I’ve finally managed to play my first game of the DW 3.0 Beta! My friend Matt, with whom I recently played through the Hurricane Season campaign with, and I met up last night to try our hand at War Cradle’s latest revision. The standard disclaimers apply; since this is a Beta test, any specific rules that I discuss below are subject to change before the game’s release, so keep that in mind. For those keeping score at home, we were playing with Version 0.03 of the Beta rules, dated 14 September 2018.

Our First Game

For our first foray into DW 3.0, Matt and I decided to focus on the core rules, and exercise as many of them as possible. As such, we played with decks of Victory & Valor (V&V) cards, and made sure we each had a carrier so that we could play around with the SRS rules a bit. About the only thing we did not use this time around were the Outfitting Cards, which means we didn’t have any Generators.

Forces

We went very basic with the forces we took for this mission; we played with mirrored forces, with us both taking a Battleship, a Carrier, a unit of three cruisers, and two units of four frigates each.  Essentially, we played what old DW hands would recognize as a “Starter Box Plus Carriers” game, with me taking the Prussian Imperium and Matt running a Union fleet. We took this route partly because the unit stats for the Beta are still very preliminary, as are the list building and force construction rules, but still wanted to make sure we had a good selection of units. All totaled, our lists ran to 1090 points per side.

Scenario and Setup

We played on a 4×4′ table, with 5 islands arranged in a rougly symmetrical pattern. We decided to use the Pitched Battle scenario, where we would score victory points from being in one of the two table quarters on our opponent’s side of the board as long as there were also no enemy units in that quarter. Deployment zones for this scenario consisted of an 8″ band on our respective table edges. Matt won the V&V draw-off, but decided to have me deploy first. Here is what our initial deployments looked like:

Game Hightligts

We immediately noticed that there was much less Turn 1 shooting than what we are used to from previous editions, thanks to the slightly shorter range bands and the way units are stated for less long-range shooting. All that really came of this turn is that I managed to claim a Union frigate.

Turn 2 was where our two forces first managed to really start coming to blows. Matt managed to put a critical hit  on my carrier that resulted in a Magazine Explosion, which managed to put a point of damage on all three of my cruisers and 4 of my frigates!

Turn 3 was the bloodiest of the game. We both lost a full squadron of frigates, our respective battleships took a lot of damage. Due to a miscalcluation on my part, Matt got an unopposed strike off on my battleship. I should have use my SRS to put a defensive screen on my BB before it moved with range of Matt’s carrier, but it didn’t occur to me until much too late!

While I was behind moving into Turn 4, I still managed to put up a good showing. My battleship was able to position itself to use all of its weapon systems, crippling two of Matt’s cruisers, sinking one of his frigates, and further damaging his battleship. I attempted to make a boarding assault as well, but the dice were not in my favor and it wound up being a draw with no effect on Matt’s flagship.

The last two games were a bit less dramatic. I managed to finish off Matt’s flagship and get my two remaining frigates into his deployment zone for victory point purposes, while Matt managed to sink my other frigates and finish off one of my cruisers. At the end of the game, our final victory point total was 9 for me and 11 for Matt. Victory for the Union!

Thoughts and Impressions

Generally, we had a good time with the game. It still had a lot of the same feel as previous versions of Dystopian Wars, but was definitely streamlined. It took us about 3 hours to set up the game and play all 6 turns, which wasn’t bad considering we were both doing a lot of rules referencing. In no particular order, here were some of our observations:

• Line of Sight: We might have been getting the rules wrong on this. The way we played it, any model can pretty much shoot at any other model at all times, just that sometimes you get a penalty of only hitting on Heavy and Exploding Hits (ie, hitting on 5s and 6s instead of 4s, 5s, and 6s). While the rules state that LOS can be completely blocked in a note on Pg 16, we weren’t clear on what would actually count as completely blocked LOS. Hence, the way we played it is that LOS was never completely blocked. It definitely made it easier to get weapons on target! However, I do hope that completely blocked LOS stays in the game with some clarifications on when it does and does not apply.
• Turning: Honestly, after having played a game I’m not sure what the point of using only a single turning template is. The inclusion of the Turning Limit and Lumbering special rules effectively bring us back to three templates, but having to move straight one or two inches between turns struck us as a bigger hassle than just having three templates.
• Carriers: The new carrier rules felt pretty good to us! Even though the carrier’s striking range is limited to 20″ we both felt like we were able to get off effective strikes during the game. It definitely seemed that it was more effective to use carriers for offense than defense, however, since SRS are twice as effective on offense than on defense. Actually, they are more than that, since defensive dice do not explode and attack dice do! However, one thing that occurred to me is that the new carrier rules might just give light/escort carriers a solid role  in the game. Given the fact that carriers have to place SRS before they move, I can see a situation where players use a fleet carrier to place large numbers of SRS on a target, while keeping back a smaller light carrier to activate last and place its SRS on a friendly ship that is in threat of air attack.
• Firing Arcs: Much easier to work with, as expected! We spent noticeably less time having to micromanage our movement to ensure we could get off our attacks, and it felt like it flowed pretty well. The wording surrounding where LOS is checked from is still a little unclear, but we were able to follow it well enough to get through the game.
• Broadside Weapons: The Fusillade special rule makes a lot of sense, as it really gives a great feel of lots of smaller weapons providing a shotgun-like effect. However, the number of dice they generate seemed a bit much! The broadsides on our battleships produced more dice at each range band than any single turret did. Overall though, they felt like they worked in a very thematic way, being more useful against small targets than the big turret guns were.
• Ship Survivability: This seems to have changed in subtle but interesting ways in DW 3.0;  it is generally easier to make attacks and put some damage on a target, but it seems more difficult to one-shot medium and large models. Our cruisers felt like they were much more difficult to destroy than they were before, which meant they were a lot more useful.
• Effectiveness While Damaged: The way that models degrade only once they are crippled meant that it seemed like our forces stayed combat effective much longer than they would in a normal game. It’s just not a big deal any more for a cruiser to take a  point or two of damage! Even when crippled, the stats for models allowed them to still perform reasonably powerful attacks.

Conclusion

So, it’s obviously impossible to draw any conclusions after only a single game. Our initial impression is that the game plays pretty well in its current state, and we are  looking forward to our next game. There are definitely some rough edges that need smoothing out and there are some holes in the rules that need filling (such as better detailed unit stats, more in-depth fleet building, etc), but it seems like DW 3.0 is shaping up to be a worthy successor to previous editions!