Dystopian Wars by Spartan Games...

Recently, I started playing this other tabletop game, by the chaps (and chapettes?) over at Spartan Games.



I'm not entirely convinced by some of the fluff...but in the same way I love the 40k-verse despite some glaring copying of reality, and some hilarious flaws if you choose to find them funny, I can get over issues with fluff in this system - and the disconnect where the fluff for something and the rules for it don't quite mesh...something 40k and WFB can both be accused of rather fairly too.

The system itself is fun, if you haven't tried it out.  The 'Exploding Dice' mechanism is hilariously fun, and has created interesting situations more than once in my games...and screwed me over more than once with Concussion Charges in particular.

Most of my games have been played using the Brittanian forces of my friend Death Korps of War, technically all - but in my last game I proxied them as Federated States of America units instead.  I like the American Rockets, and of course being able to field an Enterprise appeals to the Trekkie in me - why wouldn't it?!

Haha.

I've been recommended to try out the Blazing Sun, largely because of their enhanced mobility being vaguely reminiscent of the 40k armies I'm drawn towards (Eldar, Blood Angels...even my Orks are Speed Freeks!) although I find the fact that the mechanical squid has only a single turret slightly off-putting.  Any ship that doesn't give me an excuse to lift buckets of dice and let rip feels like a bit of a waste, since I need to maximise the odds of rolling 6s.

Interestingly, the game is kind of built as a skirmish game, like Rogue Trader and 2e 40k were, but the games I've played have all been fleet actions of 1000 points.  The game feels quicker than 40k, but our games haven't really been much faster, possibly because of learning and needing to check rules and such, possibly because the movement rules are so much stricter.  Probably a bit of both.

I haven't spent any money getting into the game proper yet - I have a BA army that will never get done if I buy a new army, whatever game it's for - and I picked up a rulebook free when Joe got himself a new copy that was v1.1 instead of the old one I now have. (Not that there's a massive overhaul.)

Have any of you played it, or know people who do? Is there anything ridiculously broken I've got to look out for and avoid?  Anyone debating it, I recommend trying it out, I've had loads of fun thus far.