What is Dystopian Wars?

A Brief Introduction

I'm going to be talking about this game a lot on this blog. I am aware this is quite a niche wargame so I thought it best to publish a brief summary so anyone finding this blog isn't totally lost. For those who already know about the game and the world, feel free to skip this one!


So what is Dystopian Wars?

The Britannian navy is rugged and dependable

Dystopian Wars is a miniature wargame initially produced by the now-defunct Spartan Games, and recently picked up by Warcradle Studios (more on this in later posts). It is set in the 1870s in an alternative history, where the Industrial Revolution happened under Cromwell. The discovery of a new element (Sturginium) and a vault of seemingly impossible technology in Antarctica accelerated technological development even further. What you have as a result is a steampunk universe where forces are made up of warships with high tech weaponry, robots, flying aircraft carriers and landships the size of houses. Also the British Prime Minister is Lord Palmerston kept alive by a robotic life-support chair. It is gloriously silly.

The world is at war, and divided into two major power blocs. The Imperial Bond contains the Prussian Empire, Republique of France and the Empire of the Blazing Sun, and their allies, while the Grand Coalition is composed of the Kingdom of Britannia, The Federated States of America, and the Russian Coalition, with their allies. Fighting everyone is the Covenant of Antarctica, along with a motley collection of mercenaries, pirates and other free nations.

Republique of France land forces advance supported by scout-ships

In terms of the game, it has rules and models for land, sea and air, although the naval game is the most commonly played. Spartan's commonly used "exploding dice" system, whereby every 6 rolled allows you to re-roll, gives even the smallest frigate the chance to destroy a mighty dreadnought, while also resulting in very explosively fast games.

The rules are available for free on Spartan's website (for now at least). http://www.spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads. If you're interested to get involved, the 2.0 rulebook is a bit of a mess formatting wise, but has complete and functional stats for every fleet. The 2.5 rulebook is better, and made some useful changes to the game, but Spartan unfortunately went bust before releasing final updated statistics balanced for 2.5 - what we have right now are placeholders alone.

Sleek, stylish but deadly - the League of Italian States are a unique looking fleet

If you want to find out more, I can heartily recommend the amazing Full Spectrum Dominance, who was very responsible for getting me involved in this game in the first place: http://fullsd.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Dystopian%20Wars. He also has some wonderful content on Infinity, Dropzone Commander and Dropfleet Commander, so do check it out! 

Here endeth the wall of text. Next up, lots of pictures of ships that I've actually painted!


All photos in this post are Spartan's studio photos - I claim no rights over them.