Well, it's no surprise that Russ and I, having done a demo with Ross at GenCon last year, were very excited about Dust: Warfare. And when he got a rulebook early at Pax East a few weeks ago, the fire was kindled anew. And then, a couple weeks later when we went to Adepticon, hung out a bunch with Mack Martin and the FFG guys, and dropped WAY too much money on Dust figures and urban terrain (so we could commandeer empty tables all over the hotel to play whenever we liked) . . . it was like reliving our heady early 40K days.

Our newest episode, 102, went live last night and inlcudes a massive review of Dust: Warfare with guest host Romeo Fillip, click here for that episode.

Fair warning, though: We're old school mini wargame players, and so we're not approaching this from the Dust: Tactics realm . . . in fact, we tried D:T once and didn't really like it at all . . . so our point of view is very different from many of the impressions I'm getting from delving into these forums for the first time . . .

Anyway, check it out, if you're curious.

Oh, and if you've never listened before . . . fair warning. The opening skit is only 4-5 minutes long, and IS a skit, and is not, in fact, my real voice, nor is that what the entire 4+ hours of the show are like . . . oh, and another fair warning . . . each episode is somewhere north, usually, of 4 hours. But of course you don't have to listen to the whole thing. The link above includes time stamps that will tell you exactly where to find the Dust: Warfare review . . . but just think of all that Not Too Horrible Humor you'll be missing!

Thanks, guys!

~Craig

Thanks Craig! Listening to it now, even as I type! Loved the Lost Chapters episode 31 as well, even if you guys missed out on AT-43, may it rest in peace.

Glad to see you guys are "all in" for Dust Warfare!

All in doesn't even do it justice

I spent over $200 on Armorcast buildings at Adepticon so we could play with the full effect, put the buildings together with Super Glue so it'd be fast (well, made Russ put them together), and then snapped them apart to take them home, and then put them together again and painted them up in a week to gin up excitement locally. Oh, and that of course doesn't account for the dough I dropped at the FFG booth, both in one massive supply dump and then in bits and pieces all weekend long. By the end of the weekend I had a minimum of 1 of every Axis unit except one of the command squads and the gorillas . . . who are now enroute!

I had a GREAT game last night, using all of my new terrain. I'll hopefully be posting a battle report with pictures on my blog at some point in the next week or so if I can wrestle the time out of my schedule.

Just have to say, after EVERY game of Dust: Warfare I've played so far, entire sections of the game come back to me in my head as fully realized scenes from some corny war/horror movie mashup. Never played a game whose flow allowed for that.

Oh, and as far as Zombies vs Rocket Punch G.I.s . . . don't matter how powerful the Rocket Punch is if you can suppress them before you send in your dead heroes!

Great review of the game - thoroughly enjoyable.

Great review and great show! Hope you guys talk more about it in the future!

Battle report would be great!

You mentioned shopping around for terrain in the podcast - how do you compare Armorcast vs Battlefield in a Box (GF9)? My LGS has some of the GF9 stuff, and I was thinking about picking some up.

Definitely, zombies have never failed to impress me. I am considering getting enough for a full platoon… and a full platoon of apes…

So far, so good. I don't like Romeo giving feedback on mini's he hasn't dealt with. On the painting of the minis, I have had my Dust minis painted for over a year now, unsealed, and they look the same as they did from the first day I painted them after countless games.

Craig in NH said:

Good to see ya around,and loving the review and Thanks -Gordon

blkdymnd said:

Same here. And one thing nice about the slight softness is that if you drop them, they don't break. Drop a walker and you need to get out the glue (I unfortunately know from experience) - throw a soldier at the far side of the room as hard as you can, and it will be just fine.

Great to see the D6G digging into Dust Warfare!

I too have been going pretty hardcore in acquiring stuff for my Dust table.

D6G? I love that podcast. Except for that Craig guy… He's annoying.

About painting the mini's: To be fair Romeo has handled and played with the figs. We had a game with him at Adepticon.

However…

I should have brought this up when Romeo raised the concern that the models wouldn't hold paint well because they are so soft. Craig and I played the demo both last summer at GenCon and last month at Adepitcon with the 'premium painted' models shown in the book. They looked just fine at the end of the long weekend of gaming and used in a demo.

So like any models, prime 'em and coat 'em right and they should hold up just fine.

Now finished. Romeo is as clueless as I always pictured him to be. He had a chip on his shoulder about the minis from the beginning, and it bled into the rest of the review which was completely unfair. You guys were decently objective and that's appreciated, good and bad. I think most of the points were pretty informed. And I'm glad to see you guys totally on board. Paolo has been a pretty brilliant artistic director, I think that alone will keep the legs on this product as well as the support and seemingly very cohesive relationship with FFG.

Um . . . ok . . . .

Yeah, my decision at Adepticon came down to Gale Force 9 stuff or the Armorcast stuff. The cost was actually pretty close, to be honest, and the GF9 stuff comes painted . . . The final decision was the aesthetic. the GF9 is VERY much Faux 40K. You put that stuff down on the table and, in my mind, you're soaked up to your neck in GrimDark. Where as the Armorcast stuff looks like it came right out of Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.

Again, hoping for some free time to get some pics up . . . soonish . . .

Fair warning, though. Armorcast just decided to redo all their brick ruin molds, to add more details, remove the construction element from some of their items, and to add piled brick at the base of each wall to bulk them out. So right now it's not possible to order their stuff from their website.

Craig in NH said:

Thanks! I will keep an eye out for Armorcast.

Great review guys, first time hearing your show, but as someone with about the same gaming expience as Russ I agree with what you guys said. I hope FFG listens cause the fourth faction is highly important. Now for the SSU to arrive, did you guys get a good look at the SSU helicopters, I would love any info on them.

thanks

They had a couple units and one of the armored suits at Adepticon, and they looked amazing. The Premier Edition troopers had Molotov cocktails that were actually made out of translucent plastic, so they looked like real glass bottles! Mack was saying that the standard primed models will be made out of the same material, so although the bottles will be primed over, folks should be able to scrape the primer off the bottles if they want to take the time, and get the same effect.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the helicopters, so all I know is what I can see from the war store website, other online shop's pictures, and of course the cool Dust: Tactics Operation Novgorod rulebook they just posted up this week, which has the fluff and background desriptions of all the units, SSU, Axis, and Allies, that come in the new book. Some very cool stuff in there, and fun to speculate on how they'll work in :Warfare, based upon their :Tactics rules . . .

If you treat your minis like rubbish and throw them in a box then expect the paint to flake off just like it would with any miniature, pick them up and store with respect and they will last for ages, common sense yeah ?!

Good review and helped me to understand the game better, I enjoyed your closing statment of people on forums and in general some of the idiots in the hobby.

Great review, by far the best one I have heard so far. I have to agree that Romeo went a bit to far with the Gumby comments about the basic infantry but acknowledge that he is entitled to his own opinion based on his personal experience. To be honest I was a bit worried about this too at first but I have painted up several squads now with no problems, both repriming the minis (with Flames of War Army Painter brand primer for those that are interested) and painting/ washing straight over the minis as they come out of the box (Pics coming soon).

Thank you for taking the time to explain the game in detail and fully explaining the detail tactical interactions possible for both players throughout each turn. I would highly recommend that new players listen to your review.

Thanks again.

-jay

Nivanti said:

That was also my favorite part. Haters are the worst part of the gaming industry.

Hey Craig we really want to see your gaming tables for dust, been a fan of your work for a long time ans if thier is anyone whos not seen your work your going to be very surpised…sorry craig no presure…lol

-gordon

link to tables? I'm gathering parts for my first one now.

Well, you can see some buildings here .

The table itself is a generic mat . . . I don't make 'tables' anymore . . . not enough hours in the day. But the stuff that goes ON the tables, I'm still a big fan of.

What you'll see in the battle report are mostly Armorcast buildings with mounds of old extra Hirst Arts bits that have been quite literally hammered into submission.

The church is made from Pegasus Gothic sets, except the very top of the tower, which is a very difficult kit-bash of the GW balustrades, because of course they didn't fit The roofs are made from scratch from slate-shingle plasticard based upon plasticard frames.

To sort of kick things up a notch or two further, a made posters, based on real WWI and WWII posters with implanted DUST art, and put one on each building, so there would always be a couple facing you no matter where you were looking at the table from, and I used old GW water effects, which they don't even sell any more, to add puddles and standing water here or there, either from rain or coming out of pipes or piles of rubble.

I'll be taking more pictures of other battles, so there will be more chances to see this stuff, and other things, and I'll try to feature the church more thoroughly next time . . .

And thanks for all the kind words, guys! We have a strict No Hate policy on the show . . . but it's harder to police now that each episode features a guest host. And when one gets a burr up about something . . . and we don't know it's coming . . . well, it's hard to no hate the no hate . . . we tried to defend the minis, and they DO bend (although I just got Angela last night, and she was TOTALLY crushed by a less-than-stellar packing job by HOB on eBay . . . but 5 seconds in hot water and she was good as new!

Thanks again, guys!

~Craig

Craig, (and that Russ guy),

Downloading the episode now. Can't wait to hear your review; however, the no hate policy and your posts here pretty much let's me know what you thought.

Started demoing the game at my local store to good reviews. The store sold out of stuff after the first demo! Now we can't get any more due to out of stock. (ran into that problem with Warmachine) I need one more unit of Zombies with the two heroes, oh well.

Great looking table. I was thinking of going minimalistic on painting the minis at least until I can get some paint on all of them as I'm doing two armies and I'm a very sloooooow painter. I'm thinking of doing the boots, weapons, faces and hands on the first past. Did the mini's present any special issues pre primed like they are?

Other than the slightly bendy bits, the minis posed NO problems at all. I dry-brushed all my Original Core Set Axis, then hit some detail colors, and I was good to go. Like I said in the review, I was a little nervous to use hot water to straighten the models, but my eBay go-to gave me little choice . . . and it worked FINE!

Yeah, availability is a real issue around here all of a sudden as well. A HUGE order to a certain online store than sells war-like things, done as a giant joint order to save on shipping, just shipped with a lot of holes in it due to sudden lack of inventory . . . I'm just hoping _I_ don't get hit with the "I got a rock" syndrome . . . which happened to me last time

I can't help but feel, as I read those few vituperative negative comments I've found, that I'm playing a totally different game than those folks are. Quite literally there is NOTHING I don't LOVE about this rules set. The game the batrep was based on, for instance. To be honest, I really DON'T love the Assault Walkers. They don't seem to fit, power-level-wise. As Axis I just don't have a lot of tools to take the damned Punisher et.al. on. And when they get evaporated in activation 1 of turn 1 . . . well, I had a HUGE 40K moment . . . I felt like I'd lost my las-cannons, and the mean nasty Land Raider was going to own my whole army . . .

Except that I was able to limit its effectiveness with terrain and focus on the mission, and he had several fewer squads than I had due to his big points dump in the Heavy. So I hit him on the flanks, took out enough to get me a tie (so it would go to Army Points, in case he was able to take out a couple other cheap units, because I had him all up on Army Points at that stage), and then I faded back. Squeeked out a win in the last turn or so, and NEVER felt like my fate wasn't in my own hands.

So yeah, I just have to assume I'm playing a different game . . . . cuz this one rocks . . .

~Craig

This is an awesome review Thanks for doing it guys!