Has anyone run across any expected release dates or information on the Sino-Soviet faction introduction?

I can't imagine there is alot more to introduce for the Allies and Axis (well except maybe aircraft).

I am hoping FFG puts out another Core box set introducing the Sino-Soviets and the Vril at the same time.

I would guess we would see them debut at the next GenCon (Aug). Now I am just guessing here, but that would seem like the right time. I'm sure we will see something biggish before then (like said aircraft) but I think they would need to test a new faction against both current factions and for both Tactics and Warfare. That would take sometime and it seems like they have put all of their time and effort for Dust to bring us Warfare and the new Cerberus/Heavy Walkers. I could be WAY off here, but it's my 2 cents and I keeping it.

-Jeff

My "guess" is that the next year will come with three "big" releases.

The first will be Dust warfare, either this winter or early spring.

We'll then see the aircrafts around summer / late summer.

A new core set with the soviets and the Vrill around next september, this would make it a year after the revised has been out, which would seem to make sense.

It would make also for a steady release of new stuff for all the year...

Personally, i only hope we'll see the rules for the aircrafts in Dust Warfare.

I prefer the idea of a complete ruleset in a single book than rules placed in several books. I have memories of BattleTech, which i needed something like 15 books to have the rules for every elements we were using (it was annoying). Dust Tactics is starting to look like this, with new rules put in every expansion box.

I really hope not. SSU (at least)) needs to be released fairly soon. It might get away with "here are two walkers, one hero and three squads of IA2 in an expansion," but they will have to be slotted into the current expansion program. Which means, wheeee, they need Heavy, Medium, Light Walkers, several IA3 heroes & squads, several IA2 heroes & squads.

Now they could be getting ready to release them shortly because all seems quiet on the new models to be released front. So, SSU might get some concentrated loving starting early this next year. I hope so anyway.

I'm a bit torn on this whole new factions deal by introducing the Vrill and SSU forces. As cool as they might be, do I really want to buy into a whole new faction? It's hard enough buying all the expansions I want for the allies and axis, but it seems that adding a couple more factions is just unsustainable. Unless a friend of mine wants to make the SSU his own, I don't think they will be making an appearance in my games.

No, like me, you do not want or need to buy into another faction. But by not having them available severely cripples the games expansion to other players who want in, but can't because they don't want to duplicate there mates armies. New armies should have been released this year, not next. In our group alone sales would have doubled if another faction had been available.

I do agree that new factions should come sooner rather than later.

I have at least one friend who likes Dust Tactics a lot, but doesn't want to invest in his own copy.

In his own word (more or less): "i'd buy the soviets if they were released as there's no point in buying an army you already have to play".

But all in all, i'd rather see the aircrafts first, then Dust Warfare, then the Vrill before even the soviets. I see the soviets as being a bit too similar to the axis and allies, while the Vrill will be a completely new play experience. Give me the new over variations on the same theme...

I just hope they make any new factions a self-contained deal, so that someone who just wants to own that faction can do it, and someone who wants nothing to do with it won't lose out on anything for the normal game. It would be terrible if they introduced the Vrill in something like an aircraft package, that contained aircraft for all the factions.

I know several people who are interested in trying Sino-Soviets or the Vril. They play now casually learning the Allies and Axis, but want to see what the other two factions will have to offer.

Plus I like the idea of having campaigns with more than 2 factions.

I hope they add in the factions one at a time. It will be soo expensive if they just come out with another starter box the is Vrill vs Soviets.

-Jeff

I think a unified rules book would be great very soon. I remember the avalon hill days of squad leader, etc...... Any new minis though would be great as Im always looking for more things to paint!!! The SSU would be my first choice as I have toyed with using the AT43 guys for a stand it at times.

I think it will be SSU real soon. Then at GenCon they will have a sneak peak of the Vrill. Maybe release airpower for all the three factions.

Why assume a limit to just the Vrill and Soviets? There are Soviet and Japanese models already created that could be brought over to DUST while the Vrill are still a dream. FFG's plan may be quite different for release of factions than was planned before they took over the gaming property.

The Vrill interest me the least, as I'm enjoying DUST as alternate WW2 more than as a precursor to an alien invasion. I think the arrival of the Vrill would mean much more limited fighting between the human factions, as they would be likely to unify even with former enemies against a much greater alien threat. Even politicians can have a clue sometimes.

There is a lot of territory DUST can cover, from the Soviets, to the Japanese, to the sub-factions that have only minimally been touched on with the Red Devils so far (ie: more Brits, Italians, Chinese, Australians, etc...). Adding to that you have aircraft, watercraft for island combat, four more classes of vehicle armor, one more of infantry (expecting the description to mean only the Vrill have Amor 4 infantry), and a lot of other battlefield options, whether for scenario specific or general scenario play (ie: minefields, barbed wire, combat engineering & fortifications, tunnel & sewer fighting, etc...).

The Vrill could wait until all of that and more is released, and I wouldn't mind. Coming up with rational explanations on why an alien invasion that didn't know the local situation could somehow keep humans fighting each other while they attacked everywhere would be hard to believe.

If they came in and simply watched for a while from space, and then approached the right people with invitations to help against one foe, they might be able to pull it off, though they're starting without knowing the languages or cultures. The problem with that would be limiting the Vrill's possible opponents.

Gimp said:

Arn't the japanese already considered part of the axis? Like the british part of the Allies?

Unless i am mistaken, the japanese units models were more prototypes for the game than anything "official". Same as with the already released soviets.

The Japanese are part of the Axis, but are fighting in a different part of the world. DUST broke the world into Axis, Allies, Sino-Soviets, and Neutral camps, but they are not four individual countries, but alliances of different ideological groups with a unified command.

The British troops are part of the Allies, as the Japanese are part of the Axis, but they are probably fielded as British and Japanese units, especially for the Japanese with the distance they have from the Germans. The Japanese were given German walker technology, and have used some walkers as they were, and adapted the technology to their needs for others. The British may field some units that match US squads in equipment, and others that are completely British, like the Red Devils (the nickname for the British Airborne forces). There were a few US/Commonwealth combined units, but they normally fought separately. The Germans may have sent trainers and observers to Japan, and vice versa, but they would have a very hard time fielding a combined force both due to physical separation and language problems.

The Soviet and Japanes models do not have official DUST stats, but they are official DUST models from either the comic books or Mr Parente's further works for the world of DUST.

That means they are already functional for production as part of the game, just as several other DUST models have made the translation from simply being a model to being part of the game.

It makes more sense to fill out forces that are already started than to set them aside to create new forces from scratch.

The Soviets would need infantry and a few more walkers. The Japanese would need the same, though they have the advantage of being able to use German walkers, as well.

I'm with Gimp, I would like to see some sub factions filled out more. Even if stat wise they are not that different, it would be cool to see walkers made by the Brits, Chinese, and so on. It would also be nice to see second generation walkers. I'm getting tired of all the Mickey variants ( cool as they are).

-Jeff

I agree. I'd trade any day the introduction of the Vrill and SSU for some more axis and allied units from different countries. Give me japanese walkers, but also units from the other founding ASOCOM countries: Brazil, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico. I'm sure they could come up with some very colorful units.

Go Poland! Oh, wait, i'm now a part of III Reich....

Not if your a Partisan!

-Jeff

I'm with Gimp here, the next core is going to be SSU vs Japan because it makes sense in the storyline. In the dust world, right now, the Germans are invading England and the Americans are developing better Walkers and VK Heavy Armors and sending a lot more people to the western front, something that is excelent for Dust Warfare, as you can introduce the airplanes and the IA1 squads and VA 1 and 2 vehicles. It's convenient to stop the timeline around here and to reshift focus on the Eastern Hemisphere at the beginning of 1947 and develop that conflict so that you can finish that year with the world at war and 1948 is the year when the Vrill return, introducing the IA4 squads and changing the nature of the global conflict.

Vrill and Soviets are contingent in the background of Dust. Without the Vrill, there is no advance tech and Koshka is one of the major characters in the comics. I'm for Vrill and Soviet next in either order or together. But sooner the better.

blkdymnd said:

The Vrill are a significant part of the DUST universe, but they don't make a full appearance as other than the largely dead crew of their ship. As I noted, their appearance will cause a huge shift in the dynamics of the world that could cause big issues for the game. An alien invasion is a lot more significant than anything countries are currently fighting over.

The Soviets are a huge part of the story, and are already there in the midst of the war, and in model production.

The Japanese are there as part of the war, and with models already available for the game.

I would enjoy reading more about the Vrill, but really would prefer they take a while longer getting their ships to Earth. If they could write a plausible way for them to invade and not turn the world upside down, I could accept them coming sooner, but I can't see world governments being quite dumb enough to accept an alien invasion as unimportant enough to ignore and keep fighting a war against each other.

According to the Seelowe fluff, the Vrill invasion will give the warring factions a common enemy, but your still going to have pockets if hostility. It's very plausible to get them involved.

Mankind had a history of being able to put aside differences to face a common threat, only to go back to fighting once the threat is neutralized.

That holds even when the threat is another human culture. What impetus do you imagine an alien invasion would have to unify mankind?

The Vrill would be coming without knowledge of human culture, language, or the current political climate, and are completely alien, so how would they be able to try and play one faction against another? Kvasir was noted as learning German quickly, but whether that is common, or do to his abilities as a Vrill scientist are unknown. Kvasir was noted as sending only a distress signal, so the Vrill reaction is impossible to predict.

Without knowing Vrill culture, we don't know if they would be coming to conquer, enslave, or eradicate humanity, nor whether they would feel it worth their while or beneath them to even attempt to parlay with humanity. They are obviously a race willing to use deceit based on the available fluff. They are currently fighting their own war, so humanity using the VK they tagged Earth as a supply point for with their efforts will not go over well.

The Axis already knows they cannot defeat the Vrill by themselves, though they have tried to keep their knowledge secret. How do you expect them to react to a fast arrival of the Vrill? Kvasir sent his distress signal two years ago, but we're talking about a distress signal from an exploratory party sent to a government involved in a interstellar war. Pulling aside resources and travelling to Earth to respond could easily be either low priority, time consuming, or logistically impossible under their current circumstances.

If the Axis decides to release information about the Vrill when they arrive to try and unite humanity, there is still far less reason for the normal war to continue until the Vrill are dealt with. Even if there are some who want to point fingers to blame the Axis for causing problems, the problem is something important enough for people to be willing to unite to deal with before they do more than complain.

The Axis could as easily say they were working to repair the ship they found, and the distress signal was accidently sent while experimenting with it. There is no Kvasir around to argue the point. That paints a Vrill invasion as a significantly threatening action for any Earth government.

I think that if and when FFG decides to due the vrill side of the story., It may not be along the lines of a full invasion that would unite the entire world, but maybe a small force that would start in maybe what was a nuetral territory that they conquer and build out from there. So it would be a sizeable force but nothing so big that it would incite the entire world to focus their efforts on just them.

Like many others here though, I would much prefer the other nations more flushed out than just start dropping in aliens. Going through the sourcebook and comics there is a lot of stuff that should be more concentrated on, rather than introducing aliens.