Frozen Gamer AK: Game Review: DUST Warfare

About a month ago I started listening to the D6 Generation to help kill some down time while I traveled to Kenai, AK to go fishing. The trip takes about two and a half hours from Anchorage when there salmon are not running up river. When the fish are running; it can take up to four hours to get to Kenai due to the mad rush of anglers congesting our simple two lane “dirt” highway. Mix in a generous amount of wildlife, accidents, and road construction and you might as well be flying across the country.

While listening to D6 Generation, the hosts started talking about how much fun they had been having playing a new miniatures game called DUST Warfare, from Fantasy Flight Games. I had previously heard of DUST Tactics and initially thought they were talking about the same game. DUST Tactics is a Weird World War Two tile based board game that uses pre assembled, pre primed 28mm miniatures in game play.

When DUST Tactics first came out I thought the miniatures looked fantastic, but I did not like the 2D tiles used for the game. The one thing I love about miniature war gaming is the 3D elements of game play, so it is hard for me be buy into a war game that has beautiful 3D models, but uses 2D tiles or maps. For example, when Star Wars Miniatures came out I loved the models, but hated the 2D maps, so I built my own terrain for the game. I feel 3D terrain takes gaming to the next level, so if it is not an important part of a war game; I normally pass. Especially on a game that is half board game, half war game like DUST Tactics.

Needless to say, as I listened to D6 Generation, DUST Warfare sounded different from DUST Tactics. DUST Warfare is the miniature war game version of DUST Tactics. You still use the beautiful pre assembled, pre primed figures made for DUST Tactics, but the game has been upgraded to be a full blown miniature war game with proper terrain.

D6 Generation does a great job of giving honest reviews of game; they are not just a sounding board for the industry, so I respect their opinion. When they spoke about DUST Warfare’s elegant game play and simplicity my ear perked up because I want that things in a game.

I am a fan of history and of sci-fi/fantasy, and while I have found plenty of historical games I enjoy playing, I have had a hard time finding sci-fi/fantasy games I enjoy. I don’t particularly care for Warhammer or 40K and my adventures in the land of the Iron Kingdoms (Warmachine/Hordes) was a less than thrilling experience. Other less known sci-fi/fantasy game systems I have played are slow, clunky, unbelievable, broken or just poorly written. That leaves me with the option of writing my own rules, but this idea inevitably results in failure and a waste of a Sunday afternoon.

I am very attracted to the price of DUST Warfare. The rules cost approximately $30-$40 and you can pick up three to five pre assembled, pre primed figures for $12-$18 at the Warstore. Light and Medium walkers are like $20-$30 each. Compare that to GW or PP and it easy to see that DUST does break the bank like they do.

Due to the intriguing review by D6 Generation and the low start up cost I jumped in and have decided to give DUST Warfare a chance. Last Friday, I bought the DUST Warfare rules, at my FLGS, before I went down to Portland, OR for work. Over the weekend, I read and digested the rule book through a couple of times.

Background:

DUST Warfare takes place in Paolo Parente’s DUST Universe and is based off his Dust War comic books from Image Comics. Parente’s DUST Universe is an Alternate World War Two universe in which World War Two rages into 1947. During the course of the war German scientists discover alien technology in Antarctica and after successfully assassinating Hitler, new German leadership integrate the new technology into the German Warmachine. This allows the Germans to create new weapons including giant World War Two era battle mechs, advanced small arms, personal body armor, jump packs, jets, war gorillas and of course zombies. One important thing to remember is that the Germans are the Germans not Nazis in the the DUST Universe. Although, they seem to be just as evil looking and mean.

The relationship between the Soviets and Western Allies breaks down and the Germans take control of most of Europe. The Russians and Chinese Communists form a block know as the Sino Soviet Union (SSU) and bring many South American countries into their fold. The Soviets technologically lag behind, as they still employing tanks on the battlefield. The SSU does have limited walker capability and they employ a variety of transport and attack helicopters.

The Allies consist of the traditional Western Allies, but also included a contingency Brazil, which is threatened by communists from South America. The allies capture large amounts of the alien technology and incorporate it into their war efforts, thus giving them similar capabilities to the Germans.

The Germans have landed in Britain and North Africa while the communists have invaded Africa, Alaska, and Florida. Everyone is fighting over iceland. Meanwhile the Western Allies have sent troops to Antarctica to take control of more alien technology controlled by the Germans. Naturally, the Dust Universe is full of a cadre of heroes and villains that take center stage as World War Two rages on. Side Note: I started reading the comics a few nights ago and they are awesome!

The Rule Book:

Dust Warfare was writen by Andy Chambers, who previously worked on rules for Games Workshop. The Dust Warfare rule book is a hard back, full color rule set that is approximately 100 pages long. The rule book includes a Table of Contents, Introduction, Dust Universe Fluff, the rules for basic game play, complete army lists for the Germans and Allies, a war gear sections, missions section and index. The rule book is full of images of game play, well thought out diagrams and examples, fantastic graphic design and comic book quality art. It is easy to page through and appears to be made of very high quality material.

Rules Overview

The Dust Warfare rules are like nothing I have ever seen (although I have heard others say it is like Infinity). The game is broken into phases. During the phase players check for initialive, give orders, and activate units.

During the initiative phase players check to see who has initiative by rolling dice equal to the number of leaders you have. Whoever rolls the least hits win the initiative an goes first. During the command phase, the active player than assigns orders equal to the number of hits they rolled. The inactive player may not react to the active player. After player with the initiative has finished, the other player issues a number of order equal to the number of hit he rolled during the initiative phase. Again the inactive player may not react.

After the command phase the game moves into the action phase. During this phase your opponent has the ability to react to what you do. Players can react to being shot or having an enemy shot or move within 12 inches. This means players are always engaged in game play. I really like this aspect of the game and look forward to trying it out. Each unit gets two actions per turn. If a unit is suppressed, reacts, or activates during the command phase their actions are reduced by one.

The game comes with these black D6 that have cross hair on two sides and blanks of four sides. All die rolls succeed on either a roll of cross hairs (5+). Cover does not adjust what is needed to hit a target, but instead gives them a number of guaranteed saves. So if you hit my infantry four times and I am in hard cover I automatically save two of those hits. This simplicity is one of the reasons why the game does not require quick reference charts.

Here is a video from Fantasy Flight which does a great job of explaining the rules and game concepts.

The game also has a very unique mechanic for generating missions that are balanced and fair. Each player gets two points to put into the mission. Players take turns spending points to adjust mission conditions. This allows players to spend mission points in areas which favor their army and style of play or hamper their opponents. Example: I have a close assault army so I spend points to hamper visibility while my opponent spends a point to push our deployment zones back.

Army building is pretty straight forward as well. For every 150 points allotted for the game players get one platoon. Platoons are broken out into types. The platoon types determine what type of squads can be taken. The platoon always consists of a command squad or hero with the leader ability and a combination of one to four infantry squads. Squads consist of three to five infantry. The platoons are then supported by off board artillery assets, snipers, and vehicles/ mechs. I bought two armies to start, one German and Allied. Each side consisted of one platoon plus support.

Allied

Boss (Headquarters)

Gunners

Recon Boys
Tank Busters

Sniper Team Light Assault Walker - Wildfire

Germans
Kommandotrupp (Headquarters)
Battle Grenadiers
Laser Grenadiers
Gorillas
Heavy Recon Grenadiers
Medium Panzer Walker - Luther

Figures:

DUST miniature come pre-assembled and pre primed. Infantry and mechs are already mounted on their bases and each factions is primed a different color. They also have small decals on them. They are 28mm scale and made of mostly hard plastic. I say mostly had because you will occasionally run into a figure that has warped bits, like barrels. While is a drawback I have read that you can bended the warped pieces back into place using hot water or a heat gun.

Each squad or vehicle comes stored in plastic inside a beautifully designed box set. Inside of infantry boxes you get between three and five figures, depending on the squad size. While inside a vehicle box you get one vehicle with all the optional weapon systems. In DUST most vehicles have two or three variants and the box sets give you all the options to field the vehicle of your choice.

The Vehicles are large and as detailed as a GW or PP vehicle, but cost half the price and come pre assembled and pre primed. All bases had notches in their base which make determining arc of fire really easy. Because they are pre-primed you can start painting them as soon as you take them out of the box. The figures have very dynamic and heroic poses and are balanced on their bases in order to achieve maximum stability. Several blogs and videos I have watched recommend gluing some of the moving bits to the vehicles so the do inadvertently move during the game.

The miniatures can be used to play both DUST Tactics and DUST Warfare. A Con I have found is that the miniatures come with unit cards so you don't have to constantly reference the rule book. However, these unit cards are designed for DUST Tactics and don't fit perfectly with Dust Warfare. I have read that many people just take pen an update the cards, but this looks tacky. Also the card list the special abilities for the units, but do not spell out what the ability does, this means you have to reference the book during play which can be time consuming and annoying. I am not sure if Fantasy Flight has plans to issue updated card decks for DUST Warfare, but it should be something on their short list of things to do to support the game.

The Future of the Game:

This is a newer gamer and one concern I have is if I invest in the game with it be around next year? Fantasy Flight Games has DUST Warfare on a seasonal release schedule, which means new content, rules, campaigns and miniatures will be released each quarter. This last season saw the release of Operation Zverograd, which introduced the SSU. Next season we will see the release of Operation Hades and from what I can tell each faction will get some love in the form of new heroes, mechs, infantry and air support. The Operations also include new rules and missions. For example Zverograd had the rules for aircraft. Fantasy Flight plans on keeping with this season schedule to support the game. Rumor has it sometime next year another faction will likely be released which will likely be Japanese or Aliens.

I addition to supporting DUST Warfare, Fantasy Flight still supports DUST Tactics. In each Dust Tactics expansion there are additional models and terrain pieces which can be used in DUST Warfare. If things continue to go well for the game Fantasy Flight appears to be behind supporting it which means there is a good chance it wont be pulled from the market in a year.

Final Thoughts

I am pretty excited to get my miniatures and play a game of DUST Warfare. If the game plays anything like the reviews online say it does I will be more than please with my new hobby investment. If the game doesn't work out I am only out a relatively small amount of money when compare to other popular table top games. I personally have faith that this will not be the case. The only worry I have is that we are a relatively small gaming community and others might not be as excited as I am for a new game. Good thing I bought two armies.

DUST Warfare Resources

Beats of War Reviews DUST Warfare