Today was day for the Dystopian War tournament that Adam kindly arranged. The event started at 9am at Imaginary Wars which required the owner, Kyle, to open the shop a few hours early for us. There were ten players present bringing fleets for the Ottoman (1), CoA (2), Russians (2), EotBS (2), KoB (1) and FSA(1). I was happy to actually play against players and fleets that I didn’t have any experience with.
I brought the 850 pt Russian fleet that I have been playing for a few games.
- 1 Borodino Class Battleship
- 2 Veliky Class Escort
- 3 Novgorod Class Frigate
- 3 Rostov Class Destroyer
- 3 Suvorov Class Cruiser
- 2 Suyetka Class Small Skyship
- 2 Tambov Class Gunship
- 5 Dive Bomber Wing
- 5 Fighter Wing
The Borodino had the Torpedo Breaker Generator installed and since I ended up playing the Japanese twice it was a good investment.
Game 1
The first game was against Brad’s EotBS token spam list. He had a Kiyohime Class Assault Carrier and two Tenkei Class Sky Fortress and a total of 14 activations.
Brad set up with a Tenkei at either end of his line and the Kiyohime in the centre. He then proceeded to launch wave after wave of torpedo bombers at my smaller vessels and then launched boarding parties at the remaining ships.
On my right I sent my Gunships to attack his Tenkei and managed to get a critical and then roll a 2 for a Magazine explosion to take it out. This sadly left my Gunships with nothing to do.
Brad quickly reached his 70% victory mark with a combination of sinking and capturing my vessels and we played another turn just for kicks.
Brad’s fleet was well tuned to his tactics and it was little surprise that he won best overall in the event. In addition his models were very well painted (see some photos below).
Game 2
Game 2 was against Paul and his CoA fleet. Paul played a fairly standard CoA fleet, based on the naval starter, with the addition of the Fresnel Crusiers and the ever-popular Epicurus Class Sky Fortress. I’ve never had an opportunity to see an Epicurus up close and it is really an impressive model. The drone dispenser at the base of the model is genius and it is one of the better models in the game.
Paul placed his Fresnel’s on the far right of his deployment where they were really only ever able to savage my Cruisers and, near the end of the game, start to put some damage onto my Battleship. If I knew how much damage they could deal I would have sent my Dive-bombers at them directly. I sent them against the Epicurus initially and they did their job but I would have liked to have at least threatened them.
I concentrated most of my force to take on his Battleship and its accompanying vessels. As such I was primarily deployed away from the Fresnels and the Epicurus. It wasn’t until later that the Epicurus was able to bring itself to bear and it was, I think, too late at that point.
My Gunships were able to take out his Cruisers and my Destroyers and Frigates dealt with his Frigate screens. After I cleared out a path to his battleship I landed a lucky hit with my Gunships that caused a critical ht and rolled a 12. The Stirginium Flare sent the Battleship off the table and I quickly sent the rest of my fleet to curve in to attack the Epicurus.
I managed to deal some damage to it and then sent in my Fighters who dealt an inordinate amount of damage to it and caused a critical. I rolled, of course, a 2 which blew the Epicurus out of the sky and took out all my fighters.
That was enough for my 70% victory point level and we ended the game on that turn.
Game 3
My final game was against Jordan and his EotBS fleet. Thankfully Jordan had a more standard fleet and while he had a lot of torpedo bombers it wasn’t anything as bad as Brad’s fleet. Paul dropped the Battelship from the starter box and added a Kiyohime Class Assault Carrier with its compliment of token and also added two DFA-170 Class Bombers.
I rolled the #3 field order which worked out well for me since Jordan only had a single squadron of medium class models. This meant that almost everything I had as initially gunning for them and sadly Jordan had deployed them directly across from the Gunships and Battleship meaning that they were going to get the attention of a lot of guns.
Jordan took his bombers and a squadron of frigates wide left against me meaning that they were out of action for the first few turns. He also kept his Kiyohime behind a wall of cruisers and frigates for most of the game.
Jordan and I traded fire across the centre of the board and I was able, in the second turn, to blunt the impact of his cruisers by using the destroyers to slam one of his cruisers into the one behind it using Hard Impact. The collision did a weapon damage critical on the first cruiser and a pint of damage on the second but it did restrict the fire from both of them the next turn.
Jordan kept advancing in the centre and then made a mad dash with his Cruisers across the gap to attempt to board my Gunships. Sadly I had the Mad Moment card to add +2 AA to each ship in the Gunship squadron and I cut down almost all of his boarding parties.
I followed up with a boarding attempt of my own and since none of his cursers had any AP left it was a quick fight. While prepping for the boarding assault I targeted his Kiyohime and managed to get a critical on it and rolled, you guessed it, a 2 and blew it out of the water. Between the initial losses, the captured cruisers and the Kiyohime I made my 50% victory point level and won the game.
Conclusions
Most of the fleet worked the way I expected it to. The Ablative Armour kept me in decent shape until I got into range with my guns and then my guns ruined things quickly.
The Suyetka Class Small Skyships were a total waste. They look nice but they are very fragile and really only act as a flying bomb to drop onto a crippled ship. Even Obscured they were taken out far too easily.
I have also learned to respect tokens in the game. Brad’s list was deadly and almost every player had far more tokens than I am used to seeing. I will definitely have to add a carrier to my painted models and add a few more tokens of my own.
Adam ran an exceptional event and manage to make six table for the event and a spread of terrain for each table. An exceptional effort and certainly appreciated by the tournament attendees. Plans are for another event in the new year at 1000pts and I am already planning what to paint for it.
Pile of dice 
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