Dystopian Wars: A Brief History (Part 2)

2013-2014 In Review

In retrospect, these two years remind me of the famous line from A Tale of Two Cities, about how it “was the best of times…it was the worst of times.” On the plus side, Spartan had managed to maintain a fairly regular release schedule through 2013. While that schedule fell off a bit in 2014, that year did see the launch of a much-improved second edition of the game, as well as a reasonable amount of new models for the core factions of the game. On the downside, a significant amount of the releases through 2013 and 2014 had limited appeal to the larger fanbase, especially those players who (like me) started the game with one of the 7 core factions and played mostly naval games with a dash of air support. A majority of the releases over this period were either for the ground combat side of the game or else were for various allied and mercenary factions that by they nature would have more limited appeal.

I’ve already talked a bit about my reservations with the various mercenary factions, but I would like to spend a bit more time here talking about the ground side of the game. Looking back on it now, it seems pretty clear to me that Spartan had decided that 2013 was the year that it was going to try and make a go of it for the land side of Dystopian Wars. The Brigade Boxes, the launch of Armored Clash, the new ground models, the Storm of Steel and Operation Sirocco campaigns…all of them seem now to have been parts of a larger effort to really sell the land game of DW. Unfortunately, it just didn’t seem to resonate well with the wider DW fanbase. Certainly, there were groups here and there that focused mainly (or entirely) on the ground side of DW, but from my experience and what I could see online, they were in the minority. Speculation over the reasons why this was the case is a bit beyond this post, but it seems pretty clear that Spartan’s armored warfare blitz of 2013 was ultimately unsuccessful.

The early adopters of the game, those players who were primarily naval players and whose primary faction was one of the first 5 released in 2011, probably had it the worst during this time period. Looking at the releases in 2013-2014 as a whole, one notes a severe lack of new content that would directly interest such players. After the expansion boxes of August 2013 came out, it wasn’t until the new fleet box sets launched alongside the release of DW 2.0 almost a year later in the second half of 2014 that these players got significant new content. Unfortunately for some, this roughly 12 month drought was enough to end their interest in the game entirely. This was the great paradox of this time period; on one hand, it was peak DW in terms of the sheer amount of new releases and other content that Spartan was pumping out for the game. On the other, it was during this time when the game lost a ton of momentum as gamers got bored of not getting any new releases for their faction that they could actually use (ie, air and naval units) and wandered off to greener pastures, often never to return. This loss of market share and gamer mind share seems to be reflected in the retail space as well, as during this time it seemed that many gaming stores stopped bringing in new stock and began to liquidate what stock they had. Interestingly, from what I saw first hand across a number of game stores most of the stock left stuck on store shelves were armored models for the land game.

Next Time: The Conclusion

By the time we get to the end of 2014, we were starting to see multiple-month gaps in releases as Spartan scrambled to support Dystopian Wars, Firestorm Armada, Firestorm Planetfall, and Dystopian Legions all at the same time. That problem was only going to get worse, but DW still had some good life left in it as we shall see in the third and final post in this series. Until next time!

Corrections: The original version of this post stated that the Italians launched their torpedo boats from their battleship; in fact, they are launched from the cruisers. The post as been corrected above.