Incoming Dystopian Wars...

Dystopian Wars is my new flame, a game that excites and enthrals me.  For anyone who isn't aware, Dystopian Wars is a tabletop miniatures game set in a dystopian and steam punk past.  What I love about the game is the excitement, theme and story that rises from the game play.  Seeing great behemoth ships traverse the seas, giant airships hove into view and myriad fighters and dive bombers struggle for aerial supremacy is a pleasure.  The broadsides, torpedo salvos, laser fire, bombs, mines, submersibles, giant robots and other technological marvels all seamlessly weave together through a tight ruleset to make a gloriously enjoyable game.

Spartan Games have been expanding and releasing stuff at an astonishing pace, and from rumour the rest of 2013 and 2014 is going to be even more amazing.

At the moment I collect the Covenant of Antarctica, and there are plenty of posts here that show my fleet as it stands.  But I've also been particularly excited (as silly and nationalistic is it might sound) to see that Spartan have released a fleet of ships for the Aussies.  The models look nice, and I have a box waiting here for Fathers' Day to roll around (which means I must get to painting the rest of my Covenant minis pretty quick smart).

The staunch Aussie fleet, replete with little Crocodile boarding submarines...

Some of the other recently released fleets look fantastic, the Ottomans, and the Chinese look particularly amazing.

The Chinese fleet also includes a support box with floating towers that can create a great wall style shield effect...

This monstrous Ottoman model is a walking airfield.  Oh - and you can remove the top and it can sail the waters too...

It's also been interesting to watch Spartan change their approach to packaging, they have expanded their line of boxed sets immensely, where every faction once had a single naval and ground boxed set, they now, they now have a variety for every theatre (ground, naval and air).  I have been impressed with the way they have decided to make sure that the boxes include enough models for maximum strength squadrons, rather than minimum or some other number.  When you get a box - you get enough to field full squadrons of those models.

One of the announced boxed sets is an expansion for the Covenant air arm - including an amazing flying saucer like behemoth - the model is about 12cm from side to side!  Looks amazing!

That giant saucer really is giant...

In the works is also a 2.0 rules book, and from the rumours I've read online I'm again impressed.  According to Spartan it will pull together much of the stuff from the fleet booklets and scenario books as well as the core rules.  In addition it seems they are planning on publishing a hard cover book, with a free PDF also available - free.  The supplanting of one version with another is always something that irritated me about some other rule sets, but the opportunity to upgrade the rules via a free PDF is a fantastic thing, kudos to Spartan for choosing this route.

All in all I am really excited about the direction this game is taking, there are some new developments thematically/story wise scheduled for next year, and Spartan are also working a novel, which should be fun.  I for one can't wait!  Now if I could only fit in more games...

Cheers,

Giles.