Dystopian Wars Forces: Kingdom of Britannia

High-hulled and festooned with guns, the Kingdom of Britannia fleet sails to war with all the subtlety of a thrown brick.

Your ships may be hardy, but lacking the speed of the Prussians or the ranged power of FSA or Blazing Sun, the Kingdom of Britannia fleet can often find itself between a rock and a hard place. You must close the distance to be effective, and you don’t have the extra speed to do this quickly.

Fortunately, shields are your friend here, and every ship of medium class or larger has access to these. The 1.1 games rules also give your shields an area of effect to help protect the smaller ships. Once up close no one can match the power of your guns. Shields help you live long enough to get there.

The other armament sported by Britannia’s ships are torpedoes, and the combination of guns and torpedoes make this fleet trickier to play than any of the others. The best tactic is to try and split your opponent’s fleet and box them in with a superior number of your own ships. Once their ability to maneuver has been restrained, you can hit them with your torpedoes, before closing to finish them off with your guns.

Easier said than done, and you’ll find that every opponent has a trick or two up their sleeve to thwart your plans. Often a well timed game card will give you the edge you need. This means you need to vary carefully consider when you will use your cards, and adjust your tactics depending on what is in your hand.

The path to victory is strewn with obstacles, but that just makes it all the sweeter when your fleet finally triumphs!

Also see our forces reviews of FSA, Prussians, and Blazing Sun.

Dystopian Wars Forces: FSA

The Federated States of America (FSA) are the US faction in the steampunk alternate world of Dystopian Wars. This naval group gives you a startling amount of power and flexibility.

FSA ships carry a decent mix of long, medium, and short range weaponry. The cruisers carry fearsome rocket batteries, that can deal out significant damage before you close with your opponent. When you do, you’ll find the frigates are equal to the Prussians in terms of close range firepower.

More than any other faction, positioning, even individual ship facing, is more critical to the successful operation of the FSA navy. Moving your ships forward too soon, or presenting the wrong facing to the enemy, can severely limit the firepower you can bring to bear. You will always need to bear your firing arcs in mind when moving.

The sea carrier for FSA is disappointing in its defences and will be outgunned by the equivalent ship from any other faction. While you’ll pay fewer points for your carrier, most FSA players would rather pay more and have a ship that can defend itself.

The John Henry robot gives you an iconic and versatile addition to your fleet. This robot flies, and can dart ahead to harass enemy ship formations. Breaking up enemy formations is a key tactic the FSA must use to be successful.

Flexibility is the watchword of this navy, and you should expect to change your tactics depending on which opponent you are facing. Against Prussians you’ll want to hand back and use your rockets, while against Blazing Sun, your advantage is at mid and short range, so close quickly.

Forces of Dystopian Wars: Empire of the Blazing Sun

Club member Adrian R has written this review of the Empire of the Blazing Sun force for Dystopian Wars.

Empire of the Blazing Sun represents Japan in the Dystopian Wars universe.

Contents of the box
1 Battle ship (Resin with 2 metal turrets and shield generator options)
3 Cruisers (Resin)
9 Frigates (Resin)
2 Medium Bombers (Metal with clear plastic flight stands)
10 Small flyers (Tokens) (Resin)

The box include corresponding cards for all the above units with stats and special rules, that tell you how they play in the game. Each faction’s naval box set contains the same mix of ships and air units but the real difference is in the performance of each faction’s ships and air units.

As with all Spartan Games miniatures the quality is excellent, the detail on the resin models at this scale is simply stunning.

Game play

Empire of the Blazing Sun naval force and air forces can be summed up with one word; “Flexibility.” Most factions have a particular style of play for example Prussian speed and boarding ability, Britannia is about guns and elite repair crews and FSA excel in the long range shoot out.

The Empire of the Blazing Sun can do all the above to a degree, they have all the tools for speed, range attacks and taking heinous amounts of damage and still remaining functional but they don’t master any of these aspects of the game.

“They are the game’s “jack of all trades, master of none.”

Model play review

Battleship
I believe the battle ship of each race really underlines the game play and style of the faction and this is really the case with The Empire of the Blazing Suns Battleship. The battleship is fairly slow and can take considerable damage before sinking and otherwise has similar stats to the other battleships.

The Battleship sports two excellent turret guns second only to the FSA for fire power. A broadside battery and fore torpedo launcher with are all very nice with the slight issue of being fixed arcs reducing flexibility of targeting or combining attacks.

Also the mainstay of the Empires naval and air forces are rockets and this Battleship has excellent long ranged rockets, 360 degree line of sight and incendiary rocket special rule for burning other ships. I believe this is the most dangerous weapon system on the ship, with the ability to inflict critical damage over time to the toughest of enemy vessels as fires spread out of control.

Cruisers
The Cruisers are fast not quite as fast as the Prussian Cruiser but fast enough to redeploy into better more advantage positions which is required to get the most out of this class vessel.

The cruiser have 3 main weapon systems; Broadside guns with fixed channels, fore torpedo launcher with fixed channels, and a slightly weaker version of the rockets from the Battleship. The lack of a turret main gun is a weakness but this ship is capable in ranged combat and can be deadly up close with the enemy fleet firing broadsides.

Frigates
They are small, fast ships. Each Frigate has 2 weapon systems, a broadside battery with fixed channels like the Cruiser and Battleship, and a small turret which adds the flexibility of combining shots to deal out surprising amounts of damage. Frigates can be underestimated by opponents and in this fleet they really can outperform much larger ships with the weight of their combined fire power.

Medium Bombers
All the Empire of the Blazing Sun medium and large flyer use turbine technology for flight. This makes them quite stable platforms for extra armaments and very manoeuvrable in flight. The Medium Bomber in the start up box is no exception to this, the main weapon system is rockets, and in the longer range bands they can be devastating.

Also the Medium Bomber has more anti-air guns than any other faction’s Medium Bombers. This allows the Empire of the Blazing Sun Medium Bomber to also hunt other air force models quite effectively.

Small flyers
Small Flyers come on small tokens based 3 planes per token, individually they are very weak and can be dealt with easily but in a squadron of 5 can damage and cripple the largest ships.

The Empire of the Blazing Sun specialise on Torpedo Bombers and Fighters . Faster torpedoes are more difficult for enemy ships to avoid, and the swarm tactics of the Fighters increases the damage they can inflict.

In Summary

The Empire of the Blazing Sun brings a combined arms approach to naval battles in Dystopian Wars.

The ship are very distinct in appearance with their train-like hulls. This is a very fun faction to play in Dystopian Wars and how can anyone resist using their Jetpack Samurai Assault troops!

You may also like to see our Dystopian Wars Review, Prussian Force Review, and FSA force review.

Dystopian Wars Forces: Prussians

Dystopian Wars is a popular game of naval conflict in a steampunk alternative nineteenth century. LXG has previous published a Dystopian Wars review. Now to look at some of the forces in the game.

The Prussian forces excel in close quarters fighting and ship to ship boarding actions. Prussians vessels typically come packed to the gunwhales with boarders waiting to leap across to enemy vessels. Given that captured enemy vessels are with double victory points, it’s a strategy worth playing towards.

Prussian guns are typically short range, indeed you will be hard pressed to must any shooting at all at the band 4 range. Because of this you will need to spend your first couple of turns advancing on the enemy as quickly as possible.

The Prussian navy is most vulnerable at long range and most deadly at short range. This means the first couple of turns will generally start badly for you. Particularly when facing enemy with long range rockets, you can expect to lose a ship or two without so much as damaging an enemy vessel in return.

Suck it up and don’t be disheartened as your revenge will not have to wait long. Prussian ships have a reasonable speed to them, enabling you to close quickly.

Tesla coils are a weapons system unique to the Prussians. On your larger ships these weapons have the lethal strike ability, meaning that they kill a crew for each point of hull damage they inflict. This combines well with your large troop complement to make those boarding actions a little easier.

Frigates and Cruisers are very much the main strength of the naval forces. Frigates in particular can deal out huge amount of damage once your squadrons get within short range of the enemy. Experienced players will often target these over your larger ships.

While the Metzger robot is something of a poster model for the Prussian forces, being so impressive, in battle it is serviceable but not outstanding. It is one of the few models with any weapon strength at band 4, so that is a consideration. It’s nice to be able to return fire!

Prussians excel at swarm tactics, so keeping your points free for medium and light vessels is well advised. A single capital class ship is good, but for the most part your strength is to be found in clever use of medium and small vessels.

If Prussians aren’t to your taste, consider also the Empire of the Blazing Sun or Federated States of America.