Blog Post: A Brief History Of Dystopian Wars (Part 3 is now up!)

[Ruckdog]

Hello all! The recent announcements about DW have got me all nostalgic. I've started a series over on the blog talking about the history of the game. Part 1 is up for your reading pleasure!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2020/08/15/dystopian-wars-a-brief-history-part-1/

[Covertwalrus]

 Excellent review of Spartan and Dystopian Wars so far - Looking forward to the next installment.

 My own involvement with Spartan started with watching closely as Uncharted Seas hit the shelves; It was only an observation at a distance. as I was no longer in our largest city and the distributors for the company were at the time mainly interested in where they were based rather than the rest of the country. But by the time DW rolled out, they had moved from there to a provincial city closer to me, so I actually got to see items on shelves and became fascinated.

[Easy E]

Man, I always loved those French flying battleship models but never picked any up when I could.....   

[Ruckdog]

The second part of my brief(ish) history of DW has been posted up on the MBS blog!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2020/08/21/dystopian-wars-a-brief-history-part-2/

Man, I always loved those French flying battleship models but never picked any up when I could.....   

I feel that way about now about so many models in the range!

[Covertwalrus]

 Again, a very good summation.

 Interesting you should make that observation about the blister packs: the first FSA ships I ever saw were in blisters at about this time when as you say DW and AC  had moved to boxes. This made it a problem with importers in my country; boxes being bulkier were far more expensive to import than blister packs.

 Was this also about the time that photos of a 6mm Wierd World War Two game was demo'ed at one of the British conventions? I seem to recall a photo of a board with full squadrons of Maus supertanks and E-series tanks versus allied Bloodhound heavy armoured cars and a massive carrier vehicle capable of moving four Shermans at once across sea and land. It did seem that Spartan prefered land -based games to their combined forces with naval bias games at the time. . . . .

[Ruckdog]

 Again, a very good summation.

 Interesting you should make that observation about the blister packs: the first FSA ships I ever saw were in blisters at about this time when as you say DW and AC  had moved to boxes. This made it a problem with importers in my country; boxes being bulkier were far more expensive to import than blister packs.

International distribution is always a challenge, it seems. The US seems to have been lucky in that regard, possibly because of the close relationship Spartan forged with The War Store (sadly now defunct as well).

Was this also about the time that photos of a 6mm Wierd World War Two game was demo'ed at one of the British conventions? I seem to recall a photo of a board with full squadrons of Maus supertanks and E-series tanks versus allied Bloodhound heavy armoured cars and a massive carrier vehicle capable of moving four Shermans at once across sea and land. It did seem that Spartan prefered land -based games to their combined forces with naval bias games at the time. . . . .

I believe you are thinking of Spartan's Project Gotterdammerung. That was previewed a couple of years after the events in Part 2, at Salute 2016:



From the outside looking in, it's hard to say for sure what Spartan's bias was, if any. My own view is that Spartan recognized they had a unique product with DW in that the system allowed players to seamlessly combine land, sea, and air aspects of the game on a single table. They also recognized that the land side of that triad was not selling as well, and made a full-court press in 2013 to improve its popularity.

[Covertwalrus]

I believe you are thinking of Spartan's Project Gotterdammerung.

 Yes, that is the very one! I was a bit off on the timing of it's appearance then.
 Interesting that there are multiple manufacturers of Wierd WW2 in 25mm and above, a couple in 15mm, but onely one ( GHQ) in 6mm/1;285th or so. Spartan moight hav ebeen onto a winner there. . . or maybe mass-scale WW2 gamers aren't all into "SF" gaming, the latter which seems unlikely.

International distribution is always a challenge, it seems. The US seems to have been lucky in that regard,

 Agreed. As did Australia as well, seeing as they got those rushed but complete box sets releases of the Republic of Egypt just before the end.

My own view is that Spartan recognized they had a unique product with DW in that the system allowed players to seamlessly combine land, sea, and air aspects of the game on a single table. They also recognized that the land side of that triad was not selling as well, and made a full-court press in 2013 to improve its popularity.

 I could not agree more; The robot release was clearly aimed to link the game's facets together even *more* so than before,  but I think Armoured Clash and the changes to movement for land vehicles madeno sense and in facyt is the main stumbling block for most of the players in our group; Having the 90 degree turns on a vehicle like a Brunel Mobile airfield for one is a step too far for even a Wellsian SF miniatures game. If we ever take up the land forces again locally, I think we will be using the 2.5 rules even if they make vehicles a lot weaker weapons wise against aircraft and ships.

[Ruckdog]

Part 3 has been posted!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2020/08/29/a-brief-history-of-dystopian-wars-part-3/

[Easy E]

It seemed Spartan was trying to go the GW route of having various scales all connected to one shared background, they could of had squad v squad skirmish with Legion, mass battle with Empires, and their core company sized with Dystopian Wars.  Those Dreadbots seem like an attempt to make an Adeptus Titanicus grab.  All they needed was a D-wars Sports game and a fighter combat game to make a perfect match!

All in all, that is a good strategy but also trying to do the same with Firestorm Armada and Halo was just a stretch too far for a company of its size.  They tried to go too big, too early. 

Honestly, if you look at the survival rates of new businesses; they had a good run.  Something like 95% close in the first 5 years.