Poking The Bear

NEW RELEASES FOR DYSTOPIAN WARS, AND PREVIEWS

After the mounting horror and crushing disappointment of the end of the Marvel Universe Miniatures Game, I thought it was time for something a little more positive.

The guys over at Spartan Games have been very busy following their Kickstarter at the end of last year, and now we have our first glimpse at all of the new Expansion Boxes for the Core Nations! Their blog posts detailing the second wave of Battleships can be found here, while the new Expansion Boxes are discussed in full detail here. I'm not going to repost everything here, suffice to say that a lot of it looks really, really cool.

Big news aside from these new boxes for the Core Nations is the development of Egypt as a playable faction - and here is the render for their first vessel, the Sekhmet-class Armoured Cruiser. It looks fun! I'm going to resist picking one up (I have enough hovercraft in Dropzone Commander...) but I like the aesthetic and am relieved they didn't go for a more stereotypical extreme Ancient Egyptian theme.

The conclusion of Egypt’s long and bloody civil war saw a need for a complete redesign for the newly unified Republic and its military. With its borders constantly threatened by an ever-aggressive Ottoman Empire, a versatile fleet would be needed to defeat invaders from both the land and sea. The Sekhmet, like most Egyptian vessels, glides into combat on a powerful hover-platform, taking the fight to the enemy regardless of terrain. The extreme maneuverability of this platform, combined with powerful turbine engines, give the Sekhmet the ability to draft easily through the field of battle, able to maximise its deadly payload, like a dust devil.

In addition, they have released a new two-player boxed set, the Corsican Incident. Featuring two Mercenary forces battling it out in the Mediterranean, this is a great set for people wanting to add some Mercenary forces to their fleets, and even includes two new vessels - the Spuntone-class Gunship for the League of Italian States and the Hydra-class Rocket Cruiser for the Black Wolf Mercenaries. I have more than enough of these two fleets and will not be picking this set up, but when they become available individually I may partake!

Back to the Core Nations, the Russian Coalition has been holding my attention in recent times, so I thought I would have a closer look at their new range of releases.

The Magadan-class Large Submarine, also known as the Oktober-class by its crew due to the month it first set sail in 1875, provides a strong naval artillery presence for the Russian Coalition, allowing for coastal bombardments without the need for close range engagement

This model is lovely, but I am a sucker for Submarines. The shark-like design is cool and I especially love adding more mortars to the Russian arsenal

The Mezan-class Corvette. First built at opposite ends of the vast Russian Coalition, in the Alaska Oblast and the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Mezan began life as a field modification of the Kazimov-class Corvette. Mounting a battery of guns adapted from White Army artillery pieces created a small but powerful gunboat. By mid-1875 the design had been officially recognised and was being produced in all major Russian naval yards

This Corvette is cool - I especially like the guns built into the hull of the ship. The Russian fleet seems to be experiencing a thickening to their armour, but I think it still fits the older aesthetic nicely

The Onega-class Light Cruiser provides Russian Coalition Fleet Commanders with a low draft medium class vessel perfectly suited to engage multiple small enemy targets at once. The initial design was a product of the Far East Fleet’s naval architects, following the final lifting of the siege of Vladivostok in 1874.

This vessels looks like a Light Cruiser - much smaller and compact than the bloated Cruisers and Gunships of the Russian fleet. I like it a lot, as with the other releases, especially the metal grills running through the ship

Traditional gunnery, long the staple in Russia’s war-machine, was in need of improvement if they hoped to remain a threat to their enemies and their potent new vessels. Markov, the Antarctican Traitor, having proved himself time again to be the genius messiah of the Motherland, secreted himself away to a hidden laboratory in the cold miserable Island of Yuzhny. He had long planned to develop a new form of cannon, a terror weapon with which to break the will of proud enemy commanders and with the Tsar’s enthusiastic support the Pakhtusov Mk I ‘Terror’ Battleship rolled out of dry dock, allowing him to realise his design.

This is definitely my favourite, and I think I will struggle to resist getting two! Love those ornate towers!

So there we are, after months of nothing Spartan are flooding the market with new stuff and trying to bring Dystopian Wars back into the light. I hope it is enough! 

Thanks for reading, 

George