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I'm looking to try out Dystopian Wars with a few others locally, we're interested in the miniatures, but have no real idea how the game plays with exception of the battle reports we've read.
Is there any form of a trial rule set to test out the basic game play?

Unfortunately, there are no trial rules per se, although if you go to Spartan's downloads page, you can find the Fast play sheet, along with all the tokens and templates you need::

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads

Now, this sheet is designed to be a handy reference during a game, but you should be able to get a feel for how the game flows from it. The other info you will need are the unit cards, which you can get from this thread on the SG forums:

http://forum.spartangames.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=4361.0

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot! You should also check out Episode 70 of the D6 Generation; they did a very detailed review of the game that should help explain the rules to you.

Awesome, thanks for the information.
I hope we get it close enough to get a good feel for the rules.

Thanks again!

If something doesn't make sense as well, you can drop a question in here, and we can help you out until you figure out whether or not you like the game.

We're going to try a quick proxy game this Sunday, likely just a few cruisers and frigates to keep it simple.

I'm trying to understand the basics here.
1. If I recall all hits are on 4+ with 6s counting as doubles with a reroll. But "small" vessels are hit on 5s?

2. When firing against a target do you fire against a specific target or a formation? IE if I'm shooting at a formation of three frigates do I pick a specific frigate as my target? I'm guessing a specific target

3. When firing do I fire weapons separately against a target or pool them together? I think this is my basis for my linking concern. So if I have two turrets with 5 dice each do I roll 5 against the DR of a ship and resolve and then roll the other 5 dice?

3.5 If I'm correct in example 3 I'm guessing "linking" is the whole process of taking the 5 dice from turret 1 and half the dice from turret 2 and rolling them together? So 7 dice in one attack?

Thanks so much guys!

1. By larger ships, yes, if they have the Small Target rule. Elusive Target grants this against all attacks.

2. You can fire at one target, or fire various weapon systems at various targets, or split fire between several targets.

3. You can do this, or you can add half the value of the second turret to the first (rounding down, total of 7).

3.5. Yes, like this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
2. Actually, I'm going to expand on this.

When you activate a ship, you can fire it's weapons in a number of ways.

a) Fire individual weapons at one target.

b) Link fire. Primaries can link fire with other primaries, secondaries with other secondaries, broadsides with broadsides, (you get the idea).

c) You can split fire off one or linked weapons between two targets.

Bear in mind that you can fire different weapons at different targets without halving the dice.

Awesome, thanks!

But just to confirm. When firing at a target the only way I get a larger single pool of dice is by linking right?

IE if I have 2x Turrets that can fire on a single target. They each have 6 dice. I could either roll 6 dice twice and compare to the target's stats (seperately) or I could link and roll a single pool of 9 dice right?

Also, the larger ship would have the "small target" rule or the little ship would have the "small target" rule?

Thanks

Your linking example is correct. The only other wrinkle is that if you are linking with an odd number of dice, you round down (7 becomes 3, 5 becomes 2, etc). As for the Small Target rule, the target would have to have it for it to be in effect, not the firing model

htj wrote:1. By larger ships, yes, if they have the Small Target rule. Elusive Target grants this against all attacks.

This one can use a teensy more explaining as well. Small Target affects fire from Capital Class vessels(most medium and larger vessels) while Elusive Target affects fire from Small vessels. So because of this, a small number of vessels, like the medium bombers and tanks, still hit a Small, Elusive Target on 4s.

The trial game went pretty well, we had to make up a few things here and there as we went, but it was fun!

One last question as now I'm waiting for rules to arrive.

What radius do ships that are in a formation need to remain to each other? I'm assuming a group of 3 cruisers need to stay within a certain distance of each other right?

Hey, command distance is 6" to any other ship in the squadron, which means squadrons can spread out pretty far if they want, but knocking out the 'middle ship' in a spread out squadron of three can make one of the others go out of command the next turn. Also, a lot of times people will group up in AA/CC bubbles for each squadron to protect from rockets/flyers and torpedoes.

CPTPromotable wrote:Hey, command distance is 6" to any other ship in the squadron, which means squadrons can spread out pretty far if they want, but knocking out the 'middle ship' in a spread out squadron of three can make one of the others go out of command the next turn. Also, a lot of times people will group up in AA/CC bubbles for each squadron to protect from rockets/flyers and torpedoes.

Which, in this case, means being within 4" of each other. Imagine you have three cruisers, in line abreast formation (that is, they are sitting next to each other, all pointing in the same direction). If one of the two outside crusers is attacked, the other two ships can link their AA/CC bubbles as long as they are within 4" of it. So, if the ship on the opposite side of the formation is too far away, it won't be able to contriubte to the defense of the attacked ship.