Warcradle Studios has announced they are working on a new edition of their naval wargame, Dystopian Wars. This week's blog post went into what the design team aims to achieve with this upcoming edition, whilst retaining what makes Dystopian Wars unique.

Dystopian Wars // Warcradle Studios

Lead Games Designer James M. Hewitt highlighted the aims of the team...

"Our aim with the new edition was to make Dystopian Wars quicker and more intuitive to play. The current edition has grown massively since its release so it’s no surprise that some areas of the game have become somewhat complex. The current edition did a great job of depicting ship-on-ship combat. Still, as the range of miniatures has expanded, countless new gameplay elements have been added through special rules and supplements.

Now, with the advantage of the clean slate of a new edition, we’ve been able to fold those elements into the core rules. We’ve also taken the opportunity to streamline things, combining similar rules and removing redundancy wherever possible."

This sounds like a great direction for the game. Dystopian Wars has quite the pedigree, but making it quicker and more intuitive is going to be a massive plus for newcomers diving into the game and veterans wanting to play more games throughout a weekend.

James continued...

“During testing and development of this latest edition, we’ve found that players who are familiar with the game and know their fleets can get through a round of a 1000-point game in about twenty minutes. That’s an important difference from the current edition, and we think it’s going to be incredibly exciting - especially for the competitive play community, who will appreciate the number of games they can get through in a weekend!

But most importantly: it still feels like Dystopian Wars. We want to be very clear about that, because we know a lot of people might worry that we’ve over-simplified things. Fear not: that was the last thing we wanted to do.

The overall shape of the game will be immediately familiar to existing players. Instead, our focus has been on making things more intuitive and quicker to resolve. There’s just as much crunchy, cinematic action, and plenty of granular choices to make, both in force selection and during play.

All in all, the response from existing players has been that it feels like a faster, fresher version of the game they know and love.”

It's good to know that the crunch is still there for those that want it, whilst the basic mechanics of the game are being refreshed to make it more approachable. It's one of the elements of Armoured Clash that has been so refreshing. They managed to get across the feel of massive armies clashing on the battlefield, but with a set of mechanics that made sense almost immediately when you sat down to learn to play.

Korean Hwanung Class - Concept Art // Dystopian Wars

If you're an existing collector, have no fear. Every miniature from the range will be compatible with the new edition of the game and there will be grand new miniatures coming out for the Greeks, Australians, Koreans (see above) and the Spanish, to name just a few.

Some key changes to gameplay mechanics are also in the works to solve the issue of a first turn sinking for your opponent. Attack resolution and damage systems are being overhauled, so you'll have to make tough, meaningful decisions as to what you can do with a limited number of activations per turn. As James says...

"...This gives the game a more consistent pace. You’re less likely to see models removed from play in the first round, or the victor being decided before the fifth.

We’ve also taken a look at some of the things that might have been a bit overpowered (or underpowered). You’ll struggle to find any “auto-include” units in this new edition, and we hope that players will be encouraged to play around with different fleet compositions to uncover new synergies and strategies."

The team also explained that you'll still be using a lot of the same Action Dice, Critical Damage Dice and Measuring Tools as you currently do but some templates will no longer be in the game (Blast and Torrent) and the Victory & Valour deck is being updated.

Greeks - Work In Progress Renders // Warcradle Studios

The game will also now share the same Token Sheet as Armoured Clash, plus a supplementary sheet designed for Dystopian Wars. A solid way to make sure that you don't get swamped by tokens taking up shelves in your wargaming collection.

James M. Hewitt closed out by saying...

"Overall, this new edition of Dystopian Wars has been an opportunity for us to apply the lessons we’ve learned from years of developing the previous edition. Also, anyone who’s played Armoured Clash will recognise a few new elements that have been applied in new ways - as seen with the updated rules for using Victory & Valour cards.

We’ve seen plenty of reviews praising the Armoured Clash rulebook for its layout and ease of use, and you’ll see more of the same in Dystopian Wars. We’ve also put a lot of thought into how ORBATs are presented and used. We hope the rules documentation will blend into the background when you play. We want you to be able to spend more time directly engaging with your opponent across the table, and less time checking rules."

This all sounds like Dystopian Wars is going in the right direction and all of the miniatures that they have produced for the various factions are going to find a home within the new edition. There is a LOT for you to pick up to create interesting and diverse factions in Dystopian Wars right now and this feels like just the tip of the iceberg for what Warcradle has planned.

What do you think about the news?

Disclosure: OnTableTop and its companies are part of the group of companies owned and operated by Wayland Games Ltd since 12/10/2020