Hello fans of Dystopian Wars, in this a most exciting month for our 1/1200^th scale Victorian Super-Science Fiction tabletop wargame!

As you will be aware we have kicked off major development on our core Spartan owned game systems, with Dystopian Wars the first of our games to see increased activity. We’ll detail more about our exciting Dystopian World Expansion Kickstarter Campaign in a follow up blog, as in this article we want to focus on detailing and positioning our new Battleship models for you.

Old for New
In our latest product announcement, we told you that the first four core nations (Kingdom of Britannia, Prussian Empire, Federated States of America and Empire of the Blazing Sun) were getting new ‘modular’ Battleships. Let’s put some context on these models for you:

The Mk I variants are effectively replacement models for the Battleships we first released in 2010, models such as the Sokotsu, Independence, Ruler and Emperor Classes. We replaced these older Battleships around three years ago when we introduced our Heavy Battleships and included them in our updated Core Nation Naval Battle Groups.

The new MK I Battleships

We feel that after six years, and with the fact that our first-generation Battleships have not been readily available to new players of Dystopian Wars for around three years now, that a replacement Battleship was needed. Our new MK Is (Mississippi, Magnate, Yokai and Eider) will take on this role moving forward, both in terms of updated model aesthetic and in our game statistics.

What does this mean if you own an older Battleship? Effectively, nothing. Our older models are still supported in the rules and you will have downloaded files with version 2.0 compatible statistics for the likes of the Ruler and Sokotsu. If you love your first Battleships, have painted up lots of them then keep gaming with them. We in no way intend to remove them from your gaming experience.

As we expand Dystopian Wars the statistics for our new models will take centre stage in our nation documents, with older model statistics assuming more of a ‘legacy’ role. This is key to our design documents as we move to rapidly design new models for you, and such models will form part of the functionality improvements in the Dystopian Wars Version 2.5 Core Rulebook.

You will also have noticed that each of our new models has a MK II variant. In some cases, this may see quite a distinct change to the MK I; we’re thinking the Blazing Sun Yokai here, and with some the refit will be less prominent visually, such as the Eider which allows a player to switch from a Gunnery biased machine of war to a more Tesla focussed warship.

The new MK II ‘Variant’ Battleships

Effectively, what we are offering with these models is a new Battleship model (MK I) and a variant (MK II) in a single product offering. We have looked to make both ‘magnet friendly’ so players can switch between both variants when needed. Some players already do this with their models, but with our new models we will look to enhance this capability.

Moving Forward – Core Nations
We are now full on with our new model development for Dystopian Wars. You have seen the first four models, but we have much more coming your way. Our Kickstarter is set to deliver a host of exciting additions to all seven core nations, along with some super cool narrative style models.

The Kickstarter delivers what we call Core Nation Expansion Boxes, and what makes these exciting is that each brings a model in all three major size classes (small, medium and large), and the driving force behind the models is how we can best plug key gaps on a nation’s product offering. Watch out for our next blog in which we set the scene for these new models.

As part of this development work you will also see us deliver new types of model classes, designed to boost playability and fleet building options. Examples include the new Prussian Empire Gustav Class Bombard Monitor which packs a scary punch and introduces Tesla Torpedoes to this nation and the Covenant Hawking Light Interceptor which gives CoA players some much-anticipated guns to aerial combat. The list of cool new models goes on and we’ll unveil them all shortly to you.

Moving Forward – Alliance Nations
Our first major Dystopian Wars expansion sees the core seven nations being well catered for, but there is more to the game than just these nations. As many of you already know, we have several cool Alliance nations which bring fabulous gameplay and stunning models to your tabletops. Nations like the Ottoman Empire, Kingdom of Denmark, Australians, Indian Raj just to name a few.

We have exciting plans for our Alliance and Free Nations, both in terms of new models, new nations and new fleet building rules in the Version 2.5 Core Rulebook. Such is the size of this expansion that we need to deliver it to you as part of its own dedicated process, the Dystopian World Expansion Part II if you will! More to follow on this.

That’s it for now and we hope this update gives you an insight as to our plans for our exciting new modular Battleships.

Happy gaming!