Dystopian Wars: The Tsukuyomi War Gyro Review

The final review in the Japanese fleet's 'Large' category is the Tsukuyomi Class War Gyro - an upscaled version of the Inari Scout Gyro (we'll look at that in the 'medium' review next week).
 The function of the Tsukuyomi? I really am not sure.
There is a large class flyer for each faction, and whilst they are all relatively cheap (the War Gyro clocks in at 150 points)  they all don't really do a lot as far as I am concerned..bear in mind we could grab a Sokotsu Battleship for 180 points...which really does contribute to the fleet.
The War Gyro can pump out some decent fire though, and does so with some style.
The Gyro possesses the "Maneouverable" MAR (Model Assigned Rule = USRs 40k Phil) allowing it to rotate 90 degrees when at an All Stop.
OK, so what does this mean? The Gyro's armaments are 2 x Main Turrets and a Broadside (both Port and Starboard ofc) of Incendiary Rockets. The turrets have a 270 degree arc.
These weapons have a cracking rate of fire in Range Band 3 (up to 24") and the plan therefore is:
- Fly obscured (above the clouds) for turns 1 and maybe 2 (depending who the opponent is), keeping the Gyro safe.
- At the end of the movement in Turn 2 (vs slower opponents, turn 1 v Prussians!) have the Gyro finish its movement facing side on to the enemy and come to an All Stop.
- Unleash hell. Launch a linked fire volley (9 AD from 6,3) from the 2 Turrets and a volley of 9 Rockets from the Broadside. 18 AD in RB3 is pretty damn good..

- Remain where you are and improve your shots as the enemy closes into RB2 where although the Rockets decrease to 7 shots, the Turrets now pump out 8 shots each or 12 linked.
- If you are still alive in Turn's 3/4 then come out of your All Stop and now fly over the foolishly close enemy and drop your Bombs on him. Although to be fair, with a move of just 7", you'll be lucky to fly over the enemy, so instead make good use of the turn capability and the 4" aft fixed channel of bombs..

If the enemy has closed this much and you are taking some serious fire, then forget your now useless guns and Rockets (as the enemy is too close for Rockets) and try and use the 7 AP (assault marines) on board to take part in a boarding action.

The Tsukuyomi has a DR/CR of 6/9 and 7 Hull Points which will keep it alive for quite some time, but it will most definitely draw fire. When playing my Inari squadron (the smaller versions of the War Gyro) they are pretty much the first thing that my opponents shoot at, knowing the damage they can cause.. so what do you think will happen when you place the War Gyro down, the big bad ass brother of the Inari?
Yeah, they will shoot you down man. Fast.

With a high critical rating, the Tsukuyomi will lose just one Hull Point at a time, slowly losing effectiveness. BUT, it will draw fire very nicely, protecting the rest of the fleet.

The final, best, use of the Tsukuyomi is to fly straight down the middle of the enemy and come down from the clouds firing the Broadsides on both sides of the Gyro. The Turrets will get use too, meaning all the weapon systems get to fire. Unfortunately, this situation is highly unlikely - even if you can get the Tsukuyomi in position, the enemy will more than likely understand what you are trying to do and simply keep the fleet huddled, ideally underneath the Tsukuyomi (althought suffering its bombs as a result) not coming under fire from the Rockets. The other alternative is that the enemy will simply gun you down or board you when you get close.

It does have a place in the fleet, as a fire magnet and as an offensive tool - a fire support unit that is great for setting itself up in RB3 and laying down fire. Kill off or cripple an enemy medium, decimate the smalls..and boom you'll see the enemy turrets pivot right at the Tsukuyomi.


It is a good airship, needs a shield for the points or needs to be 20 points cheaper. It does have a cracking offence though...the question does really remain though - is the War Gyro worth 2 Inari? I'm not convinced..I think I may prefer the 2 Inari.. Why? Well, we'll get to the Inari next week! 

Dystopian Wars - EotBS Review - Large Category part 1

The second part of the Empire of the Blazing Sun review (see here for first part: Massive Category) will focus on the ‘Large’ category.

Here, we have far more choice than in the Massive, which has just 2 Naval/Air units.

In ‘Large’, we’ll look at:

-          The Sokotsu Battleship

-          Hachiman Class Dreadnought

-          Ika Robot Squid (yup..cool as fuck!)

-          Tsukuyomi War Gyro

OK, so just double the choice..but what a selection! Huge robot submarine squids that rip ships apart with their tentacles to a floating gun ship with the surface covered by potent Naval beasts.

Each in turn though.. let’s start with the Sokotsu and see what she can do;

Dystopian Wars: EotBS Review

As part of my learning process for Dystopian Wars, I thought I would review some of the units available to my Naval fleet – the Empire of the Blazing Sun.

Whilst the game is playable, simultaneously, across Land, Sea and Air..in our local group, we are only playing Naval with some Air support.

I can break the Naval/Air fleets up into several size classes for review purposes:

- Small

- Medium

- Large

- Massive

Within  each, I will review the units that crop up in the category and try to get a feel for the better units in the game, whilst also highlighting how and why I reached such conclusions. The units that are available to the Empire, Naval and Air, are:

Massive:

Kiyohime Assault Carrier

Tenkei Class Sky Fortress

Large:

Tsukuyomi Class War Gyro

Hachiman Class Dreadnought

Sokotsu Class Battleship

Mechanical Ika

Medium:

Nakatsu Class Cruiser

Tanuki Class Gunship

Inari Scout Gyro

DFA-170 Bomber

Small:

Tetsubo Small Flyer

Uwatsu Class Frigate

Yurgi Class Destroyer

Fujin Class Corvette

Kitsune Class Escort

Tiny Flyer 

So where to start? Massive is the smallest, but I have no experience with either unit.. guess it’ll make it a paper/theory exercise and probably quite brief.. Massive it is then! Today, we’ll just cover massive class:

Samurai Boats Vs Teleporting Energy Beam Bastards

I am loving Dystopian Wars.

I got a game in last night versus Bringer and his British Fleet (now with added air support) and last Wednesday got another game in versus Mark - a local lad I've known and played since I started playing 40k at the start of 5th ed. Mark is what some of the guys refer to as a "Power Gamer"..so I think, jokingly, that'll be his handle on the blog.. or just "Power" maybe, PG for short.

Today, I'd jsut like to talk about Power and his frozen fleet..

PG plays the Covenant of Antarctica Fleet (or CoA for short) who are what he calls a 'finesse' fleet.

I didn't see too much of that finesse..

I just saw a blunt hammer.
Power ran a few small, fast corvettes some Cruisers sized ships, some Ptolemy Bombers and then a Dreadnought with an escort and CAP.
This is not a finesse army, but a death star.
It seems that even in Dystopian Wars you can create a deathstar...of sorts.

Perfect Sunday Morning?

So many rivets... ;) 

Chilled out Sunday morning for me today.

Painting my Dystopian Wars fleet with Das Boot on the TV. 

What a film, not watched it since I was in college about 18..whoa ten years since then! 

Forget how tense it is! Crushing feeling of dread inside that boat with all the U Boat crew.. 

Perfect for painting up my Naval Battle Group though, 

These guys now all have 3 colours on them, next to come is the airbrushed Devlan Mud wash over the lot..then highlighting. 

Going to have to get stuck into some of these rivets.. there a literally dozens per boat.. little touch of metal and then a little extra oil leak, perhaps some green in there too for the brass/bronze. 

It's so quick to get these guys up to speed.. there is a lot more detailing to do before these guys are finished, but it is a wonderful feeling to get the models painted up. 

Still have the Bombers and the Tiny Flyers to do.. hopefully have 2 more squadrons being delivered for the end of next week, some Inari Scout Gyro's and some Tanuki Gunships... both of which I am told are very good units.. I genuinely orded them cause I like the look of them! 

To complete my Empire of the Blazing Sun I want a HeliCarrier to launch Tiny Flyers off of, then a Dreadnought - a massive heavily armed naval unit and finally I'd really like the Ika Squid Sub/Robot.. then I have all the cool looking stuff in the army and job done. 

Airbrushing Dystopian Wars

HaHa! Got hold of Bringer's airbrush! Going to smash out my new Dystopian Wars Empire of the Blazing Sun/Japanese fleet now!!

We've got a games night planned tonight between Bringer, Kabalite and myself as the other half is away on her Hen Do. Geek on!

So what have we got..

This is what I want them to look like. Not a finished product by any means, but it has a base coat in all the colours I want as well as a magical Devlan Mud wash. I'm going to try and bring up the French Mirage Blue (Vallejo range) through at least 2 blends, well glazes more like.. but it'll look nice.

I am wondering if a sharply contrasting colour is required.. ? Thoughts appreciated. Red or White for the Empire flag.



So this is the airbrushed fleet with just FM Blue on it:

Dystopian Wars Game 1

Awesome.
It is a really cool game.
The core mechanics are relatively straight forward..if you've played a tabletop wargame before.. which we all have.
Bringer of Death and I got our first game in on Wednesday and it really is cool.
The 6'x4' looks really good with the two fleets on it, manouevring for position and range...
The first few turns took us a little while as we figured out what we were doing with our ships and which of them had the ability to take out others/were vulnerable to other stuff.

But lets start at the beginning:
- We decided to play an "open" game with 6 fixed turns.
- Size was "starter box" as these are balanced for points, this is even an option in the rulebook before you escalate up to higher point value like 1000points to 2500pts.

Deployment:
Pretty simple. Roll 2D6 and pick which board edge you want to deploy from.
Deployment zone is 8" on from that edge.
We went from short edge to short edge so we had the whole length of the 6' to play with.. I like to take a length lol
You take it in turns with the person that won the roll of to go first and deploy one squadron.
A squadron is essentially just a unit.
This is similar to how WFB used to be I think, and allows for some sort of strategic balance of forces but also for the occasional surprise deployment.

The game itself..
At the start of the turn you roll 2D6 and whoever wins MUST go first.
From here it is a system of alternative activations of units until both players are out of units.
For the first 2 turns, as I said, we just moved up the board trying to get our squadrons into the right position for a preemptive strike against the enemy battle group.
The term Alpha Strike is really quite apt in this game, except that it does not really exist. A crippling slavo fired before the enemy is able to react, then sweep in and finish off the pieces.
I play a Empier of the Blazing Sun (read: Japanese) fleet, it's principal feature other than manouevrability is that its principal weaponry is large quantities of rockets.
Rockets that work best in longer range bands (side note: Range bands are up to 8", 16", 24", 32" - making 32" the maximum theoretical range and you get a certain number of attack dice in each band.) having the greatest number of dice in that range.
I thought I could therefore Alpha Strike Bringer's British fleet, but he also has a long range weapons system.. the more traditional Naval weapon.. the Torpedo!

Taking the plunge: New game picked!

I've done it.. I've committed myself to a little meander around the oceans of Dystopian Wars.

In my last post I discussed my options for a new game (til Hawk Games unleash their awesomeness on us!..oh and that "6th ed" thing hits) and I've chosen to engage with some maritime bantering.

I've picked out the Empire of the Blazing (read: Rising) Sun and gone all native like Samurai William... Japan in a Victorian era, steampunk, alternative history earth. Bring it.

I took a visit to my local independent store (Inner Sanctum Collectibles, Cambridge) and grabbed a copy of the new Rulebook and picked up a Naval Battle Group for both Bringer of Death and myself.

Bringer went for Kingdom of Brittania, staying true and patriotic. I went with the Japs cause they have a giant, submersible, metal squid!

Got them home, finished marking my essays for the weekend and then unboxed those bad boys.

You Sunk My Battleship!!!

Hey guys as promised yesterday here's my hobby article. So its been a while so what have I been up to since my last post? Well other than worrying and revising for summer exams (I love Engineering... -.- lol) I've been dabbling in a bit of Dystopian Wars. Now I started briefly having a look at this game about 6 months ago but never really got into, however a new rulebook has just been released so I've decided to give it another go. Over this easter I've been playing a few games and painted a bit and to be honest I'm really enjoying it! To start with the models are gorgeous a real pleasure to paint! The game system has had a lot of its flaws fixed in the new incarnation of the rules, and to be honest I kinda missed rolling fistfuls of dice like I used to playing 40k.

So what's the game system itself? Well Dystopian Wars is a game where Air, Naval and Land elements can be used within your games, all at the same time if you really want. In the games I've played so far I've only played with the Naval and Air elements which have been really good fun. The tactics are quite important however pre-measuring is allowed at all times which definitely takes some getting used to. The power of the weapons within the game is dependent on which "range band" your target is in, in relation to your model. The Range bands are 8" wide and there are 4 of them with your ships getting more dice to roll against the enemy ship the nearer you get.

There is also and "exploding 6" mechanic within the game which adds a nice random element. A roll of a 6 in game

counts as 2 hits (where 4 or 5 is one) and also grants the roll of an additional dice, which means there is a possibility of rolling strings of 6's allowing ships which normally wouldn't have a chance against bigger ones the chance to damage them.

Dotted around this post are pics of my Prussian fleet, the Battleship, Frigates and Tiny Flyer tokens, the tiny fliers aren't the only airborne models there are full scale planes and for the prussians zeps and airships!

The Prussians are a very fast but fragile fleet with all of their firepower delivered up close in range band 1 as well as being great boarders.

Other forces are the FSA (Federated States of America) Which are mainly paddle steamers with huge guns and rockets.

The Empire of the Blazing Sun (Japanese) which again have rockets and are very durable.

The Kingdom of Britannia (I'll let you guys guess who this is ;) ) These guys are a mid ranged fleet with lots of Torpedoes and shield generators.

The Covenant of Antarctica these guys are super advanced tech wise with weaponised particle accelerators and energy turrets.

And finally the Republique of France again a close ranged fleet but with a definitely different playstyle to the Prussians.

If you want to know more about Dystopian Wars feel free to ask in the comments or check out Spartan Games' website and forum here

Stargazer out.