Taking down a Dreadnought

The Doom Boat! (FSA Dreadnought)

Ok, it's been a few weeks since my last post about Dystopian Wars, and my fleet has grown a bit since the last time. Since then, I've taken the time to purchase a Carrier (one, so I have more tiny fighters in the air keeping my opponent's tiny bombers away, and two for the access to the sweet, sweet Glacier Generator) and a blister of 6 more Escort/Frigate models.

So far, I've won one game (vs. the local Republique of France player) lost four games (once vs our local Prussian Empire player, and three times vs our local Federated States of America player) and had a tied called game (due to time) that could have gone either way (the same French Player I'd previously won against.) The Russians don't fit my preferred playstyle at all... Where I'd like to sit back and shoot you from a safe distance, the Russians are borderline suicidal in their rush to come to grips with the enemy, getting as close as they can as quickly as they can, where their guns can do the most damage. That said, I'm nothing if not flexible, so I'll take it as a personal goal to master playing as the Russians.

In two of the three games I lost to the FSA player, we played at 1000 points and he took the FSA Dreadnought, which I will henceforth and forevermore refer to as the "Doom Boat." The first of these games, the FSA player had impossibly good dice from his Battleships, and sank 1/3 of my fleet before the end of the second turn (He had actually sunk my Fleet Commodore Carrier in his first two volleys...) Meanwhile, I spent the game attempting to destroy the Doom Boat, but unfortunately he kept playing the 1d3 HP repair cards on it and shooting shooting to full effect. Needless to say, it was a frustrating game, but we kept playing until the end, and the FSA finally won out.

The second game vs the Doom Boat happened earlier tonight/yesterday (this won't have posted until after midnight... so yesterday) and I did markedly better this time around. I kept my Fleet Commodore out of harm's way, and made full use of my Rocket Jammer Generators (including the Mimic'd one I had aboard one of my Borodino Battleships) to keep my ships from being sniped out. They worked wonders, and I almost got close enough to lay down some serious hurt when the FSA player ended up having to go, so we ended the game and tallied up victory points. I lost by a small margin, due too two separate and saddening factors.

The first being the FSA player attempted to board my Battleship with one of his crazy Sky-Carrier-thingys, and through the judicious use of Cards, I managed to kill off all the boarders with my AA (a rare and magical feat for the Russian Coalition!) I then counter-boarded with my Frigate squadron that was nearby, and because I wasn't well-versed enough in how to actually board, we made quite a few mistakes that contributed to more AP loss on my end. In any case, I managed to prize his Sky-Carrier but due to the faux-pas in boarding I was left with a prize crew of 3, which was subsequently recaptured. Had I went ahead and left it Derelict rather than try to prize it, I would have ended the game with more VP's scored.

The second, and more unfortunate (though, completely random) factor was that in killing my Battleship, my opponent scored a critical hit and rolled the 4" explosion of death result which then killed an extra 75 points of models that wouldn't have been dead otherwise, which would have also help tip the points in my favor.

At the end of the day, I've learned a bunch, and still have quite a bit of learning to do... I love this silly boat game, and my only real gripe is that the appendix in the back of the rulebook is ABSOLUTELY WRETCHED, which makes it hard to look stuff up mid-game. Other than that, I'm definitely hooked. Expect more articles in the coming weeks/months as I expand my Fleet (and start actually painting.)

Vaya con Dios,
Timothy