Dystopian Wars - Invaders on the Beach

On Saturday at Gnomecon, here in sunny Savannah, Mike and I put on an Invaders versus Earth Dystopian Wars participation game. We used two boxes of Invaders (roughly 1800 points) versus four 600-point Earth forces (2400 points). The earthlings were made up of French and British naval forces and Prussian and Japanese land forces.

The British force was about to surrender, having been surrounded, when the alarms sounded - whatever had taken out Moon Base Alpha a week prior was now here! The Invaders must be stopped! The four forces, with a common enemy, turned their guns on the monstrous walkers and flying machines.

Our layout. That's Ian, the Prussian commander, in red. I took command of the French, Mike helmed the Brits and James commanded the Japanese. I also made him the overall Earth Force commander - he'd select units to be activated. Mark and Brian commanded the Venusian and Martian forces, respectively.

The Earth forces were sandwiched between the two Invader armies.

The naval side.

And the land.

Things begin poorly for the Prussians. From the lower left, that's Mike, Mark, Ian, Brian's arm in the black shirt and James' arm in the white shirt.

Having faced them before, we knew how nasty the Predators were, the Magenta and Tribals combined to kill one quickly.

The Terrors and Scarab unleash some whoop-ass on my Magenta.

Dive Bombers make a run at my Cherbourg for a crit and engine damage.

Back on the other side of the table, the Japanese medium tanks blast a Predator out of the sky.

Turn two begins; Martian Terrrors open up on the Kagoshima.

The British carrier makes some noise, killing a Terror and heavily damaging a Sentinel.

The damned Predators get some revenge for the Venusians.

A bit more revenge was on the menu. The Scarab double-crits my Magenta and sinks it.

My Cherbourg takes a whack at the Scarab while the Terrors blast away at it.

Our replacement Martian player (Steve perhaps?)  moves the Martian Sentinels forward and smacks the Ryuo.

My "MOMENT OF THE MATCH." The Almas score a crit on the Venusian Scarab! Three Corrosion markers! HUZZAH! Never underestimate the little guys.

The lone Green Sentinel stalks the British Carrier. She's in big trouble,

This pretty well sums it up.

A similar story unfolds on the other side of the board.

The Chi Ris go bananas and destroy another Predator.

 The last Martian Sentinel stomps through the woods and finishes off the nav-locked Kagoshima.

All earthling big vessels are destroyed except the wounded hover squid. The Metzger, the Magenta, the Kagoshima, the Illustrious... We called the game there through four turns.

We had killed three Terrors, four Predators and two Sentinels. We'd also seriously damaged one Scarab. A beating if there ever was one.

What a terrific game! The result was never in question - the Invaders were going to win - we wanted to see how the meat-sacks would perform. The answer is "not so well!" I think for a competitive game, the human force needs double the points of the Invaders. This wasn't supposed to be a competitive game - it was a fun multi-player convention demo game and we all enjoyed ourselves immensely. For a four-turn big game of DW, we got through pretty quickly - under four hours which was shocking. After turn 1 we started with double activations - one per table-side (naval and land) which kept everyone involved and burned clock. I spent a lot of time GMing because many of the players had never played DW before. I think we generated a lot of DW interest and we got a LOT of positive comments from onlookers.

Thank you to all of our players for making it a success!