Thanks to Neal over at The War Store, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Hurricane Season, the new campaign supplement for Dystopian Wars. Along with this shiny new book comes several new naval models that allow players to ferry land units ashore; having made do with some home made landing craft before, I couldn’t resist picking up these “official” ones now that they are available.

Read on to see my first impressions!

The Book

Hurricane Season is designed to be a self-contained branching campaign, and as such provides all the necessary information and missions for running one. The supplement is broken down into several major sections. The first part describes in detail the background of a military campaign waged by the Prussian Empire and the Empire of the Blazing Sun against American and Britannian forces in the Caribbean, with the Covenant acting as a spoiler. This information is quite complete; there is even a description of the operational commanders on each side that describes their personalities and leadership style:

Also inlcuded in this section is a very detailed order of battle for each faction, down to the last frigate:

Later, the book goes on to describe the various scenarios of the campaign, each one depicting a different pivotal battle. While the fleet compositions for these battles are laid out very specifically, there is also an “alternate order of battle” option that allows players to select their forces with a little more freedom. Also included are maps showing terrain and deployment, as well as the victory conditions and the like:

Finally, the book also includes some new and revised rules. The new rules are mainly the special MARs that allow the landing craft to work; I’m still working my way through these, so I can’t comment on them at this point. The revised rules cover the Covenant; there have been some minor tweaks to a number of their models, and their entire range is presented here in its most up to date form. Also in this section are the rules for the 5 involved factions’ Small Flyers, which seems like a handy quick reference for these little guys:

The Models

Three different models have been released along side this supplement: The Small Landing Barge, the Medium Landing Platform, and the Large Landing Barge. The small barge and the medium platforms are packaged together, with 6 small barges and 3 platforms per blister. The large barge, though, is only one model.

The Large Landing Barge

This thing is BIG, as this comparison with a couple of dreadnoughts shows:

The model is intended to represent a generic landing craft that can be used by any faction; to this end, it comes with no less than 7 swappable bridges, each in line with the aesthetic design of one of the currently released or announced core factions. Yes, that’s right, there is a Russian bridge piece in the blister! Here is a pic showing the whole contents; you can find close-ups of each bridge piece in the gallery at the end of the article:

Medium Platforms & Small Landing Barges

The medium platform is smaller than the large barge, but still a pretty good sized model:

The small landing barges, on the other hand, are much smaller, though they are still a bit larger than a frigate or destroyer:

Impressions

Overall, this is a fantastic release that does much to advance both the setting and game play options of Dystopian Wars. The book is very well done, with enough detail to be a very interesting read and tons of new artwork to serve as eye candy. While it seems like it could be very prescriptive as far as the scenarios go, I do like that Spartan built in an “escape hatch” in the form of the alternate order of battles. The models are of the usual high quality I have come to expect from Spartan in terms of detail and casting quality. The medium landing platforms are a bit “meh,” in that they are a pretty basic design. The large and small landing barges, though, are simply awesome looking models. I am looking forward to getting much more in depth with both the models and the supplement this summer!

Here is a gallery that has a few more images of everything, including the stat cards for the landing craft: