For some time now, our Games Development team have been beavering away at the new edition of Dystopian Wars. Their primary focus has been on streamlining mechanics to reduce mental load and speed up gameplay, while keeping things as interesting and engaging as ever. Of course, when you work with something for an extended period of time, it's only natural to develop a soft spot for a clever mechanic or a simple fix to a complex problem.
Continuing on from the theme of last week’s blog post, we’ve invited two more members of the team to tell us about their favourite element of the new edition, and why it scratches that itch in their brain.
Edward Spence
You might think that because I’ve already written an entire blog post on the subject of Short Range Squadrons, I would be done with the subject. But blistering barnacles, I’ve not even begun!
Reader, I love them. For me, SRS tokens are where this game came alive in the development process, and I believe they are emblematic of the key principles of this new edition: player agency, strategic choices, and reactive plays.
But more than this, small as they are, I feel that SRS tokens represent the “vibe” of the Dystopian Age and its different Factions. My primary role within the Development Team is overseeing the lore and narrative of our rulebooks and ORBATs. As such, whenever we develop a new game, army or ruleset, the chief question I often find myself asking is “Does this feel right?”
This is a question we have sought to answer in each facet of the Core Rules, the additions we have made to various Unit Profiles across the game, along with how Force Selection works and how Battlefleets are built.
To my thinking, this focus on narrative is exemplified in the Squadron Grids for Short Range Squadrons:
An example of a few Short Range Squadrons and their properties
With each Squadron now possessing values for Attack, Intercept, Support and Resilience, we have allowed ourselves to tailor each Short Range Squadron to the playstyle of their Faction, not to mention their place in the lore of the setting. SRS such as Messer Interceptors will be far more suited to Supporting friendly units, while offensive SRS like Sabiha Attack Fighters will prefer launching brutal Attack Run Missions on the enemy, and is not unusual to find both within a single Force. But this nuance goes beyond the number of dice in your hand.
In my previous blog, I alluded to SRS Properties, and it is here that Short Range Squadrons really shine. There will, of course, be more reveals coming along the big blue watery road to this new edition. But perhaps I can provide a peek behind the curtain, and tease one such work-in-progress SRS property…
Portal Strike
If an SRS Stack consisting entirely of tokens with this Property makes an Attack Run mission, its Admiral can attempt a Portal Strike at the start of the Disengage step if at least one Attack Run Target was within 10” of a friendly Portal marker.
The Admiral enacts a Special Valour Effect. If the effect is Denied, the Disengage step is resolved as normal. Otherwise, the Disengage step is skipped, and the SRS Stack is allocated to a new Enemy unit within 10” of a different friendly Portal marker. It is now Threatening that unit, and can make another Attack Run mission on a subsequent turn.
An SRS Stack can only make a single Portal Strike per Round. To track this, mark the Stack with a Depleted status token after its Portal Strike has been resolved.
Bear in mind that this is subject to change.
A lot can happen when playtesting, even to a rule as simple as this - see Sophie’s blog on the Design Process and how we employ iterative game development. However, this is an example of the ways in which we’ve adapted pre-existing rules from the previous edition (in this case, SRS Portal Strike from the Sultanate ORBAT) and tweaked them to suit the updated ruleset, while also reflecting the purpose of each SRS and the “feel” of each Faction.
But wait! What’s this about Portal markers?
Well, that brings me onto the other change I’m most excited for.
You see, each of us in the Development Team has been tasked with adapting the existing Factions of the game to this new edition. And while we have ensured they stay true to the units players know and love, we have definitely been leaning hard into the bespoke playstyles of each Faction.
For my part? I have been working on the Sultanate. And I suppose that now is the time to tell you about all the exciting new ways this faction will be using Portals, not just to make Attack actions but to-
Oh, will you look at that - I’m out of time!
Sophie Williams
In the new edition of Dystopian Wars, units have an Action Limit that restricts how many actions a unit can take in a turn. In the Core Rules, this broadly covers how many Attacks you can make. However, as players move into the more advanced rules, this also includes Special Actions such as firing devastating Broadsides and performing crucial Maintenance to repair potentially catastrophic Critical Damage. The player then has to decide: what are they doing? Do they fire their weapons? Try to recover from a previous assault? Rally their crew to stop them from panicking? While there are plenty of options available, the choice can change a unit's fate and the whole course of a game.
I love this! At face value, it’s a simple change. We made it to reduce the mental load on players, a serious focus for us when developing the new edition. After all, individual models can do a lot, especially when grouped together in units of two or more. Trying to remember all those options, weapons, generators and which Actions a model can participate in could be overwhelming, and often meant that cool rules were forgotten or underused. So with this “simple change”, we give players fewer rules to remember at any one time, empowering them to make clear and decisive choices when it really mattered.
From a design perspective, it would have been easy to fall into a trap of simply reducing the amount of options available to players to streamline the decision-making process. However, the introduction of Action Limits, instead forces players to make challenging decisions that have meaningful outcomes whilst also reducing mental load. How players spend their Actions, and in what order, rewards the player with immediate outcomes and gives them far more agency over their Force during gameplay.
To me it’s a win-win. The game is easier, but provides an ‘opt-in’ mentality. If you want to launch more complex strategies, then go for it. But it’s your choice, not an essential step in your path to victory. Action Limits are an incredibly satisfying solution to the problem “how do we let players do cool things without overwhelming them?” and I think we’ve achieved it. To me, it’s really elevated Dystopian Wars into a new era of streamlined rules whilst maintaining that strategic gameplay we all know and love.
We hope you’ve enjoyed taking another look behind the curtain at some of our Games Development team's favourite changes to the new edition of Dystopian Wars.