You sank my Battleship!!

Somewhat delayed but I have wrested control of the stand alone PC! It's a tea break for those of you that need to know!

So back to last Saturday night and a far more successful attempt at playing through a game of Dystopian Wars. This time we upgraded to a couple of islands and the use of tiny flyers i.e. playing the game as designed and even manged more than a couple of turns, in fact we managed a whole game in about 3 hours.

This time we upgraded to islands!!

Second proper game out with starter fleets and things flowed a lot better just remembering fleet and ship special rules as well as the different types of ordnance and their effects. We had quite a few more flyers on the table this time round which did mean regular reference to the rulebook but generally their was a lot less page turning and more dice rolling involved.

We still did a few bits wrong, obviously, and we weren't playing with the event cards, as neither of had got round to ordering any.

Having had my battle-ship viciously battered by flyers last game I was determined to get stuck in with her this time out and organised my deployment around her and my wish to engage the Tommy-Tanker as soon as possible. Stewart went for a split deployment so I gratefully piled in after his "Old Gal's" group with all haste.

One shot....

......one kill!!























Early doors the Brits had the marginal rub of the dice but it soon became clear that this was an engagement that was going to be decided by the sheer number of 6's that either of us could roll. Once again my Battle-ship came in for some long-range torpedo punishment from the Brit heavy rotors and it all felt a bit overly familiar as I pushed on.

I concentrated my fire on those Brit ships escorting the "Old Gal" until she nosed out to unleash herself. Fortunately it was more of a tizzy than a full-on tantrum and then it was time to power up the the Death Star / Heat Lance and have a poke back.

DR of 6 x2 = 12 dice minus 1 for 3 damage halved by Redoutable = an 11 dice shot.
Blizzard of sixes = 23 hits = 2 criticals one of which was a double 1 Magazine Explosion = KABOOM!!!
KABOOM!!! = game winning advantage!

Magnificent men in flying machines

After that we then went on to find out exactly how destructive wings of Tiny Flyer fighters can be against medium and heavy flyers. By then the dice had turned in my favour so the answer was VERY! Stewart did finish off by gleefully dispatching a good number of my destroyers by air-dropped mine but with the guts Death Star-ed out of his fleet it was a case of mopping up whilst his last stand bombers fled from the scene.

So, a highly enjoyable, though rather freakishly 6'd, game. We both learnt the true value of DW air-power and the need to play with your combined arms Admiral's hat on. Interestingly Spartan have just released air-group starter sets but to be honest I think you'd be missing out to play just air forces.

I have to admit I was somewhat sceptical when DW was mooted as a viable Land-Sea-Air game. Now I am far less so but would suggest that only grander all-day games could probably handle all three effectively though I'd be interested to see how easily it would shrink down, so to speak.

Interesting times!