Paolo Parente’s DUST 1947 Rules Available For Download [Updated]
July 6, 2016 by brennon
Over on the DUST website Download Link is now available for you to snap up the new rules for the re-named game, DUST 1947. Inside you're going to get rules for both the grid based and gridless versions of the game, scenarios, army lists and more...
UPDATE: Since the previous post last week the team have finalised and tweaked the rulebook so you now have an official final version uploaded on the link above & HERE , straight from the DUST 1947 website.
If you're a big DUST fan you'll want to go and re-download this to get the most up-to-date version of the book so you can start playing!
The book contains a bunch of background as well as rules so you get to take a look at the range of factions on offer, delve into rules explanations and also look towards a bunch of neat scenarios too.
We've not delved into this too deeply just yet but Lloyd is going to be burning through this at a rate of knots I reckon. This sounds like a good one stop show for people to get started with the game and use their existing models while you plan out where to go next.
There's plenty of neat looking stuff in here to get stuck into and I love the way they've done the diagrams for the book. Now we want to know your perspective on this - get stuck in and drop your thoughts below. Free is always good!
What do you think?
"...you get to take a look at the range of factions on offer, delve into rules explanations and also look towards a bunch of neat scenarios too"
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@buggeroff – here’s something new to have a read up on before gaming in July.
Anyone know yet about what cards work with these rules? I’ve not had time to read up on them YET.
The new rules will work just fine with the V2 cards for now. Some interesting tweaks. Pleased to see terrain has a more detailed section including advantages for giver ground. Snipers got interesting, ignoring both cover and infantry saves. The fixed damage resilience so it works just like an additional save. Heroes can no longer join and leave units but must stick with one unit for the whole game.
All in all it’s pretty positive but I’m not sure about the new LOS being drawn to and from squad leaders only for ‘freeform’ play (battlefield).
“All in all it’s pretty positive but I’m not sure about the new LOS being drawn to and from squad leaders only for ‘freeform’ play (battlefield).”
@graystoak – oh that sound weird.
God of Battles by the estemeemed Jake Thornton does this and it works very well.
Warfare had a similar mechanic. I need to try it out but I don’t think there was anything wrong with the way LOS worked in Battlefield. I can’t see the need to change it.
@redben, how so?
@lloyd
It makes things very quick and easy. In GoB’s case, you measure from leader to leader. So if the leader of unit X can see the leader of unit Y, then unit X can shoot at unit Y. All you have to do is check LoS between two models on the board and you’re done. The distance a unit moves is also taken from the leader and the distance between units is measured from leader to leader. There’s no discernible difference to how the game plays out in comparison to something like Warhammer Fantasy, but you lose all the micromanaging of models which you suddenly realise was completely unnecessary, and it takes half the time to play.
I don’t think it works well for grid less DUST. The grid less game doesn’t need to be simplified or made faster as that is the whole point of the grid version. v2 of the rules felt like you had 2 related games with the grid less being the more involved, meaty version. v3 makes it feel like the grid less version is really the same game for those who want to use terrain without a grid on it. I think that is a real shame.
I’d have said the same thing before trying it. Give it a go before passing judgement. It might be unnecessary, but it might work very well.
That’s Higher Ground, pesky auto correct!
downloading 😉
I think this guy has a turnover of editions faster than GW, wonder how long this one will last!
It will last just about half way through whatever contracts they have. They have broken every contract they have started. This is what happens when you deal with a company based in China. China will not follow international contract law and allows companies like this to do what ever they want and act in a fraudulent manner. Not saying that the previous issues don’t have two sides and fault there also but DUST Studios has been the one constant.
That’s the point, now we are self published and distributed. No more “partner” to make us do what we don’t want to. 🙂
@ghent99 Do you mean that first distributor that they now manufacture models for?
The point is not to point fingers. The point is to have fun with a good game. And we really hope you’re going to enjoy it for several years. 🙂
He’s actually forced to do this because of the joint production he did with former companies. Fantasy Flight Games has rights to Warfare. Battlefront has the Tactics. If he stayed with Battlefront I believe this would have been more popular game than it is now
Free untill you have to buy those updated unit cards in order to play smoothly
THIS. EXACTLY.
Cards will be free to download.
^ Actually, this exactly
@dustusa Cool, would you by any chance have a ball park time scale as to when they will come?
End of July.
Im still missing walker items from the KS, are you sending everything out right now or?
I’m still waiting to….
Same question, any word on when we are getting the rest of our KS stuff?
DS have said wave 3 has been shipped to BF, so given transit and BF sorting through it at the other end I’d say another couple of months before EU start receiving their stuff and a bit longer for the US as that is being done afterwards in reverse of wave 2.
Something to read this weekend!
The LOS rules are too abstract for me. Disappointing. Battlefield is still my preferred version of Dust. It is just another kick to the nethers for the few ks backers that still play Dust.
Lots of people already talking about how they will house rule grid-less play or just stick with the Battlefield rules from V2. The Dust community is an increasingly divided one it would seem.
A few players in my group tried the ‘off-the-grid’ rules this weekend while I was teaching someone how to play Bolt Action. I didn’t really like what I saw when it came to templates. As much as I didn’t like them in Battlefield, and in general, they worked well enough. I was surprised they just didn’t keep the templates most Dust Battlefield players already have. I also don’t like the last-man-standing squad leader rule which incredibly immersion breaking and unnecessary. Even Dust Warfare didn’t go that far with the way they used unit leaders. I also don’t like the idea of critical hits rules as I don’t think units last long enough on the table to warrant slow down that critical hits adds.
It wasn’t all bad, of course, I like the idea of snipers returning to the game. I also like the Aircraft saves. Unfortunately, most of the changes I saw could just be house ruled into Dust Battlefield which even without the rule changes I think is a superior tabletop game to the new “grid-less” Dust Tactics.
I wasn’t really joking when I told my gaming group that I don’t think I will show up much for Dust with those rules. I have mostly moved onto other games such as Bolt Action anyways. Which also has its own quirks and issues (and getting a new edition with template rules). Plus, I have always preferred Dust Warfare to anything that came out later anyways. If that is the game Dust Studios wants have, I say great for them, I’ll go play something else instead.
Hey Clash, not seen you around for a while. I think you summed it up pretty well. They’ve worked the bugs out of the special rules such as sniper and damage resilience but the LOS rules add an unnecessary level of abstraction. No real problem for Battlefield players who can carry on playing as they were with the updated special rules and cards (when they come out).
Like I mentioned, I have been playing in the Warlord Games bouncy house with Bolt Action and Black Powder for the last little bit. I agree with you, I have been making jokes about how snipers and aircraft were perfectly balanced in in the old rules that’s why you never saw them and I would field 3 teams of 13 Foxtrot as snipers instead and whole squadrons of non-helicopter aircraft. I really like the Damage Resilient change if only for the fact it was super hard to explain how it worked and always felt unfair with the Konigsluther couldn’t blow up a KV-47 in a single shot (yeah, I lost a game that way).
What I don’t get is changing the fundamental rules. I can’t say I ever really liked them, as a dyed-in-the-wool Dust Warfare fan, but I could never say they weren’t solid. I was figuring this updated version would have mostly just re-written the Battlefront rules in such a way to avoid copyright and mostly work on altering units that were universally considered unbalanced or to make upcoming units that would use them workable.
That seemed like just about the easiest thing to do. They already had a game engine that works well enough. It was just some of the units that could have been re-worked to be more appealing to players to put on the table. They seem to have fixed some of the units only to mess with the core game in some pretty baffling ways to me.
Also, while they got rid of reinforcements/recovery they kept reactivation (Get Moving you Bunch of Monkeys) and seemly expanded 3 action units with Move and Fire (if my gaming group is correct). I never did like the number of actions a unit can perform as a resource mechanic. Honestly, reactivations were always more of an issue to reinforcement/recovery to me as the former is always useful and the later usually means you have taken at least little bit of a beating to have destroyed units.
I really didn’t like the tone that playing on the grid is the way to play Dust Tactics (even if it is). I have never played it on the grid, I don’t intend to. I already had the fun of being the red-headed stepchild as a Dust Warfare player. I ain’t about to do as a “gridless” player too. Dust Studios isn’t Games Work Shop and this is the early 2000s. There are way too may great miniatures war games out there to put up with that.
Played it over the holidays and it works fine
@lee337 – I’m sure the rules work (now they’ve fixed the problems it caused with snipers etc), but the point is whether the majority of people like it. If not they’ll just house rule it or move onto other systems. With all the problems of the KS, making such a big change for questionable gain to a core mechanic and risk driving away the people who had been playing it is a very risky move. Time will tell whether this was a good idea or not.