The Dystopian Wars Rule Book, Glossary and ORBATs are now available to download! Whether you’re new to the game or you’re a veteran of countless engagements, you might find yourself wondering where to begin! Thankfully, James Hewitt (Lead Designer of Dystopian Wars) is here to help you find your way.
A New Age Begins…
Welcome, Admirals, to the new edition of Dystopian Wars! The journey has been long, with rough waters and stiff headwinds from time to time, but we’re finally hoving into port - and we couldn’t be more excited.
Before you all set sail, we thought it would be helpful to cover some points of order that will help you get the most out of your first few games. I’d also like to take the opportunity to set some expectations and let you know what the future holds. So drop anchor, row ashore and join me at the nearest dockside tavern for a tale or two.
(Don’t worry, the overwrought nautical imagery drops off quickly after this.)
A Design Challenge
For those who aren’t aware, Dystopian Wars is a big game. According to my shoddy maths rough estimation, there were 392 individual unit profiles in the previous edition of the game, spread across the eight ORBATs. (If you’re new to the game, an ORBAT is an Order of Battle - a document which contains all of the unit profiles, points values and battlefleets for a given faction.)
The rules of the new edition are sufficiently different that the “v3.xx” ORBATs wouldn’t work with them, so we’ve removed them from the website. In their place, you’ll find a shiny new set of eight Launch ORBATs. But… what’s a Launch ORBAT?
The process of developing a completely new ORBAT for a Faction is not a quick one, but there was never any doubt that we wanted everyone to be able to play Dystopian Wars on launch day. We settled on the idea of creating a set of stripped-back ORBAT documents which could be downloaded and used on day one. Then, in a move that will be familiar to Armoured Clash fans, we’ll do a proper launch for each Faction, which will see a new Starter Set and a full ORBAT. The first one of these will be the Crown, arriving next month alongside the fancy new Crown Starter Set.
Watch this space for news of future releases!
What’s in a Launch ORBAT?
The quickest way to answer this would be to say “go and see for yourself" - ORBATs are free to download from the Dystopian Wars website (just select the banner of your faction of choice and then the ORBAT button!) like they’ve always been - but I’d like to give you a bit more context.
Launch ORBATs contain all of the following:
Unit Profiles
Every unit now gets a whole page to itself, listing its stats, special rules and options. Point values for the units can be found in the reference at the start of the ORBAT, allowing for easy Force creation. The Unit Profile pages in the Launch ORBATs are very barebones compared to the ones in the upcoming full ORBATs, but they’ll give you everything you need to play.
Battlefleets
The units in a Dystopian Wars Force are organised into Battlefleets. These have been given a significant overhaul, bringing them more in line with how Battlegroups work in Armoured Clash. Each ORBAT lists a handful of Battlefleets, with more coming in future updates and the full ORBATs.
Additional Rules
Each Launch ORBAT contains profiles for the Short Range Squadrons available to the Faction, as well as any Faction Special Rules that apply (such as rules for special generators or Faction abilities). You’ll also find a list of Fleet Doctrines - minor upgrades that can be purchased for a Force when you have a few points left to spend. These, too, will be expanded in the full ORBATs.
Unit Review
In some places, we’ve taken the opportunity to combine similar units from the previous edition - especially when it wasn’t easy to tell them apart on the tabletop. For example, looking at the Crown range, the Yukon Auxiliary Cruiser was essentially a Newfoundland Attack Cruiser with the addition of a single component, so the Yukon is now an upgrade to the Newfoundland.
In addition, some unique named units which didn’t have models in the range have been removed. Where necessary we’ve tweaked the options for the basic class, so that keen kitbashers can still use the models they put together for the old edition. All of these changes are summarised at the end of the ORBAT.
Accepting the Inevitable
We’ve done a lot of playtesting during the development process, but we’ve accepted that despite all our hard work and checking (and double-checking, and triple-checking) some errors will have crept into the Launch ORBATs. This is simply unavoidable, especially on a project as expansive as this!
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the ORBATs have “beta” after their version number (at the top of every page, and on the cover). This means that the file isn’t final, and is likely to receive some updates as we hunt out the inevitable typos and (hopefully very minor) errors.
During the initial launch period, the ORBATs will stay in their beta form for a little bit longer than usual. During this time, we might release revised beta versions (beta 2, beta 3, beta 4 and so on). Once we’re happy that any bugs have been well and truly stomped out of a document, we’ll release a locked version, with “beta” removed from the version number.
Once an ORBAT is locked, the only times we’ll update it are:
When we add something exciting, like a new unit.
When we do a Global Update, roughly twice a year.
If we find any major game-breaking errors that slipped the net during beta.
How You Can Help
If you spot any errors in a Launch ORBAT (or the Glossary), we want to hear from you!
First of all, check that you’ve got the most up-to-date version of the document. Then, if the issue hasn’t already been fixed, follow this link and fill in our error report form. This is a much more helpful way of reporting rules issues than posting on Discord, commenting on our social media pages or emailing us. Over the next few weeks we’ll be rigorously monitoring these error reports, and applying fixes as needed, so please try to avoid chasing up your report. If you’ve filled the form in, we’ve seen it!
A Word of Thanks
Before I sign off, I’d like to thank the Dystopian Wars community in advance for your support of this new edition of the game, and for your patience while we iron out any teething issues. We genuinely cannot wait to see what you all do with it! From speaking to so many of you at shows, we’ve seen how there are countless people who have some miniatures but haven’t yet got into the game. This is a great chance to bring them in, so if that sounds like anyone you know, why not set up some games?
And of course, don’t forget to take some photos and share them with us on social media! We wanna see how much fun you’re all having.
Thank you all for reading, and I hope that’s been helpful. Until next time!
James M Hewitt