of the day. That and good will squandered.

I don't see how you can blame Dust Studios when it was Battlefront that embezzled the kickstarter money to fund Team Yanky

 Digclaw wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
.... Its about credibility at the end of the day. That and good will squandered.

I don't see how you can blame Dust Studios when it was Battlefront that embezzled the kickstarter money to fund Team Yanky

I do have to ask what your source on that information would be, because it sounds entirely made up.

From my own personal reading of both sides presentation during the KS kerfuffle, it sounded much more like BF failing to do due diligence before their partnership (in it's more charitable to Dust Studios interpretation). This lead to BF buying up stock before finding out that it couldn't be sold if FFG still had stock of that SKU available (which in many cases, FFG still does). I think at this point BF was a bit annoyed with DS, as they had been expecting to start selling it and somehow due to "communication problems" they couldn't sell many of the basic components of the armies.

BF feels hard done by this (justification varying on how far along the "BF Fail" to "DS concealed" spectrum; either company has a track record where it either or both could be true) and basically don't pay the invoice. Problem being that Dust Studios already sold that payment to a factoring bank, and now both companies are on the hook to said bank. In what amounts to "a baby will save our troubled marriage" kind of thinking they draw up a contract between the two parties before the KS was launched that prioritizes payment to said factoring bank out of the campaign.

During the campaign, the companies agreed on a number of freebies that would be offered to the backers to drive up the total. A new misunderstanding emerges. BF talks to Paolo, who agrees that Dust will provide set of freebies X while BF will provide set of freebies Y and each company will absorb their costs. After the campaign is concluded and lurched through the first part (held up in no small part by BF's somewhat characteristic ineptness with technology) and Dust Studios goes "we're not paying for those freebies, you owe us the money for them to be made." BF cites Paolo agreeing, and the reply from Mr. Yau is essentially "I run Dust Studios, not Paolo; he had no authority to approve such a thing."

At this point, BF decide they have had enough of being jerked around by their "partner" and draw their line in the sand. They will not pay for the freebies, because in their view they have had all they can stand. Dust holds firm, campaigning for the backers to pressure BF into just paying for the freebies and stating that all they need is the money and the shipment will be on its way. Months of this go on. BF gives up on negotiation and simply offers to refund the backers a pro-rated amount. Within 48 hours, suddenly all the problems with Dust have been resolved and things will be proceeding. Almost as though Dust Studios realized that once that pot of money had left BF and gone back to the backers, they would not see hardly any of it coming back to them. Fast forward many months and Dust Studios is still manufacturing models for the order (makes one wonder how that shipment would have gone out if BF had outright caved).

Now, there's a fair bit of speculation from the obviously biased information presented by both sides involved in an acrimonious split. BF has certainly shown itself multiple times to be hilariously bad at dealing with outside contractors. Dust has similarly demonstrated that their most prominent spokesman has a somewhat arms-length relationship with the truth and reality.

I'm not sure I'd trust either with money sight-unseen, but I also find it hard to believe the issues with Dust can be blamed squarely on one side or the other.

Great summary and the reason why I'm so glad i decided to pass on their KS.

Battlefront were just as bad. I have received no responses to my customer support questions of where is my gear from the kickstarter.

Anyway, it's a rulebook thread not a kickstarter whinge. The book is up on their website now, it may receive some spellheck and grammar edits over the weekend as they get some feedback (i believe there was a rules comprehension issue with moving diagonally).

Not trying to side line dust but warlord games has there 47 spin off of bolt action out in a couple of months. Will be digging out my dust walkers for that one,
Seems a lot of people will be doing the same thing.

Thanks for the link, greatly appreciated.

So have BF and DS split ways for good? As best I can tell, BF is still making the existing models? I've had enough recent bad experiences with BF (not via the KS) that I would be happy to see them part ways for good, but I'm confused who will be producing the future models, and what exactly will be available as new product vs. what is just carry-over stock.

I do miss when Dust was under FFG and I never discovered why the two split - was Dust not selling well under FFG?

I don't recall saying Battlefront was blameless in the myriad of screw-ups on that KS; in fact I do recall the phrases "BF Fail", "ineptness" and "hilariously bad" being attributed to them. I said that your claims that they had committed an actual crime of embezzlement was unfounded. The funds were spent as the two parties agreed and thus couldn't have been misappropriated; it is incredibly shady that neither company bothered to mention how the funds were actually going to be spent to the third party funding things (i.e. - the backers) during the campaign though.

Further, discussing prior actions of a company is always relevant in a news thread as a customer who is unaware of what went on, especially with the split from two major distributors, would definitely want to be aware of that before diving into a system. I think we all hate it when we buy into something we're only kind of interested in to discover it's no longer supported or not really available or, in this case, fragmented across a surprising number of product lines (Dust Tactics, Dust Warfare, Dust Battleground, Dust 1947, etc). Sometimes we don't care because the models are that cool (and I have a bevy of SSU tanks that are getting painted up), but that's a choice that's much better to make with the information beforehand.

BF and Dust are splitting once the final delivery of the KS is complete. As of their April 25th post to FB (~five months after the agreement was reached), the word from Dust was that manufacturing was "reaching its end". Taking Dust at their word combined with the last little bits of a project always taking the longest and sea shipping to BF, I would guesstimate in the next month or so that there'd be some news on the final shipment.

How the future of Dust sales will go is anyone's guess. I've not heard of Dust getting a new distribution partner, so they may be trying to handle that themselves now. Dust Studios is still producing models and many of the KS designs are on sale on their site. I've not been able to track down much information on the split with FFG, as I was curious about that too, and I would say that given that I believe Dust Studios makes X-Wing and Armada for FFG that poor sales was the major reason and that certainly jives with Dust stock still be available today from FFG. I have found veiled references from outside parties (i.e. - folks who "know" people at FFG but are not FFG employees, apply salt to taste) that Paolo and the Dust portion of the business were not fun to deal with. That too jives with what we've seen from Paolo's behavior in this KS meltdown; he is very much the artiste and it's not unusual for those types to gloss over major logistical details that kind of matter to a business.