Introduction

A full year after Spartan Games went under, the open Beta test for Warcradle Studio’s new version of Dystopian Wars has finally arrived! There has been a lot of discussion and rumor surrounding the changes that are coming to the game, and now we get a chance to see just what they are in detail. In this first post, my main goal is just to provide a summary of the changes made to the core rules. I’ll provide a few initial thoughts at the end of this post, but more detailed impressions and analysis will probably have to wait until I’ve gotten this new edition to the table a time or two. And, as this is a beta version, keep in mind that the rules are not set in stone so any of the specific rules I discuss below could change depending on the feedback Warcradle receives. Onwards!

Dice

The beta uses custom D6’s for attack/defense and critical hits. However, conversion tables are provided to all players to use standard D6s, so it’s not much of an issue. Attacking dice explode as they always have. Defending dice rolls no longer explode.

LOS

Models no longer have to be two sizes larger than an intervening model to see over it. Aerial units can now block line of sight to other aerial units.

Firing arcs are not measured from a weapon location, but rather any part of the firing model to any part of the target model. There do not appear to be provisions for shooting reductions due to partially blocked LOS.

Measuring

The game still uses inches, and premeasuring is allowed. Measurements are done from the closest points of two models

Range Bands

There are now only 3 range bands, each of which are 10”. They are called Point Blank (0-10”), Short (10-20”) and Long (20-30”).

Unit Stats

Units now have two states, Battle-Ready and Crippled. When Crippled, players flip their unit stat cards over to the Crippled side. Crippled models have suffered substantial damage and suffer stat reductions.

Armour and Critical are roughly equivalent to the old Damage and Critical ratings. Small models do not suffer critical hits and are immediately destroyed. Doubling the Damage Rating of a model results in 2 points of damage, while doubling the Critical value of a model results in a catastrophic explosion.

Hull indicates how many points of damage a model can take before going from Battle-Ready to Crippled, or from Crippled to Destroyed.

Fray is a value that roughly corresponds to the old AP ratings, and includes both assault marines and robotic appendages.

Defense is broken up into Aerial Defense and Submerged Defense, and functions in a similar way to AA and CC in previous versions.

Weapon Profiles

All arcs appear to be measured from the center of a model rather than from individual mounts. Weapon profiles have two numbers listed in each of the 3 range bands to indicate how many dice they generate. The first is the number of dice provided by just that weapon, while the second is in parenthesis indicates how many dice is provided when it supports another weapon in an attack (essentially supporting is like linking).

Conditions

There are now 4 conditions models can experience: Disorderd, Hazard, Stunned, and Obscured.

Disorderd seems to be a combination of previous Disordered rules and some of the critical effects such as Chaos & Disaray. Disorderd models can’t Ram, can’t contribute Support Weapons, and suffer -1 to their Fray and Speed values.

Stunned is a new effect, and prevents models from taking actions during the Operations Phase of a turn.

Hazard seems to be similar to the old Corrosion and Fire maker effects; if not repaired at the end of the turn it will result in the loss of hull.

Obscured now covers both aerial and submerged models, and makes them more difficult to hit.

Game Set-up

This seems pretty standard, though it is considerably simplified from previous editions. This section provides for scenario type, table size, and deployment.

Game Turn

Initiative is no longer a die roll. Instead, players draw the top card from their “Victory and Valour” deck and look at values in the top-left corners of the card. The player with the higher value can choose to activate first or allow their opponent to activate first.

Activations are largely similar to previous editions; players select a unit, and then move through Operations (generators, special operations, etc), Movement, Shooting, and Assault sub-phases.

As with 2.5 and earlier, there is also an End Phase where various game issues are resolved and the table is tidied up.

Victory and Valor cards appear to be the latest evolution of the older STAR and TAC card systems. Each V&V card has two ends; one end, Victory, allows players to “bank” victory points for completing the conditions listed on the card. The other end, Valor, gives an immediate effect (which is the way TAC/STAR cards mostly worked in the past). As with previous iterations of the system, the larger the game size the more cards players are permitted to have in their hands.

Carriers

Carrier models now launch a number of tokens equal to their carrier rating. These are no longer required to be in formation but can be placed separately. The tokens have taken the SRS acronym from Firestorm Armada, but its meaning has been changed to Short Ranged Squadron (vice Short Ranged Ships).The SRS is launched in the Operations phase of a carrier’s activation (ie, before the carrier moves), and are placed directly on a friendly or enemy model. The type of SRS is determined by where it is placed; SRS placed on an enemy model represent bombers, while those placed on friendly units represent CAP fighters. These SRS can only be placed on models within 15” of the carrier unit. SRS in base contact with an enemy model make an attack during the End Phase with a number of dice equal to twice the number of tokens in contact with the target. The target gets its own aerial defense, +1 from any friendly SRS tokens also in base contact. The effects of SRS attacks are resolved in the end phase after all other units on the table have activated. All SRS are removed from the table at the end of the turn.

Movement

Minimum move is now referred to as Drift, but is functionally the same. The one difference is that a model’s Drift value does not get subtracted from its Speed value like it did in 2.5 and earlier. Turning is now done using only a single template; there are not separate turning templates based on model size anymore. Some large models have to move forwards directly ahead before continuing to turn. There do not appear to be any restrictions on turning one direction, then turning the opposite way.

Collisions and ramming are present in the game. Ramming is only possible with specific units that have a Ramming weapon listed in their profile; not all units can ram anymore. Colliding with another model results in the Disordered Condition, and colliding with terrain results in Disorder plus a critical hit.

Shooting

Firing arcs have been simplified down to just 360 degrees or some combination of Fore, Aft, Port, and Starboard 90 degree arcs. Gone are Broadsides, Fixed Channels, and Offset arcs. LOS and range bands were as discussed previously. Support Weapons are the new version of linked attacks, and can be accomplished with weapons that have the same qualities from the same model or other models within the same unit. As before, all attacks must be declared before any dice are rolled.

After dice are rolled and hits are added up, the total is compared to the target’s Armor value. Hits equal or greater than this value cause one point of damage. Hits equal to or greater than double or more that value do two points of damage. There are no benefits from doing 3x, 4x, etc the target’s Armor value. In addition, the number of hits is also compared to the target’s critical value. If equal or greater than the Critical value, the model takes a critical hit as well. The number of results has been reduced from 11 (2D6) down to 6 (1D6). The intention is that the critical die will become the effect marker after being rolled. Note that the model takes both its regular damage and a Critical roll in this case. The critical results, except for Magazine Explosion, do not directly lead to additional damage being done to the model.

There seem to be far fewer negative modifiers for shooting now; for example, there is no equivalent negative modifier for the old “-1 For Shooting Primary Guns at RB 1” rule of previous editions.

Defense

Aerial and Submerged defenses can only be used against attacks from weapons with the corresponding attributes. Friendly models within 5” of the attacked model can contribute +1D6 to its defense; note that these models do not have to be from the same unit. The dice are rolled, and sort of work the same way that Heavy (Blue) dice did; a Light Counter negates  one hit, while a Heavy Counter negates 2 hits but does not explode. Once all defense dice are rolled, add up their values and subtract them from the  number of hits received.

Weapon Qualities

This section appears to be a roll-up of the previous weapon type and special ordnance section, as well as some of the applicable MARs. This makes it a one-stop shop for all things modifying what it is weapons will do to a target.

Assaults

Assault range is now 5”. There is no restriction about shooting and assaulting the same target in a given turn now. Also, it is now impossible for ground and surface units to assault aerial and submerged units. Aerial and submerged units can still assault surface/ground units, however. Both the model initiating the assault and the target roll a number of D6 equal to their Fray values. Friendly models on both sides can assist, adding +1 D6 to the assault pool. Additionally, friendly SRS in contact with the target model contribute +1 to the defending model’s pool. A defending model also gets its Aerial or Submerged defenses if the assault comes from a model with that attribute. From there, it’s a roll-off; both sides roll their dice pools, with the attacker looking for hits and the defender looking for counters. Once the counters are subtracted from the hits, there is a table to consult to determine the result. The worst that can happen to a model in an assault is two points of damage, a hazard condition, and a Critical Hit.

End Phase

In addition to SRS resolution, the End Phase also allows for Repairs, Clean-up, Check for Victory, and Maintenance. Repairs work quite a bit differently in 3.0. Players compile a pool of dice, one D6 for each critical effect. Players can remove one critical effect marker (of their choice) from the model for each counter that is rolled. Any remaining critical damage is then automatically removed by a “Jury-Rigged Repair” that removes the critical hit in exchange for an additional point of damage. This is compulsory; no model can carry critical effects from one turn to the next. Also note that none of the proceeding applies to Conditions; that occurs in the Clean Up phase. During Clean Up, all conditions except Hazard are removed from models. Players roll 1D6 for each hazard on a model. The Hazard is removed if a counter or blank result is rolled, but continues one hit, and the model suffers a point of damage for an explosive hit.

Victory is determined by achieving the objectives on the drawn encounter card for the game, plus any V&V cards that were played as Victory Cards during the game.

The Maintenance step is essentially the “deck mining” step for the V&V cards; players may discard any number of cards from their hands, which get re-drawn in subsequent initiative phases.

Unit Special Rules

These are essentially the replacements for MARs; the range and scope of their abilities is largely the same. Since weapon abilities were split out, it seems that most of the USRs deal with movement, repair roll modification, assault modifications, etc. Of note, there does not seem to be an analog for “Small Target” and “Elusive Target” in the  new USRs.

Squadrons

These work largely as before. One big difference is now Coherency; it is now 5” and models outside of coherency gain a Disordered Condition. If one or more models in a squadron are outside of coherency for more than one turn, the whole squadron takes Disordered tokens. The next big change is that if a model in a squadron is targeted with multiple attacks, and that model is destroyed before all the attacks are resolved, the remaining attacks are re-allocated against another model in the squadron.

Fleet Construction

There are a lot of details to be filled in. Various “Patrons” will be available, each of which will grant special abilities to a fleet. Specialist battlegroups will also be available to use, which are also said to have their own flavors and abilities. And finally, various outfitting cards can be used to place equipment onto models and customize them even further.

Generators

While there are several generators with similar names to the generators of previous editions, essentially the rules for all of them have changed significantly. In general, many seem to add bonuses and buffs to a model’s base statistic, rather than a completely different ability of its own.

Initial Thoughts

After my first read-through, I have to say these rules look pretty good! I’m very interested in giving them a go. Clearly, the rules are significantly simplified from previous editions of the game. In fact, the rules document weighs in at only 29 pages! Granted, a lot of that is due to the fact that the beta rules are a stripped-down document, without a lot of the diagrams, rules examples, artwork, and background that will inevitably get included in the final version. Even though this version of 3.0 has been stripped down a bit, I still get the impression that there will be enough “crunch” here to keep the game tactically interesting. The main way this will happen, I think, is in the different ways that various equipment cards, weapon upgrades, and Valor card can be combined to give advantages in key situations. Interestingly, this version of 3.0 seems to take a lot of nods from the DW Fleet Action rules, especially in how its carrier rules work and in the fact that only one turning template is used.

One impression that I get is that the advantage in DW 3.0 has shifted to offense. If you look at just about any major aspect of the game, such as shooting or assaulting, and the attacks for these are made using exploding dice, while the defense is made using what is essentially Heavy (Blue) dice. In addition to that built-in advantage, it seems a lot easier to make supported attacks than in previous editions. On the other side, a lot of tried and true defensive options, such as shields, target modifiers such as Small Target, and armor modifiers such as Retardant Armor or Ablative Armor are either watered down or removed from the game. I get the feeling that 3.0 is going to be quite deadly!

Conclusion

Well, that should do it for now! In future posts I hope to dig into some aspects of the game in a little more detail, such as the carrier mechanics. I also plan on posting a report and impressions once I get a chance to actually play these rules. Until next time…