Dystopian Wars AAR - Prussians and Royal Australians

Saturday evening Zig and I put Dystopian Wars back on the tabletop. We went back to the sea and played with some (for us) rarely used fleets. I used Prussians and Zig whipped out the Aussies. We went to 1200 points which gave us both enough points to include enough fun gizmos.

My list:
1 Emperor BB + Shield Generator
1 Imperium Sky Fort (5 ftr, 1 recon)
3 Hussar gunship
3 Reiver cruiser
3 Arminus frigate
3 Stolz destroyer
2 Pflicht scout zeps
2 Speerwurf annoyers
2 x 5 fighters

Zig's Royal Aussies:
2 Cerberus BB
2 x 2 Monitors
2 Sub Tenders + 8 mini subs
4 frigates
3 Kestrel scout fliers
2 x 5 fighters

My orders were to destroy 70% of the enemy fleet. Zig had to destroy 50% of mine, including all smalls (an easy order to be sure).

Plenty of scenery to hide behind on the left, not as much on the right. Zig bottled up most of his stuff in the corner, with the sub tenders and mini subs to my left. I kept the frigates and small fliers off as flankers (to my right) and Zig had the Kestrels and two monitors off as flankers.

Early on, I tried out something new (for me). Both Pflichts spotted one of the sub tenders and the Hussars blasted away with indirect fire from their primaries. Much to my surprise, I smashed the thing with a crit, starting a fire! Normally, I don't use fleets with much in the way of "primary" class guns so I very rarely use indirect fire in DW. 

Take that, most recently painted model!

No points scored for either side in turn 1. On to 2!

One of the battleships rips into a Reiver, causing three fires.

The Speerwurfs arrive from their flank move, spear the commodore's battleship and dart back up into the clouds!

The frigates zip in and zap the battleship with their Tesla weapons, but don't do much damage. The monitors get some kind of excited about the new targets.

And boom goes the dynamite. A Tesla generator accounts for the crew of another frigate.

The Prussian light cruisers lace into the damaged Australian battleship. The Reivers are glass cannons of the highest order.

My destroyers add more misery to the painted sub tender and it sank shortly.

The Kestrels swoop in from the flank and smack one of my Pflichts. Classic double-crit including a mag-explosion. One shot, one kill. B T Dubs, if you play Brits or Aussies in DW, you really should use Ospreys/Kestrels in every game. They are ridiculously good.

So, turn 2 was done and things are really getting nasty. The score was AUS 110, PE 115.

My early moves of turn 3 including pulling SAS back to the carrier and re-tasking them as bombers. The carrier embarrasses itself with its shooting.

Australian frigates prove their worth, sinking the damaged cruiser.

The the second battleship double-crits another cruiser. Gah!

Things look up on the other side of the table as the destroyers crit one of the monitors, but the situation takes a crap when I try to board the other monitor. My APs are wiped out!

The Kestrels bomb my destroyers, killing one and shoot at my Pflicht with hold out a lot better than its deceased squad-mate.

Terror on the high seas! The Crocs assault my battleship and are repulsed. My battleship is left with a mere two APs though. Not exactly safe in these waters... The battleship would return fire with CC and other weapons shortly thereafter, killing two of the Crocs. Hey, points is points...

The Aussies snuck into the lead, 290 to 210 during turn 3. The sub-tenders (easy targets) were gone but I was having trouble everywhere else.

The Emperor continues its drive to prop up my right side and sinks the Australian commodore's vessel. Z played a "Prepare my Personal Transport" card, moving his commodore to the other battleship but handing me 60 extra points. The monitors go bananas, killing a Speerwurf with AA and double-critting my battleship with their massive front cannons. Lesson sort-of learned. Their side guns also finished off the last of my frigates.

Not pictured are my carrier killing one frigate while dive bombers kill another.

My Prussians had a great turn, snatching the lead - 575 to 420. On to turn five!

 

The Imperium lights up the enemy battleship with its lightning gun and fries the defenses of one of the frigates with its Tesla generator.

Dive bombers descend on the big Aussie and thump it hard.

The gunships, Pflicht and Kestrels continue to antagonize each other. Two Kestrels are gone, one Hussar hangs on by a thread. The monitors finally kill off the last of my destroyers. They actually rammed two of them to death, saving Her Majesty's ammunition.

No picture of the start of turn 6, but the score going in was Prussians 650 (killed a Kestrel) and Royal Australians 460 (killed a Stolz). Zig had killed all of my smalls but still needed to hit 50% (600 points). I was on a tough uphill climb to 840 points. Ugh.

Ziggy started out with a damn four-run homer as the monitors slid up to by battleship and captured it easily with their 12 boarding parties. Four-hundred points + strategic value, just like that. Crap.

I responded by using the Tesla generator and a Stoke the Engines! card to move my carrier 11 inches towards the Cerberus in an effort to capture it, trying to even out the score. I fouled up the assault, leaving two alive. I pressed the attack with a No Quarter card but only managed ONE lousy kill! A quick sabotage later caused a Sturginium Flare, enough to kill the battleship but denying me the 160-point capture bonus. Oh well.

 There was a bit of back and forth between the remaining fliers as the Kestrel tried to board my Pflicht, only to have its boarders wiped out. My Pflicht captured the Kestrel in turn for a nice 150 points, but the monitors quickly took it back. Game over.

Final scores.... Royal Australians 1175, Prussian Empire 892. A brutal minor victory for the Australians.

What a crazy game. We played for about 4.5 hours. SIX turns. It was an absolute classic. Back and forth lead changes, loads of double-crits, ridiculous dice rolls, lots of TAC cards played... I want to say that the Australians are plumb nasty. I really hate those monitors. I also think their battleships need to have Strategic Value on them. Even though the mini subs' assault failed, they paved the way for my battleship's capture later in the game because I wasn't paying attention.

What went wrong? For starters I didn't concentrate my fire enough to KILL things. I damaged a lot, but spent a lot of energy not killing Kestrels and monitors quickly enough. In six turns I killed NO monitors. They, in turn wiped my destoyers, killed a gunship, three frigates, two Speerwurfs and a Pflicht and captured my &*$^^*& battleship. Those seven models ran me ragged. I think perhaps my fleet was too spread out and I couldn't focus killing blows where they were required. Next time I won't forget the Schwerpunkt!

Great game Zig!