Hey! Saw the Dust Warfare book at my FLGS earlier this week and checked a bit in there and it was looking good.

I'm a great fan of Dust Tactics because it's quick to setup and teach, plays relatively quick (under 2 hours), intuitive rules and mechanics.

For a quick reference here's what I own and fully painted.

- Dust Tactics (original core set), Op. Cerberus, a set of gothic ruins from Battlefield in a box plus:

ALLIES:

1 Rhino, The Boss, Corps Officers, 1 Medium Assault Walker expansion, The Hammers, Tank Busters, Grim Reapers

AXIS:

1 Lara, Kommandotrupp, 1 Medium Panzer Walker expansion, Heavy Kommandotrupp, Heavy Recon Grenadiers, Special Ops Grenadiers, The Zombies

So a total of 3 Heroes, 3 medium walkers and many troops for both factions.

Having all those painted and seeing them on the battlefield is really rewarding and fun. Knowing that DT is a great board game that I love for the reasons above and many more, would Warfare be a good buy?

How much more investment would I need to first and more importantly, build a battlefield for Warfare? I certainly don't want something permanent (meaning that I don't want to use a table, set a battlefield on it and getting stuck eating over hills and miniature trees lol). I know I can buy some mats of other accessories but first i'd like to know what you think of Warfare and i'd really like to hear some comments from people coming from Dust Tactics!

Thanks all I really appreciate it!

Dust Warfare will play very differently from Dust Tactics, because it is a true miniatures game, whereas DT is a board game. Exact miniature positions, distances, and measured movement are important aspects of the game. It plays in about similar time as DT.

Few people make permanent fixed terrain boards - they're really nice to look at and play on, but they can get stale. For general play you want a flat, blank board that you can place terrain on however you want.

A 4' x 4' table (4'x6' for larger games) will work - as close as you can get, it doesn't have to be precise (I sometimes play on my 3.5'x5' dinner table). 2 folding sawhorses and a 4x8 sheet of plywood are a simple solution that can be easily stored away, and also has plenty of non-gaming related uses too.

For terrain, you don't need anything permanent, and you can use everyday objects for your terrain. Irregular shapes of cutout pieces of paper, cardboard, or fabric can represent forests, boxes for buildings, etc.

If you want to make nicer terrain, Dust is 1/48 scale (a lot of WW2 models in the scale), and is very close to model train O-scale.

• Forests Model: O-scale trees glued down to pieces of particle board with flocking/static grass glued down.
• Hills: Form sheets cut into hill-shaped pieces, layered on top with the edges cut at an angle (keep it very steep so the hill is stepped rather than sloped, it works better for models). Cover in thinned white/elmers glue to seal it, spray paint it brown (sealed first because spray paint will dissolve the foam), cover in elmers glue again and cover in static grass
• Buildings: Boxes work great as impassable buildings, then add O-scale buildlings. Anything of European style of mid 1900s and earlyer is appropriate

I also have a background in Dust tactics and love it. My friends and I got into it in anticipation of the warfare book. We all use to play 40k, but I hate all the 40k fluff (I dont like demons in space, actually I dont like demons at all). Anyway, DT is really fun and quick. But it can be a struggle to remove all you know about it to make the switch. Of the 3 of us one is still having a hard time with it. It sound like you have plenty of units to get started. I was a DT player, but I like DW more.

I find Tabletop wargaming supperior to miniatures based boardgames (like Tactics) in numerous ways, but your mileage may vary.

It isn't a must buy, miniaturees wargaming is more work to play and do right, but can be exceedingly rewarding.

Maybe find some people playing it locally and play a demo to see if it appeals to you?

No, it's not a 'must buy'. Many DT players are disapointed with it due to the way units have changed in the way they act being nothing like their DT counterparts - laser grenadiers being useless for one. You don't need to make a DW battlefield as you can still use the DT tiles, the grid doesn't matter. You would probably need to get some more terrain though, the building you have is great, get a couple more of them and you are ready to go.

Alot of Tactics players also like Warfare. Having played both I can honestly say that I prefer Warfare. Tactics is good but for me Warfare is great. I like the way the turn flows better in Warfare and the suppression/ reaction mechanics make for an interesting game. Id say Major is right and that most of the units have been slightly changed but none of the squads are useless. Squads are mostly nerfed somewhat with a few getting buffed- but in a good way for the games balance in my opinion. Anyway Id recommend giving it a go especially if you already have the minis.

I got into the Dust world through Warfare, but really if you're playing Tactics you're already buying the miniatures for D:W.

All you'd need is the Rulebook and you're good to go (assuming you've got terrain, etc. from Tactics).

I hate for my first post to shill, but over at D-W there's a fair few articles that discuss why getting into Dust: Warfare may or may not work for you. Might help, might not.

Agreeing with some that have posted before me -- check out the rulebook, see if any of your Tactics buddies want to give it a shot -- and then give it a couple games to get a handle on the rule changes.

I heard the DW rulebook sold in LGS have some errors in it and that buying the PDF would be better since you get the erratas with it.

Is that still true? Is there a reprint coming of the DW book I should wait for or should I buy it right now and print the erratas separately?

As far as I know the PDF is the same as the hard copy.

Buy whatever book is more convenient for you to use, then download the FAQ. There are only a few errors, and most of them are so obvious the FAQ wasn't needed to sort them out.

Felkor's right, the errata in the current FAQ is tiny, just some unit stats and a couple of rules. Nothing major. Most of the FAQ is made up of rules questions and clarifications.

Re: the OP's question, you only have to buy the Warfare rulebook (and CB Zverograd if you're playing SSU) and that's it, you're in. The rest is just buying minis. As for terrain, you can do that bit by bit. A building here, some plastic trees there. It all builds up, and buying terrain is like buying paint or hobby tools, you'll never regret it because it can always be used for something.

You can even get free terrain if you don't mind dead trees. Just google for "28mm free papercraft terrain" to go down that rabbit hole.

I love free paper terrain… print it out on cardstock and you are good to go. Mind you, I don't use it for Dust as I have plenty of "real" terrain enough to play dust with but for other games that need a crap load of terrain to play I use a bunch of shipping containers and buildings made out of paper that I downloaded free online…. never paper trees though, that just sounds wrong to me, lol. And terraclips Malifaux stuff is awesome as well but it doesn't really suit the look of Dust, but for other games is great terrain.

Welcome to Dust Warfare… C'mon you know you're gonna buy the book

I got started with Tactics in the beginning (2 years ago), anticipating Warfare or whatever was going to be the tabletop equivalent at the time. Wasn't disappointed. It's the most tactically deep miniatures game I've played in a while and is great fun. Definitely give it a go with the PDF version and test the waters a bit.

Bought the book at my FLGS earlier this evening…just got home from a game night of DT and Wings of Glory!

Gonna read the book and try Warfare ASAP!!!!! Look awesome!

Thanks all for the comments!