BADGA Con Tournament Part 1

At the start of June the local gaming group ran an inaugural convention which included events for various game systems but the main event for me was the Dystopian Wars 1 day-er. We played 3 rounds of 2 ½ hours each. In all there were 10 players representing a fair spread of nations including Prussia, India (x2), COA, France and more. As there were only 3 rounds not everyone got to play each other. Tournament Points were awarded for:

• Victory scoring double your opponents VP
• Victory (dictated by TAC cards)
• a draw (both players scored points)

Bonus points were scored for things like killing the commodore, and getting a magazine explosion.

At the end of the day players voted on the best painted fleet.

So to begin with I was planning on running a Khatanga/Tiksi based fleet then the Friday before the event I decided an RC/PLC mixed fleet would be the way to go. My thinking here was that I could maximise the 60% large mediums while maintaining some good firepower. This was slightly flawed logic in the end but it gave me a chance to road test some models I hadn’t played with previously.

My fleet ended up being:

1x Kostroma (Commodore) fleet carrier
1x Triglav assault carrier
1x Dazbog pocket battleship
2x Myshkin medium bombers
3x Bagiennik heavy frigates

The list was very light on mediums/smalls but I hoped the larges would do all the heavy lifting. The Myshkins were a bit of fun, drawing fire away from the main fleet while stratospheric and then making a late game attack run/boarding action. That was the plan, how did it go in action?

Battle 1 Prussia vs Russia

The Prussians were going to be tough. 3 assault carriers, 1 medium carrier, 2 heavy bombers, and a couple of small frigates to round out the group, along with fistfuls of SAW.

The Russians huddled together on the right side of the board the Prussians to the left. Early activation were all about spotter planes, luckily for the Russians the Prussians had a series of bad rolls and weren’t able to spot anything much at all.

Having said that the Triglav started taking damage more or less straight away.
SAW units moved up and started to engage each other. The sheer weight of numbers was in the Prussian favour, although the RC did have a few.

The heavy bombers start to move forward, one attacking the Triglav and speerschleudering it.

The Dazbog rounds the island and deals some damage to a bomber.

The Triglav is brought down and the Azov, with a bomber at its rear, takes a lot of damage very very quickly.

The Russian bombers, in the final turn of the game, bomb the only thing they can: a frigate. Yay.

The Azov is sunk. game over.

The game ended due to time, and despite the one-sidedness of the game it was a draw, as the Prussians hadn’t achieved their orders. It was a complete rout though and given more time the board would have been wiped clean of Russians I think.

In a few days time I’ll upload a separate post with the next two battles and a few points around how I thought the fleet went and what I’d do differently.

Until then I hope you enjoyed the report.

The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth will soon boast not just the Aerial box, but a Naval and an Armoured box as well.  Spartan have just posted a big write up of these fleets – so for anyone keen on the PLC – check it out!

http://www.spartangames.co.uk/polish-lithuanian-commonwealth

2014 – Once more into the… thing

Like the others I had left the blogging to Peter while enjoying my holidays and the Christmas period, good job and many thanks. Now I’m back at work I must escape the realities of the day to day grind and find somewhere I feel at home, welcome and happy… somewhere Dystopian!

2014 will hopefully be a big year for me game wise. Here are my hopes, dreams and aspirations for the year ahead.

Acquisitions

I have a fairly sizable Russian Naval Core now, not much more needs to be developed there however there are still some gaps that need to be covered:

Land Ho!

For Christmas I received a Russian Coalition Land Box. Previously I hadn’t been too fussed with that side of the game, however, seeing the minis and hearing good reports of the land game I quickly changed my mind. I quickly purchased some Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (mediums and smalls) to complement the RC or to use standalone. I still need to deepen my RC and buy some larger/massive units. So that’s number 1!

Air ho…

Or something. As a Russian player my air force is as follows: 2x Myshkin Bombers and 1x Tunguska. There is also a PLC Zamiec Carrier too, naturally. This needs to be developed somehow, probably with the PLC Aerial box, because blimps.

Emigrate…?

Lastly, I want a new nation, one that offers a different play style and set of abilities to the hard drinking, hard fighting Russians. I like the models for the mercenary factions. From the cool drone tenders of the black wolf, the giant gatling cannon of the Eclipse and so on but I am a traditionalist I guess, I want a nation so I can wave a flag and damn and blast everyone for being foreign. To that end I am mulling the following options:

• Chinese Federation – A floating forbidden city with energy shields and flame throwers, what’s not to love?

• Ottoman Empire – Minarets, minarets, minarets! Plus drop mines and storms

• Italian League – Mini boats are sweet. Plus columns on a ship is just fun

 

So those are my main options. Probably leaning more toward the Chinese or Italians at this stage, but could go anywhere really. I’d almost prefer a full nation over an alliance nation as that’d give more options but am undecided as to which of those I’d go for….

Painting

I have a lot of painting to do, well I say a lot it’s not as much as some (haha Giles!). But a lot of land forces a bunker and tower set, Tunguska and 3 Suvorov’s will still take a fair old time. Still yet to decide on a scheme, especially for the PLC flame tanks scream ‘paint me red’ but my Zamiec is blue so a blue theme it might be. Although reddish elements may appear on the flamers themselves I guess…

Terrain

I’ll leave proper terrain elements to the professionals but I am going to do a sea battle board at some stage this year, everyone needs a battle board.

Storage

 

My current storage ‘system’ would send most gamers into apoplectic fits of rage and/or stress induce panic attacks. Novgorod on Novgorod, Cruisers crushing each other and the TFTs… the poor TFTs… needless to say the madness must end. Some form of tackle box setup should suffice and replace the various post box and bag setup I have currently. But yes, this is something that must be done.

Play

I am hoping to get a lot more gaming in this year. Try out a few land games and a linked series of scenarios would also be awesome. The key thing is to get the minis on the table. The rest should take care of itself.

I, like Peter, have had very patchy form across all my previous fixtures. I need to tighten up my game. I’ll need to work out how to mitigate a couple of strong tactics from my usually COA playing brother and also worry about the Aussies, after a nightmare encounter with a couple of Victoria class gunboats – it was raining pieces of ablative armour… such a sad day…

So that’s it. Purchase, paint, play and pummel. Here is hoping for a dystopian 2014!

 

With Fire and Sword!

Just recently, a few of the more minor nations in the Dystopian Wars world have been expanded and updated. One of these is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a nation perilously situated between two of the mightiest nations on Earth, the Prussian Empire and the Russian Coalition.

The newest release in the PLC range, is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Air Cadre, a collection of fast, hard-hitting aerial units dripping with fiery death, including one of my absolute favourite models in the Dystopian Wars range, the Gryf Flame Blimp. It screams mad scientist steampunk vessel so hard, it has probably long since lost its voice…

At any rate, this article aims to have a quick look at my newly painted PLC Air Cadre, focusing on the models and possible uses of them. Oh, and how pretty they are of course!

Zamiec Sky Fortress

By far the largest model in the box, the Zamiec is not a new design like the other models. However, it does seem to hav ebeen the base upon which the others were designed, so it still fits in, and looks wonderful doing so.

I got to say, my first impression with pulling this out of the box was ‘Damn! This is way bigger than it looks in the pictures?!’. And it truly is one solid lump of resin! So, after a minor amount of assembly (it’s around 3 resin components and 10 small metal ‘drop-ons’), it got to sit at the back of the painting table watching as I developed my paint scheme… Which to begin with, was tested on…

The Gryf Flame Blimps

…my favourite model in the box! The moment I read about these on the Playtester thread, I just had to have some! I can’t think of a more awesome way to wage war than to fly into battle, waving your sword and screaming your war cry from the back of a giant, flame-hurling blimp!

And I must say, the models themselves do not disappoint! Although a little hard to see from the photo below, there is a very large flamethrower that runs nearly the entire length of the keel, buried amongst a twisted network of chemical tanks, fuel lines and metal plates.

And it even has a nice little wooden deck on top from which to launch your aerial assault aboard the now flaming wreck of your enemies vehicles!

The Grom Gunnery Blimp

But for those who are a little more ‘conservative’ in their approach to ‘How am I going to set my opponent on fire’, there is always the Grom Gunnery Blimp. Packing both a forward facing set of guns and a 360 turret, which thanks to having the Incendiary Rounds MAR, can deliver napalm out to quite a range, really letting the PLC reach and touch those models that try and avoid the Gryfs…

Szabla Interceptor

With all this wonderful, incendiary-filled blimps cruising around, I can see a few TFT-based commanders rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of swarming them with those annoyingly-effective tokens, but has the PLC got a surprise in store for them…

Meet the Szabla Interceptor, one of the most amazing anti-TFT model’s I’ve yet seen. Capable of keeping up with, and even overtaking some TFT’s, and armed with Sustained Fire AA, you can bet any enemy TFT squadron nearby is going to vanish very quickly. And that’s not even getting into the shenanigans I can see coming out of their Hit and Run MAR… I’ll let you guys use your imagination there.

Polish-Lithuanian Tiny Flyer Tokens

Last, but still quite impressive, are the PLC TFT’s. Being able to take Fighters, Recon Planes or Dive Bombers, they have an impressive bunch of Tiny Flyer Assigned Rules, which basically match up to their Russian brethren.

There is one variation I would like to discuss though, and that’s the swapping of Hard Shell (2) for Acrobatic Pilots on the Fighters. Now, let’s think about this.

On an attack run against an Aerial Model, on your last point of fuel or so, you lose half your number AND suffer an Abort… Curses! Your plan is foiled…

But wait! Acrobatic Pilots let’s you avoid a TFT death 1/3rd of the time! And it saved nearly all those planes (because you got lucky), who can now contribute to the attack again!

But what about that Abort…? Well, fuel and ammo be damned! We’re nearly out anyways! So trigger For Glory! and ignore that Abort too! Huzzah!

What was a failed attack that would have left you with 2-3 TFT’s on one fuel pointlessly wandering the board, turned into a possible 8-10AD attack that could damage or even cripple an enemy air asset! No auto-win button, but you never know when those crazy Polish pilots might pull off that game-changing attack…

And that’s about it for the PLC Air Cadre pack. A really nice set of new models, an impressive larger model thrown in (with some new and improved rules too!) and a bucket load of TFT’s just for added flavour.

I’m not going to do any sort of rating on these boxes, I was never any good at that sort of thing, so to close up, all I’m going to say is that I was highly impressed, and it was a pleasure painting these models. So much so, I’ve already opened my second box…

Well, that’s me for now, so Reese out! 😀