I've decided to set up a Dust Warfare website. The game is awesome, I love playing it whenever I can, and it's here to stay, so to me this is a no-brainer decision. The site has been cooking for a little while and will launch soon.

The purpose of this post is mainly to open the doors to anyone who'd like to submit an article or two. Obviously I'll be writing for the site, but I don't know everything there is to know about DW and it'd be boring to have just one person's view on everything, so I'd like to ask the community for some help! You can submit pretty much any type of article as there is more than likely a category that it can fit into, including strategy, terrain, rules questions, op-ed, army list discussion and so on.

Although I haven't finalised this yet, certain types of articles will always go online on the same day (so, for example, strategy on Tuesdays, batreps on Thursdays and so on). Also, if you'd like to write regularly, that's cool too. PM me here and we'll work something out.

Hey dude, good to see more people willing to chip in more to help foster this game's community.

First of all, have you contacted FFG regarding your plans for the website? They might be able to provide some useful resources to help make the site flourish.

As far as existing community sites go for correspondence and cross-promotion, Dust-War seems to be taking off nicely. They've even secured interviews with some big names behind Warfare's development.

dust-war.com/

Doraiya said:

Thanks, I want to see the game and the community go from strength to strength. Warfare is too good to just wither away like so many games do these days (although I think it has enough momentum to prevent that from happening).

Dust-War has done a lot in the short time they've been around, and getting interviews at this stage with three of the main people behind Warfare is pretty impressive!

I like your enthusiasm, though I think it is FAR too early to predict if this game has what it takes to survive "long term".

That being said I think you should go for an angle that isn't already being covered by other Dust sites.

I think rather than another site with guys blogging and writing random artices I think you should do something that has it's own identity:

A Dust batrep site for example.

Come up with a characterful format and visual style for showcasing battlereports and have that as your focus.

Call it "Dust: Front lines" or whatever.

People could submit their batreps using your format. They could post pics from their games in your galleries, upload files of custom senarios, share campaign ideas, you could have scenario design contests, etc.

I'm talking good 'ol map/photo/text based batreps with cool pictures, painted armies cool scenaros and themed terrain.

(And NOT video batreps; these are often unwatchable tbh).

It could be a way to really build up fan-created game content and promote the game visually.

This would be more useful/unique and better serve the game/on-line community then another blog-style site trying to do it all imho.

Cannor said:

Thank you! We have a dedicated, driven team trying to make Dust-War the definitive site for Dust Warfare.

I agree with the aforementioned post - be unique! If you are trying to break away from the pack, make it something that no one else does.

If you get rolling, feel free to shoot me a means to share your site (banner, link, etc) and we will work on fostering a strong community together.

On a self-promotional aside, look for Dust-War to be launching a Podcast in the near future!

I should clarify my initial post; it does look a bit like those posts you see on videogame forums when someone starts a mod, and they say they need coders, artists, musicians etc. when all they'll be doing is "design".

The site will indeed start small because by nature it's a new site. As I said in the OP, I don't know everything about DW, so I'll write about what I do know. I just want to keep things open and not turn away someone just because what they want to write about doesn't "fit" (although, at the same time, it's not a good idea to be top-heavy with certain types of articles). Also, the site won't be a blog, but more of a magazine-style site. Because it isn't up yet it's hard to show where I'm coming from (and I'd rather show than tell), but I do have lot of influences from other types of gaming that may or may not have seeped into the design of this site!

Also, the site will be doing something that is, at least right now, unique among Dust sites: news. There isn't anywhere to go if you want to find out what's happening in Warfare on a micro level: new articles, new videos, upcoming events etc. that are scattered around. You might think there isn't much going on, but you'd be surprised!

@Kommissar Zeitsev: I agree about video batreps, they're often a bit clunky. The problem is that they're often not full games, but someone talking about what they just did while pointing a camera at a static battlefield. I recently watched some videos on YouTube where two Japanese players played a game of Warfare and kept the camera rolling (albeit over 3 videos with some edits to fit inside YouTube's 15 minute limit). It was much longer, but easier to watch because I could try to work out next moves and see the tension of dice rolls.

@em_en_oh_pee: Looking forward to the podcast!