Well for some time I was not sure as to what to make of this game. Definetly the wird war 2 genre so setting not 100% original but I am a fan of weird war 2 so no problem there. Also it didnt fit the standard pre-painted but it was the soft plastic type and being a miniature painter and wargamer for nearly 30 years and having played almost everything that has come down the pipe miniature wise in that time in one way or another the pre-painted type of game didnt really ring my bell. So I finally bought a copy to satisfy my curiosity.

Well after examining the contents and playing a game I find that what I have in my hands is actually a pretty well done fast playing miniature wargame that has enormous amounts of potential. For the style of game it is I must say that I didnt find it that far off from the current set of 40k rules all that much although more streamlined the premise kinda works out the same. It plays faster for sure. Seems to me that while the rules are solid and simple the variety will be found more in the characteristics of the units as more become available.

Definetly a game that I think any wargames enthusiast especially the sci-fi skirmish fan should try. The figures are really well done and are by far the best quality "soft" plastic miniatures I have ever bought. Hardly any warping and pretty good detail. They paint up really well.

I hope this game lasts for a long long time.

IraShaine1972 said:

Well just about any game's rules will stack up nicely against the horrendously conceived rules to 40K....not exactly the gold standard for game systems. Don't get me wrong, I agree with all the compliments you pay to Dust: Tactics...it's great. Sometimes I laugh that the 40K rules have been through so many "editions" and they are still so clunky, confounding and messy compared to games like Dust: Tactics which come out stream-lined and logical right out of the shoot. If GW has sense, they'd contract the folks at FFG to fix up their game.

As another disenchanted 40K player I found Dust Tactics to be surprisingly well thought out and incredibly playable. The rules are very easy to pick up and the figures are awesome and have a lot of potential. I think to a large degree its the use of the square grid mechanic to resolve movement and LOS. This eliminates 90% of the problems with other miniatures games where these things must be abstracted. That abstraction leads to ambiguity, which leads to player disagreements, which leads to un-fun games.

Wonder how long it's going to take for someone to come out with a 4x6 gridded roll up mat for large scale DT games? Hmmm....

MM says it best.

Comparing any gridded 'boardgame' miniatures game system with a freeflow tabletop miniatures game system the boardgame will usually come out on top in terms of 'clunk'. 40k's not written for tight gaming, it's written for the hobbyist as a whole (and 12 year olds).

Boardgames, because of the limitations their own medium imposes on them, are much easier to write than systems with looser guidelines. Moving/measuring/los/etc with a grid's far easier than across an open area.

keltheos said:

The problem with your theory is that there are non-gridded mini wargames such as Warmachine/Hordes which are very clear and can match most gridded boardgames in terms of rules tightness...I'm not letting GW off that easy.

Major Malfunction said:

while 4X6 is fun , its still no 6X8 , granted , our gridded twin sized bed sheets fold as opposed to roll up , but we like em fine .

The rules are great as were the AT43 rules.

Gareson said:

Gotta agree there. While the grid aspect of DT eliminates any LOS and range issues nicely probably making DT more suitable even for tournement play its the playability of the rules overall that make 40k so obviously clunky. The rules for DT can be easily translated to an inches system and played that way and still probably avoid alot of issues. Using Warmachine as an example is perfect as it is also a very simple set of mechanics with a very complex core of posibilites. Both DT and WM are in my opinion far more elegant and enjoyable play experiences that 40k and I played 40k for 20 years or so.

IMO 40k is stuck in certain rules ruts (such as 3 seperate roles for combat using buckets of dice,i go/you go thus eliminating the need for strategy beyond the army list building stage, and many more) that other game designers have rendered obsolete and antiquated long ago by simply designing a better game. For some reason the game designers at GW prefer to endlessy tweak an inferior set of game mechanics that long ago reached the max on their potential. The 40k rules have to many limitations built into them that only a true rewriting of the game itself could remedy. Other designers have already proven that a better game can be made. But enough of 40k. Frankly I am still a fan of it anyway and always will be. I just am more into better games at this point. For 40k I like the setting just not playing the game anymore.

Major Malfunction said:

BAH! Just buy multiple sets of tiles.

16 tiles almost cover a 4'x4' surface.

Frankly I like the tiles.

thanks for that - I've been looking at Dust Tactics recently and am interested, so I appreciate your perspective.

Cheers

When WH first came out (still have 1st editions) they were a breath of fresh air, simple and quick to play, I adopted the system for everything I played (which was everything , all rules sets then relied on continuously looking up charts and tables with dozens of mods and comparing them with a die roll. But since then WH have become a bloated set of complicated rules that I no longer play.

While DT is a fantastic game it is very limited on what you can add detail wise. For example if I model has a rifle, it doesn't matter how good the shooter is or what armour the target has, his attack value is 1/1, there is no room for that little bit of added detail. The basic WH system is much more versatile allowing for different training/experience/ability to hit a target and different power and effects of terrain and weapon, so the actual method of attacking is dead easy and more detailed than DT - is just that the game as a whole is just to complicated now.

Still loving DT as a game, and as I've said loads of times before, you spend the whole game on playing tactics rather than looking up rules, and with the quality of figures and at a reasonable price, it gets a 10/10 from me.

Major Mishap said:

i think you are confusing fact vs fiction here .

if you look at the stats in WH and WH40k , they suggest better training , but in reality its really based on an arbitrary points value assigned to abilities , but even those values are unreasitic . they tend to be more of a mechanic to give a different feel to each army .

the simple reality of it is that a soldier can only fire a gun just as fast as his squad mates firing the same gun , no amount of training will cause the mechanisim work faster .

when you look at statistics of military conflicts , police shootouts , and even criminal activity ............................................

the US military did a study about 10 or so years ago , the study was to determine how likely a soldier was to actually attack and shoot an enemy knowing he would kill( basicaly how willing a soldier was to willingly kill an opponent ) with the intention of increasing soldier survivability because if they dont fight , they were more likly to get killed . the study found that it was something rediculously low , even with military training , only something like 30% were likely to commit to combat . they made changes to basic training , and specialized training like infantry , etc....... that got it up to something like 89% .

and while we would all like to imagine shooting 30shots and killing 30 enemies , in reality , even well trained military in nations all around the world miss alot . alot of ammunition and explosives are expended for a very low boddy count . afganistan is a perfect example , you can look up some of the major firefights where combat went on for a day or so , shots ringing out every where , RPG's , laws rockets , mortars , MG's , and yet the body counts are still low .

look at libya , even as ramshackel as the rebels are , a large number of the dead and wounded rebels are actually bystanders waiting for bread or the like . and even the rebels are making some kills on a trained military .

while many states have a uniform training requirement for law enforcement , police shootouts often have several missed shots by the police . i've even seen dash cam footage of shootouts where more than 20 shots were fired from both sides , and not a single one hit .

regardless of wheather its the military , the police , or the common thug , its one thing to practice shooting and buidling clearing on a training course or in a video game, its a very different thing when its real and the person shooting at you not only wants to kill you , but even more importantly to them , they want to live .

the units we will see in this game represent human troops . they dont have space marine implants , eldar phisiology , or anything like that , so their stats are and should all be very similar .

the special training comes in when special abilities are applied to represent the special traing .

if anything , i think the simplified system DT uses , really represents a more realistic face of combat than we see in any game i am familiar with , and i think many other would agree if they thoght about it all .

Despite what the 'real life' truth may be, pretty much every set of wargame rules makes combat differences depending on the models skill and armour and in Dust heroes get many more dice in an attack. besides, your examples only show shooting, what about a knife fight between a guy in a flack jacket and one in power armour, still only 1/1 damage.

It was mentioned in another thread about using DT rules for other games, and I love converting favourite rules to other periods so thought about medieval and the Perry's plastics. I've not had a long thought over the possibility, but immediately got hung up on armour and skill. Armour values are easy to evaluate, but without combat becoming a total bloodbath, you can't give more than 1/1 on any armour class, maybe a 2/1 in exceptional circumstances. How do you make the knight in full plate last longer on the table-top than an archer in a leather jack? This is where the rules break down, allowing for finer tuning of weapons and effect on armour - but maybe its not really neccessary?

Still, this has now got me thinking about cracking the issue - thanks

Major Mishap said:

How did that work out at Crecy, Poiters & Agincourt?

the most obvious answer to making a knight last longer than an archer is simply to up the armor value on the knight , and have a lower armor on the archer , and if that didnt playtest well enough , keep in mind you could add special abilities .

and keep in mind that most minis games (atleast those i have seen , including WH40K ) dont give strength bonuses to the power armor wearers , they only help protect the wearer . in WH40K , the space marines stronger attack is attributed to the physical training , and a culmination of the 19 surgical alterations to the marines when they are brought into the chapters . most space marine scouts are weaker because they have not fully developed as "marines" yet . the knife only really does strength damage , which has nothing to do with the marines power armor .

we tend to think that the power armor is a bionic suit , but its servos are generaly described as powering the suit so it can move without hindring the wearers , not necessarily buf them up into super killing machines .

as far as the blood bathyness of my other thread .................................... it should be just as bloody in most instances since they are hacking and chopping , sure they may not have machine guns , but its still gonna be plenty bloody , if anything it would be bloodier .

i think alot of people are used to playing games like WH , so they get into the mind set that all the armies have to have drasticly different stats in some catagories , when alot of mechanics like the buckets of dice rolling kinda negates alot of those stats . it doesnt really matter if you have a st of 2 , roll enough dice and you will still wound , where as in DT , we are looking at alot more closly related troops attacking in bloody combat , which is more seemingly normal .

i think we also tend to let the fluff sway our impressions of the game . in reality the stats of the orks arent that much better than humans , but to listen to the fluff , the orks are so strong and tough that were they really that big and bad , they would have wiped out the humans centuries if not mellinia earlier due to over hunting .

Gareson said:

Thats down to tactics, circumstances and being shot and not basic rules of offense V protection in a sword fight.

Major Mishap said:

however in "sword fight" , the knight in full plate is alot less deadly because he is wering full plate (not power armor), which is heavy , and hard to move around in . knock him over , and he's a turtle .

every figth comes down to tactics , you dont let your archers get cought up in a sword fight , they are archers , and should be kept where they can shoot .

but you also dont let your knights get cought up in sword fights , they are meant to charge in to the enemy on horseback hacking and slashing .

Major Mishap said:

That's the beauty of Dust Tactics. When you play a 45 mins game of DT, you spent 45 mins strategizing and making tactical decisions. In other games, chances are that you spend 30 mins looking up rules or arguing over rules and only 15 mins really playing the game.

traderghost said:

dont forget the hour of setting up the board and actually deploying your forces onto the board prior to the first turn .

my FLGS has sundays as its main scifi day , so we set up among a sea of WH40K players , and we can get 1-3 games done in the time it takes them to get to the START of turn 1 .