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!

StarDust Ground at Gnomecon

Well, Gnomecon is wrapped up for another year. I guess it was a success - there were lots of attendees, everyone was having fun and my family and I had a blast!

Friday evening I demo'ed StarDust Ground to the gaming public at large and I think it was a hit. We played through two full games featuring the Red Guard and Dogs and didn't wrap up until midnight -
roughly 6 hours of dakkadakka goodness and some very memorable moments. My only complaint was that they put miniatures wargames way off in the annex and I got NO walk-by traffic at all. The positive to that was that we had a lot of space to ourselves and were able to holler, hoot and make a ruckus without having to worry about offending anyone.

My table.

The setup. The Red Guard would enter from the left, the Dogs from the right. They'd be fighting over the two yellow objectives. Dogs reinforcements would enter from the near edge road, Red Guards from the far edge road.

Ziggy commanded the Red Guard, Mike and Patrick took the Dogs.

The first (very dramatic) shot of the game. A Brawler takes a long range shot at the Red Guard Vulture troop carrier and knocks out an engine causing it to crash land. Two of the stands it was carrying perish. The Dogs are ecstatic, the Red Guard, not so much.

The forces start to settle in around the objectives.

Predator walkers enter from reserve, hit their jump jets and attack the Horseman squadron. Their attacks were ineffective and the tanks managed to evade.

As they were plotting, Patrick remarked to Mike... the assault on the objective in the ruins began in earnest.

The Red Guard rocket tanks pummel Dog infantry while the Seer VTOL smacks the Guard's turret. The Guard did have a second turret dropped in on the road beefing up their AT capability a bit. As a GM, I felt bad about the shit positioning of the turret to begin with and graciously allowed a second.

The turret on the road immobilizes a Brawler with a missile and fires its heavy machinegun at the Big Dog and his squad as they dashed across the road to the ruin. The machinegun missed all four of its shots. On the plus side for the Red Guard, the Brawlers' shots were equally crap

The Dogs hunker down as the Red Guard try to figure out how to root them out.

A turn later, the Dogs had control of both objectives at the end of the turn and won the battle! Congratulations to Mike and Patrick, and my condolences to Ziggy and his dice rolling. Zig's fortune was poor all game - his turrets had the worst trouble hitting anything and losing the VTOL right out of the gates was real punch in the gut.

Zig had drill in the AM, so he left and I took command of the Greens for the next game. I quickly concocted a scenario - the Dogs would have to get out of the town they just captured while being ambushed by the Red Guard.

We left the terrain alone. The Dogs set up in a box and had to exit as much as possible by turn 8. The Red Guard formed a 24" bubble around their enemy.

The tanks hammer my machinegun squad on the hill to the lower right. My walker heads around the right flank and the hover tanks zip around the left flank, looking for tank side armor.

Stampy get his rage on and tears into an Infantry squad in the woods.

Patrick and Mike try to solve the "Stampy Equation." Their tanks turn to blast the hover tanks but only score a single hit, immobilizing one.

Pressed for time, the tanks move quickly towards my board edge. I was doing a great job of slowing down infantry but the tanks and walkers were just killing me.

The Seer immobilizes one of my hover tanks which had been hanging out on the lake pounding enemy infantry. An immobilized hover vehicle on the water becomes a submarine. Sadness.

My flamethrower gets a nice shot off on a squad coming up the road. The stench of burnt fur fills the air. The squad in the ruined house had been kept still all game by my sniper and the rocket tank. I think it had 10 pin markers on it at one point.

My Horsemen finally get wiped out in an assault.

A melee erupts as Big Dog decides to mix it up with Earth's finest.

Shockingly, the Red Guard hold their ground and kick some ass.

And Big Dog is forced to retreat! Huzzah!

But during turn eight, the Dogs moved their three tanks and three walkers off the board. I had stopped the infantry cold, but the vehicles got away.

Another very enjoyable game! Thanks and congratulations again to Patrick and Mike! Not bad for a couple of first-timers.

I was hampered by a lack of reliable anti-tank weaponry but did OK, all things considered. The attack VTOL is vicious and I like it a lot - it is simply dominating if it isn't challenged, like air power should be. I need to pick up some MBTs for the Red Guard to even thing out a bit, then their light grav tanks won't have to do all the heavy lifting.

Next up... Saturday's games - Dystopian Wars and Star Fleet Battles.

Gnomecon -1

Tomorrow I'm heading downtown for Gnomecon! I've been busy this week making handouts, game material and fliers for StarDust Ground. I think I have most of my ducks in a row. I've taken the day off tomorrow so I can organize my two tubs of stuff - one for SDG Friday and one for Dystopian Wars Saturday.

I've signed back up on Twitter, primarily to publicize updates to StarDust and StarDust Ground - the Twitter handle being @thestardustgame. I also have an email address for SD related questions - stardustgame@outlook.com.

I'm excited and really looking forward to GC this year, I'll do my best to fire off pics and updates during the con. Have a good weekend!

Dystopian Wars - Lunar Edition

Mike and I got together for a rather special game of Dystopian Wars on Sunday afternoon. We've both got Invader armies and needed a bit of experience with them before Gnomecon so we had a Venus (me) verus Mars (him) bash amidst a human settlement on the Moon! Two identical forces - something unheard of in DW - this would be interesting.

Our set-ups. I think the Martians underestimated the staying power of their Scarab and kept it way back, whereas I put mine front and center - 10 hull points, shields out the yinyang and repair -it's a centerpiece alright!

A Martian Sentinel moves from behind the hill. The Martians kept their Sentinels as separate squadrons - the Venusian commander paired his together in a single squadron where they could LINK fire their Energy Arcs together.

 Martian Predator bombers make a run at Sentinel ZZ99 with their Energy Arcs.

And wreck it in short order. GAH!

A cluster of Venusian dive bombers finish off a Martian Terror small walker.

AA from the Venusian Scarab finishes off a Predator while they make a bomb run and blast my other Sentinel with their Energy Arcs.

Green forces coalesce around the stranded Martian Sentinel. I'd already finished off the smaller Terrors.

The final picture from the action. Both Martian Sentinels are damaged severely. I had just lost my second one.

We wrapped up after four turns. Neither of us had achieved our goal but I was a bit closer having killed off all smalls and killing the two Sentinels during a conjectural next turn would have put me over 50%. Mike was a long way off from killing 70%, having nabbed only two Sentinels and one Terror.

Thoughts - the Invaders are AWESOME. They are ridiculously overpowered but a lot of fun and very characterful. Initially we had trouble damaging eachother's stuff but by turn two we were tearing stuff apart with relative ease. Invader weapons are tremendously deadly, particularly the Energy Arcs which link fire instead of combining. Death Rays are fun since they have Incendiary and Lethal, but don't get too nasty until Range Band 1 or 2.

It was a great lead-up battle to our Gnomecon participation game, this Saturday, which will feature the Invaders descending to Earth!