Dystopian Wars: A Brief History (Part 2)

January 2014: Black Wolf Arrives!

There was but a single release for DW at the start of 2014, but it was an interesting one that hearkened back almost two years to 2012. As you may recall from part 1, Spartan released a one-off submarine model as something of a premium for those who ordered the revised rulebook from their website. The resulting model, the Black Wolf, had apparently proved sufficiently popular with the fan base and Spartan’s staff alike, for in January 2014 Spartan released a fully fledged mercenary faction around that model. The Black Wolf mercenary fleet continued Spartan’s trend of gradually increasing model complexity, while looking for ways to make minor factions such as this one feel unique. In this case, the set included two battlecruisers, three skimming cruisers, and of course the eponymous submarine model, along with small flyer tokens and minisub tokens.

February 2014 – More Mercenaries

February featured three major releases for DW. Spartan followed up the January release of the Black Wolf mercenaries with the release of the Honorable Eclipse Company in February. These mercenaries were perhaps the most unique released yet; there was an aerial battle group box, and then a support box that consisted of specialized terrain pieces and mini-sub tokens! This marked two new factions in as many months for DW.

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As a short aside, it was about this time that I noticed the mercenary factions and some of the minor nations had some…balance issues, shall we say. In an effort to make each of these new factions feel unique, Spartan tried to give them their own unique twists with unusual stat lines, special rules, and the like. This often times made their fleets flat-out better than than a comparable fleet drawn from one of the core nations, in my opinion. Granted, this advantage shifted once you started playing higher points values, as the various minor factions lacked the model diversity and access to dreadnoughts the larger factions had. However, given that most of the pick-up games I played stuck to smaller points values where minor nations could field a “pure” force, it was a bit of a problem still.

The third major released for February 2014 was an objectives set. This set included 8 objective tokens, along with a set of cards a special set of rules for how to use them in a game. I found this set to be fascinating; not only were the tokens very well done, I was excited to have a new wrinkle to use when making scenarios and playing games.

March 2014 – Tanks A Lot!

Spartan closed out the DW releases for the first quarter of 2014 with 10 box sets that supported the land side of the game and AC. These box sets were a further step along the path of consolidating SKUs, and did not contain any new sculpts. Each of the 7 core nations, along with the PLC, Canadians, and Belgium all got a box. The composition varied from nation to nation; some boxes had a familiar small/medium/large mix, while others were almost entirely medium models with a large centerpiece. Overall, while this was a nice boon for those looking to further expand their land forces, the lack of any new sculpts made this wave somewhat uninteresting in retrospect.

May 2014 – New Edition

There were no DW releases for April 2014, which was given over to new launches for FA. The next month, May, only had two DW releases, but they were very significant. This was the month that Spartan launched a full second edition of DW, which it referred to as DW 2.0. This was the first major rules revision for the game since the 1.1 rulebook came out in 2012, and as with that release, it was a bit overdue. The 1.1 revision to the rules was a big improvement, but far from perfect. After two more years of new factions and new models for existing factions with new special rules, the game was in need of some clean-up and some consolidation. There were two major product releases that supported the launch of the new edition; a stand-alone hardback rulebook, and the Operation Shadow Hunter two-player box set. The stand-alone book, called the Commodore Edition, had a lot of background material and artwork as well as stats for some of the new models that Spartan had in the works for the 7 core factions.

Operation Shadow Hunter was the first 2-player DW set, and only the second such set that Spartan had produced (after the Battle for Valhalla set that helped launch FA 2.0 in 2013). This box set contained a good-sized naval force for both the Americans and the Blazing Sun. Each force consisted of numerous brand-new models, including new battleship designs, the Boston submarine for the Americans, and a “Terror Ship” for the Blazing Sun. The set also included a secret base terrain piece, a set of punch-out cardboard islands/shoals, dice, a campaign mission book (that provided a crawl/walk/run-style intro to the game) and a condensed softcover version of the 2.0 rule book (called the Admiral Edition). Whew! There was a ton of stuff in this box, and it was great because it offered both new and existing DW players a reason to buy into it. The Admiral Edition of the rules, which cut out a lot of the background material and model stats that were in the Commodore Edition, was much handier at the table I found.

As for the content of the 2.0 rules and how they compare to the older edition, I covered that in some detail at the time here on this blog. However, to briefly summarize, 2.0 represented a major shift in the game mechanics. Some old mechanics, chiefly the boarding and tiny flyer rules, were completely changed. Some things like generators and special rules were modified or removed from the game. And all models in the game (yes, ALL 300+ of them at this point) had their statlines overhauled in order to be compatible with the new rules. On top of all of these changes, the DW 2.0 was a major improvement in terms of organization and clarity in keeping with Spartan’s trend of progressively improving rules writing. Overall, I rather liked the 2.0 version of the game quite a bit. I personally preferred it to the earlier editions, though I admit it was by no means a “perfect” game.

June 2014 – New Core Nation Models

June was a big month for the 7 core nations of DW. Each one got two new box sets, one for naval combat and one for ground combat. The naval box sets were stuffed full of new models, though they were not completely new; for example, the Prussian box set included a new fleet carrier, a new heavy battleship, and new cruisers, but still used the same corvettes and frigates as before. In general, these new models were more detailed and complex than the older models that had been released in 2011 and 2012; as such, the new naval boxes essentially represented a “re-launch” of DW that was similar to what FA received in 2013 and early 2014.

Interestingly, though, the two games took different approaches to model stats. Where as FA essentially made older ships legal “counts-as” proxies for the newer models, DW took the approach of keeping the ship designs separate. The old Mk 1 cruiser models from 2011, for example, became “light cruisers” instead. While this approach had the advantage of ensuring no model was left behind by the edition change, it also made some older models a bit noncompetitive in the context of the larger game.

The ground boxes that launched in June 2014 followed a similar pattern to the naval boxes, though in this case there were not any truly brand-new sculpts that were made for just this release. Instead, these were a re-packaging of the new models made for the various releases in 2013. Still, these boxes were an improvement over the mostly legacy models included in the tank boxes that were released as late as March 2014, and were a convenient way to get a hold of newer land models in one box.

July 2014: Aerial Boxes

After two solid months of new releases, July was a bit of a let-down. Spartan’s DW offerings for this month were aerial boxes for each of the core nations. However, this was merely a re-packaging of exiting models as a part of the continuing effort to phase out blister packaging, and were of little interest to most established players. For those new players that were drawn in by the 2.0 launch, they were a reasonable way to expand their force, however.

August 2014 – The Raj Sails Over the Horizon

This month brought another new faction to the game, this time an alliance faction for the Britannians, the Indian Raj. As a part of the Britannian empire, the Raj’s military hardware was described as being derived from their designs. This was reflected in the miniatures, which had a strong family resemblance to the Britannian range. Overall, this was a fun release with well-done miniatures, and included a naval and a land box set. It’s not clear how much this set appealed to the wider fanbase, but as usual the models were well-executed.

September 2014 – The Chinese Get an Update

The DW releases for this month were dominated by the Chinese Federation, which received no less than 5 different box sets. While most of these were re-packs, there were a number of new sculpts included among them. Foremost was a mechanical flying dragon, which became another classic DW model. The other standout from these boxes was the Chinese flying carrier, which was made to resemble ancient kite designs (according to the Spartan FB page). While the Chinese were not officially a core faction per se, this release definitely made them first among equals when it came to the non-core factions in terms of model variety and distinctiveness. Rounding out the releases for this month was the Admiral Edition of the 2.0 book (the softcover version previously only available in the Shadow Hunter starter set).

December 2014 – Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Get an Update

There were no DW releases for the months of October and November 2014, due to those months being given over to the launch of a retooled and much expanded Firestorm Planetfall, Spartan’s ground combat spin-off of Firestorm Armada. When we got to December, however, Spartan released two new box sets for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC), a naval battle group box and an armored land box. These boxes were 100% brand-new sculpts, and were better than many of the earlier PLC models that had come out barely a year earlier (the first PLC aerial box had been released at the end of 2013, if you will recall). Without a doubt, the models were quite nice, and added a lot of flexibility to the faction. The naval box was interesting in that all of the models in it were “skimming” vessels, much like many of the French models were. Overall, these releases moved the PLC up from the third string to the second string of minor factions, and brought it in line with the level of detail that the newer DW models exhibited. After a two-month release drought, though, a smaller faction such as the PLC seems like an odd choice for Spartan to close out 2014 with.