And now for the 4th and final installment of my detailed review of the new Dystopian Wars rules! First, I’ll take a look at Section D, and then I’ll close it out with my final thoughts on the rules after my first couple of read-throughs.

Section D

This section of the book is a bit more scatter-shot, as it collects up all the other aspects of the rules that didn’t quite fit in elsewhere, including what ammounts to modules for things like Infantry and Support aircraft. This is the longest section of the rules, but it doesn’t seem as long since its individual sub-sections are much more stand-alone than those of the previous sections. Section D includes the rules for MARs, Generators, Terrain (Basic and Advanced), Support Aircraft, Robots, Infantry, Combat Patrols, Model Classifications, National Commodore rules, Allies, and tips for  running multiplayer games.

MARs and Generators

The Model Assigned Rules and Generators sections will be familair to DW vets. There have been a few enhancements; first, the MARS for support aircraft are now integrated into the section instead of seperated. I think this is a good feature, as it makes it easier to have one section to go to for any MAR look-ups. These sections do bear some careful review; there are some brand-new MARs/Generators  in here, as well as some that have been tweaked slightly, and still others that have been re-named but otherwise due similar things to counterparts from the first edtion. One intersting change to the Generators section is that there is now a distinction between Internal and External generators. External generators are more vulnerable, allowing an oponent to focus fire on it and blast it to pieces! However, looking at the revised stat lines, this vulnerability is compensated by a lower cost.

Terrain

DW 2.0 includes a significantly overhauled terrain system. The Basic rules are fairly similar to the previous edition, though like with so many other aspects of the 2.0 rules there is now a lot more granularity and detail to them. There are now several more terrain size types, for example. Additionaly, terrain now grants “elevation bonuses” to models, which now means that there are definite advantages to holding the high ground now. The Advanced rules basically offer the option to include some intersting “minor” terrain types that look like they could add a lot of flavor to friendly games, such as trench networks and ship graveyards.

Support Aircraft

This, as far as I’m concerned, the the Big One, the single biggest change to the game introduced in Section D. First things first, there has been a change in terminology. Tiny Flyer Tokens have ceased to exist; instead, individual tokens are called Special Aircraft Wings (SAWs), and they are formed into Special Aircraft Squadrons (SASs). The next major change is that the fuel mechanic has been discarded entirely. Instead, the small D6 assoicated with the SAS trays that are now included in the new box sets are there to simply indicate the type of SAW making up the SAS, and how many SAWs the SAS started with.  As a result, SASs are now free to ove all the way up to its max movement distance without penalty. These distances remain the same from the TFT days, so the net result is that SASs will be significantly faster in 2.0.  SASs can also be upgraded now to include an Ace, which is a neat way to buff your SASs for a nominal points cost.

The way carriers operate have also been radically changed. There are no longer landing and re-launching rules. Instead, carriers can perform one of three actions on SASs if they are within 4″ of the carrier during the Command & Control segment of the carrier’s activation. These actions include restoring shot-down SAWs, up to the SAS’s original size (which is why the small D6s are important!), re-arming the squadron, or re-tasking the squadron (which changes the type of SAWs in the SAS).  Each of these actions has an assoicated “Carrier Point” cost associated with it, and a carrier can execute as many actions as it has points for. This total is equal to the carrier rating of the model, and is replenished each turn (though it can be negativley modified by damage).

All in all, the SAW/SAS rules strike me as a major improvement over the older TFT rules; between the deletion of the fuel mechanic, the streamlining of carrier operations, and the ability to replinish the size of squadrons, it looks like SAWs will be both easier to use and more effective than their predecessors.

The Rest

The Robot section is focused on the way these models conduct boarding actions. To be honest, I have not used robot models much in the past, so while the rules here seem pretty straight forward I can’t really say if they will be an imporvement or not. The Infantry rules have been significantly simplified from the previous edition, it seems; the two small D6 now annotate the HP and AP of the infantry base, and they now conform more to the base mechanics of the game. Compat Patrols refer to attached escorting tokens, either SASs that have been CAP’ed to a larger model or infantry escorts to land models. One interesting change I noticed is that an SAS can now automatically link AA with the parent model it is escorting, without needing a special MAR like in the prevoius edition. This now makes CAP much more useful, and I can easily envision a lot of models riding into battle with fighter escort now.

The model classification sub-section is an interesting set of specfic clarifications for each of the major model types in the game. This is where the details of how “oddities” such as burrowing, diving, and surface skiming models work. The final sections include a collection of expansion rules that were prevously found in the various campaing books, like National Commodore rules for the 7 core nations, Ally rules for making fleets with multiple allies, and the new objective tokens.

Overall, Section D is a mix of rules that are mostly the same with monir updates, brand new additions, and drasticly overhauled mechanics (in the case of the SASs). While it seems a bit more disjointed, the detailed table of contents, index, and good organization within the subsections themselvs will make referencing these rules fairly easy. Next time, I’ll give you my overall thougths on DW 2.o!