Tuesday, July 26, 2011

1st Game of Dystopian Wars

 The ocean battleground. 
The heroic Empire of the Blazing Sun on the right.  The evil Federated States of America on the left.  This was a 400pt recon game.
 
 Two fine squadrons of Empire ships.  A mighty Battleship and two cruisers.

 Two sneaky Federation blimps and one solitary heroic squadron of Empire tiny flyer fighters.

The final shame.  My Empire battleship was boarded by Marines from three Federation cruisers and taken as a prize.  

Last night I travelled to the Outpost North gaming club to participate in my first ever game of Dystopian Wars.  It was a simple 400 point recon game.  My opponent was Jason, a fine outstanding gentleman with excellent modeling and game tutorial skills.  The game lasted three turns.  To put it simply, I got SMASHED.  My whole fleet was sunk, except the battleship which was taken as a prize.  My Tiny Flyers were all shot down.  I did get a couple of campaign points for having a fully painted fleet.  YAY.  The Federals lost three frigates sunk, and one taken as a prize. (That only happened because Jason was gracious enough to tell me how to carry out that maneuver).

My thoughts on Dystopian Wars.  This is not an easy game to play.  You need to be aware of your ships capabilities.  When to link attack and defensive weapons, when not to link them.  Be aware of ranges.  Watch out for blimps.  They are nasty.  Tiny Flyers suck.  They are really complex to use, get shot down easily, and they don't do much damage.  Jason explained that they are better to use as a swarm.  Frigates are nasty little ships.  Fast, and they throw out a heap of firepower.  I really underrated the frigate but I now have a greater appreciation for them.  Boarding ships is nasty.  The number of marines in each ship is very important.  Stay away from ships with a lot of marines.  The battlefield gets ugly with a lot of counters next to damaged ships.  I really don't like that but its part of the game.  In summary, I really enjoyed myself.  I have to study the rulebook more.  Again, many thanks to Jason for his time.  I learnt a lot.  But will I remember it!  

12 comments:

Al said...

Nice looking kit, are the models expensive?

Paul said...

Three turns! Ouch. Can't win them all mate. Once you have the bits and pieces sorted you will kick arse.

Beccas said...

@Al. The models are reasonably priced. $50.00 will get you a starter pack of a Battleship, three cruisers, nine frigates, two heavy bombers and 10 tiny flyers. Then you can buy blisters for about $20.00 to add to your fleet. The models are outstanding because they have been digitally sculpted.

Big Al said...

Sounds good! I followed your link here from the Warlord forum and pleased I did. I think I'm going to get into this game.

Paul O'G said...

Good job mate - the models look a treat!

Captain Richard's miniature Civil War said...

Cool looking table...quite colorful

AdvanceOp said...

Hey mate, don't worry about getting smashed in your first game. I got smashed bar one frigate that fled off the table last night ands only won on VP's because I captured a cruiser. Remember too theres no official scenario's yet, just community stuff, so we are also "beta" testing :P

Anonymous said...

I like the counters and the way it looks. I generally hate miniature games for the arguments and the cheesy gameplay they cause so the more this looks like a boardgame the better....until an actual boardgame comes along that is cooler than this of course!

Aaron said...

Good to see your Blazing Sun ships in action all the same. And the table looks great. Not a bad start to the campaign; at least you picked up some campaign points for deploying a well painted fleet.

Monty said...

Impressive stuff, Paul!

Beccas said...

@ Monty. Set up a new game of Battlefield Academy mate.

Curt said...

Nice looking game. We too found the frigates to be nasty little buggers. We had a Brit carrier that was a complete brute and I agree, that boarding actions can be quite savage.