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Does Subway not sell 6" subs in the UK?

I'd still say a 6" sub is bigger, but that's because of the bulk. I've got some of the old Empire of the Blazing Sun ships. While the battleship checks in at 6 inches (I've got mine sitting in front of me as I write this, and just used the tape measure on it), it doesn't have the bulk of a sandwich. It's definitely not as wide as a sub sandwich. And the only way that it's as tall is if you crush the food.

Incidentally, 6 inches makes it just a bit longer than a 1/1800 USS Missouri - not including any bases that the latter might be attached to.


On another note, it looks like they got rid of EotBS in the new setting, and created a new Pan-Asian federation. Boo!

One problem SG had was keeping up with their own games; whilst they released a LOT of stuff, they really stressed and suffered in keeping up with existing armies; yet they were addicted to the big sales spike that a new faction or game would bring.

It basically wound up being something that I think contributed to their eventual downfall because they could only spend so long focusing on one game or army before they had to move on; so for a few months Dystopian would get all the attention then Firestorm etc... They rotated almost at random which annoyed fans etc...


One big thing Warcradle has done is cut things down a lot. They've merged quite a few forces and the new plastic ship kits let them get a good number of varied ship classes and builds into a single kit as opposed to perhaps 8 or more individual kits.



Stewart on the facebook pages has said he thinks 8 is the magic number of factions for the game right now. That said who knows if Dwars does really well all over again (which I hope it does) and they add more and more models they might well reach a point where they can safely add a new faction and where its a better option than either bloating their own range for existing factions or updating sculpts from existing ones.


He's also clearly a fan of the game because quite a few of the iconic units have been mentioned making a return in some form at some stage.
That and I think WC are still scaling up their own back end production; hence the slower roll out of stuff. Start small; find how the market responds and rise accordingly.

There are 8 major factions, but each one has a number of sub-factions. The Empire of the Blazing Sun still exists as a sub-faction within the Pan-Asia faction. You will still be able to collect and play an exclusively Japanese-only faction if you don't want to play Pan-Asians or whatever, but it might take a while for them to get enough releases to enable that to occur in a realistic and balanced manner.

I realise this is difficult in the current climate but are there any reviews or battle reports to give a flavour of the game?

 Overread wrote:

Heck a Slaanesh hellflayer chariot is longer on just the blades.

GW's table-hogging designs should be a cautionary tale, not something to aim for

Cronch wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Heck a Slaanesh hellflayer chariot is longer on just the blades.

GW's table-hogging designs should be a cautionary tale, not something to aim for

Well they do have a semi-major hold on the market. So if people are making boards and fighting games with them and doing well then Dystopian Wars has more than enough chance going for boards of the same size and such.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
We don't need some snarky joke about the aeroplane with top-mounted torpedo tubes right?

Nope

chaos0xomega wrote:
There are 8 major factions, but each one has a number of sub-factions. The Empire of the Blazing Sun still exists as a sub-faction within the Pan-Asia faction. You will still be able to collect and play an exclusively Japanese-only faction if you don't want to play Pan-Asians or whatever, but it might take a while for them to get enough releases to enable that to occur in a realistic and balanced manner.

Not really. I looked over the PDF for the Pan-Asian faction, and each of the member-states has its own area of responsibility within the larger governmental structure. The Japanese area of responsibility is the navy, while another nation has control of the air force (including aircraft carriers, and their support ships). Giving each of the member-states their own thematic naval squadrons would be counter to the way that the developers have organized the faction.

I realise this is difficult in the current climate but are there any reviews or battle reports to give a flavour of the game?

The official release date was two days ago, so it's likely still a bit early.

Eumerin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
There are 8 major factions, but each one has a number of sub-factions. The Empire of the Blazing Sun still exists as a sub-faction within the Pan-Asia faction. You will still be able to collect and play an exclusively Japanese-only faction if you don't want to play Pan-Asians or whatever, but it might take a while for them to get enough releases to enable that to occur in a realistic and balanced manner.

Not really. I looked over the PDF for the Pan-Asian faction, and each of the member-states has its own area of responsibility within the larger governmental structure. The Japanese area of responsibility is the navy, while another nation has control of the air force (including aircraft carriers, and their support ships). Giving each of the member-states their own thematic naval squadrons would be counter to the way that the developers have organized the faction.

The game designers have literally said what I posted, so regardless of what that fluff document may indicate it seems pretty likely that you will be able to field a pure subfaction - besides the fact that the Pan-Asians already have separate Japanese and Chinese Battelgroups announced as releasing later this year.

A direct quote from Stuart (Warcradle Designer) on facebook:

Let's look at the Empire, for example. The Empire Battlefleet let's you freely mix anything from the Empire faction together. But there are no benefits to do so other than the complete flexibility it offers. A Ning Jing Battlefleet, on the other hand, requires the Flagship to be Ning Jing class and the other units to all be non-Aerial and have the Chinese and Empire traits. In this way there is also a bonus to your Battlefleet you can unlock for having your choices more themed.

I bought the starter on a bit of a whim (I’m hoping my brother will play it with me), and it just arrived this morning. It’s really rather good quality, even down to the box.

It's...still not in stock in any of the local (by which I mean national) stores.
Soon may the modelman come...

Are Polish retailers refusing to stock it because Warcradle made Poland a Russian satellite in the new edition?

Polish retailers probably can't stock it because EU customs officials haven't found the button in their new software that clears goods for transit yet.

Maybe, i did consider if I should get it seeing as it's coming from a hostile country, but the models just look so good.

The more I look at the Warcradle minis the more I find myself appreciating the late Spartan-era sculpts (which at the time I found to be kinda meh, but they've taken on a new charm for me). So far the only new minis I've seen that I think I actually like are the Chinese resin prototypes, so I guess I'll wait until they release and see what they look like in plastic or whatever before I decide to jump in. Otherwise most of the rest of the minis feel like they've lost some of the charm of their previous iterations.

Mechanically, on the other hand, it looks like Warcradle made some big improvements on the game - still not my cup of tea but I could see myself playing it if I was in the mood for dice-chucker that I don't have to think too hard about.

I think some of the charm is that late age Spartan models were going for totally nuts science - huge centipede sea and land walkers and the like. Erog they were being really creative. I think WC are reigned in a little because they are having to go right back to the start with the core fleets. Though even then they've got a huge whale mind-control ship as one of the starter ships which looks awesome.

Plus I like that WC has beefed up the sizes. Everything has more room to it. You really see this comparing old to new ships - the old KoB Battleship has several turrets that almost have no deck before the edge of the ship. This makes the guns look big, but the hull look small; new battleships and even cruisers and the like have a lot more hull shape and space to them. The weapons are not much bigger, but are now settled onto the hull rather than dominating it.



The nice thing is this means not only will dreadnoughts be huge hunks of resin, but also that the smaller ships get to have more detail and more life to them.

They did also change the scale, the ships and planes are now more...real-life sized as opposed to 5x that of IRL ships.

And curiously I found the "pre-fall" Spartan sculpts completely devoid of charm, as they jumped the shark so completely they turned to designs silver era comics would find too goofy.

 Overread wrote:
I think some of the charm is that late age Spartan models were going for totally nuts science - huge centipede sea and land walkers and the like. Erog they were being really creative. I think WC are reigned in a little because they are having to go right back to the start with the core fleets. Though even then they've got a huge whale mind-control ship as one of the starter ships which looks awesome.

Those aren't even the minis I'm referring to. I simply think that these sculpts:








Have finer detail, nicer lines, better proportions, and are generally just more aesthetically pleasing than any of the designs that Warcradle has thus far previewed. Likewise they are way better than any of the sculpts that Spartan had in the original few waves of releases for the game when it released. If the first factions out of the gate had looked anything like this I might have actually given the game a chance. The initial few waves of releases IMO were chunky, misshapen, and bizarrely proportioned and ruined any potential buzz I might have otherwise had for the game, the same was true for Firestorm Armada and Uncharted Seas (though in Uncharteds case I eventually gave the game a chance with the launch of the Ralgard). I basically tuned out the game after that and never paid any amount of attention to it. It wasn't until after Spartan went belly-up and I was tasked with clearing out my LFGS inventory on ebay that I realized how awesome the minis for Dystopian (and Firestorm) were as Spartan's sculptors improved in skill and the concepts improved in quality.

Warcradles sculpts, even where they deviate from Spartans designs stylistically, thus far seem to be truer in proportion and aesthetic direction to the initial waves of Dystopian Wars rather than the later waves of Dystopian Wars IMO. Early Dystopian was, to me, chunky and squat, whereas later on the sculpts and designs became more streamlined and better balanced. Thus far everything shown by Warcradle is back to the chunky and squat look...

Warcradles Firestorm Armada concepts, on the other hand, look to be a *huge* improvement over Spartans and have more in common with late Firestorm than early Firestorm from the looks of things.

All those pics to me are middle-Spartan. After they hit their stride, before they started churning out flying chinese dragons and floating statues of liberty.

Also, those ottoman minarets? Whoever settled on them as a design feature should be forced to sit on the whole fleet repeatedly to realize how much of a PAIN in the posterior they were to glue and keep attached.
But that's just a personal peeve.

That indian group is amazing. Kinda sad I missed out on that one.

Maybe middle spartan is more appropriate then, I dunno. As someone who stopped basically paying attention to the company entirely around 2011/2012, other than to dip my toe briefly into Halo Fleet Battles, anything past that timeframe is "late" to me as I don't really know when things came out in relation to eachother anymore.

Those late?-Spartan sculpts are great.

Cronch wrote:
All those pics to me are middle-Spartan. After they hit their stride, before they started churning out flying chinese dragons and floating statues of liberty.

Also, those ottoman minarets? Whoever settled on them as a design feature should be forced to sit on the whole fleet repeatedly to realize how much of a PAIN in the posterior they were to glue and keep attached.
But that's just a personal peeve.

I will not hear another ill word about the Ottoman fleet! It is AWESOME in every way!

Except for those damn minarets of course

I live a few miles down the road from the citadel in Cairo and the first time I saw it from the highway my thought was, "cool it's an DW Ottoman ship!"

I loved the ottoman fleet and really wished I would have picked it up.

I feel really sorry for the designer(s) working for Spartan come the end - there was such fantastic talent there in their designs. Say what you will, Spartan put out a massive amount of creative product.

Some of those older models are pretty damn sweet, to be sure. I do like that Ottoman fleet.

New blog post with a look at the plastic Chinese battlefleet for the Empire:

https://blog.warcradle.com/blog/2021/warcradle-studios-diary-40

Pretty cool to have Antarctica, Russia and China as the first 3 factions.

Wow, that is a model that sells a game.