Dystopian Wars: Competitive Basics

 

I’ve been ruminating on the general concepts of how to win at Dystopian Wars for the Warsaw tournament, and I figured I’d write it up for people to argue over. This is aimed primarily at 2000 points, though I’ve written a bit about the differences to 1500 below. It's a bit rambley, though I hope the core idea comes through.

 

Haunebus preparing to drop some SCIENCE on Canadians

As for baseline conditions: Tournaments here are run with good levels of terrain and a houserule limiting lists to a maximum of 50% aerial units. I don’t think the conclusions listed here are significantly altered by this house rule, though it does make Iron Skies harder to run. However, since the list fits just fine into the suggested framework, I don’t think there’s any issues there.

Summary

To save you all from my ramblings, I’ll put the conclusion at the front. How should you put together a competitive list?

• Your main focus should be on units that can sink a cruiser in one activation turn 1

  • This requires either good long range weapons, closing range weapons on very fast (>12”) or vanguard units, or point blank weapons on Forward Deployment units.

  • If the unit is not aerial, prefer long range weapons.

  • It’s a good idea to avoid submerged weapons if possible. Aerial units are a big threat.

  • To get a sense of how much damage you can expect from a unit, you can take a look at my post on basic statistics here.

  • Crippling multiple cruisers instead of sinking one is also decently viable, except against Crown.

  • In most cases, this will require 3 cruisers, but certain heavy cruisers can manage with 2. Flagships usually require heavy firepower, though a few don't. Frigates generally need a full unit.
    

• Bring Mark of Fate or Fortunes of War

  • There’s an argument to be made that if you assume everyone is planning competitive lists, then they won’t bring valuable valor effects anyway, and you can get by with Devil’s own Luck or Dark Hand to deal with double activation cards. I personally think the risk of the opponent bringing units that are good without the valor effect (Zeppelins, Heavy Particle Cannons) is too high for that, but your choice.

• Bring 2 units that can reach objectives turn 1.

  • This depends on the missions that are being played. The baseline assumption for me here is based on Outpost Assault.

  • This will generally require 11” movement, but more is better.

  • Make sure you deploy them properly so they can do their job

  • Cheaper is usually better here. I’d probably still try to make sure they can contribute in the initial exchange of fire, but in this case you can compromise.

• Have another 2 units lined up that can reach the objectives turn 2.

  • There’s a decent chance that your initial objective takers will get wiped t1.

  • These units don’t generally have to be anything special, though of course the firepower requirement should be met by as much of your list as possible. Being decent in a brawling situation is a plus though.

  • Mandatory flagships often end up covering this role for me.
    

Target priority: Your goal is to reduce your opponent’s firepower. The best way to do that is to sink or cripple a unactivated ship so that its unit can no longer sink or cripple one of yours in return

As a rule of thumb, that means shooting one cruiser out of a unit, or 2 frigates if they are close enough to be a threat. Flagships tend to be tough enough that it’s better to deal with cruisers or frigates first, though there are exceptions.

What I didn't list here was toughness. This mainly depends on what faction you are playing, and from what I've seen most people play the faction they own and like. A couple of exceptions are listed in the actual heart of the post below, and I might go into more detail when I get to the individual factions.

Core Concepts

Breakpoint Calculations

I think the core piece the game balances around is the breakpoint for crippling and sinking a cruiser. Against the average A6C12H4/4 cruiser, you need 24 hits to cripple and 36 hits to sink from full health. A 3 cruiser unit shooting Heavy Gun Batteries at closing range averages 29 hits; the chances to cripple or sink are summarized below.

Unit	Cripple Chance	Sinking Chance
3 Cruisers, HBG’s, Closing	80%	26%
3 Cruisers, HBG’s & Torps, Closing	99%	73%
2 Cruisers, HBG’s & Torps, Closing	80%	20%

This means that our 2x front gun cruiser with torpedos, in a unit of 3, will probably kill one cruiser in a mirror match, and the return fire from the now 2 cruiser unit would be unlikely to kill one in return. This builds the core of Activation Denial, using your units to deny your opponent dice or even whole activations.

Range

Our chances with HGB cruisers looks quite good at closing range, but long is a different story.

Unit	Cripple Chance	Sinking Chance
3 Cruisers, HBG’s & Torps, Long	86%	24%
3 Cruisers, HBG’s & Torps, Closing	99%	73%

While the chance to cripple stays respectable, you’re very unlikely to sink the cruiser in this constellation. From the size of the table and deployment zones, plus the speed of units, you can derive that while getting long range shots turn 1 is quite easy, getting closing range shots is much more difficult and generally requires engaging an already activated unit or having vanguard (32” between deployment zone, -20” closing range, means you need to move a minimum of 12” to shoot a unit deployed directly opposite). God help you if your list is focused on point blank (unless you can cheat, as discussed below).

Keep in mind that moving forward to engage at closing during the initial exchange will also leave you more exposed for incidental fire that would otherwise not have a target.

Defensive Abilities

The goal for your defenses is to still allow your ship to fire at full or crippled after being shot at, or failing that, to make your opponent waste more shots to finish the ship.

So how do defensive abilities stack up? As the attacker, we’re going to use the HGB + Torps 3 Cruiser unit from above, against various targets.

Target Unit	Cripple Chance	Sinking Chance
Blucher (A6C12H4/4)	99%	73%
Kutsov (A6C12H4/4 Ablative)	99%	66%
Lexington (A7C12H6/3)	84%	35%
Ulysses (A6C11H4/4 Luminiferous)	85%	28%

As we can see here, Ablative is not enough to make a difference. The raw stat increase on the Lexington (particularly A7 combined with the high battle ready hull) is enough to make a difference, and Lumiferous Defences is king.

Generally, abilities that amount to a ~0.8 multiplier to expected hits are worth bringing if you want to have a more surviveable unit. This includes Luminiferous Defences, Storm Generator, Orichalcite Construction, and Obscured (but keep in mind many rules let you ignore obscured).

Another axis for being tougher is ignoring crippled on your weapons (usually only on your primary weapon). This is a rather rare ability, found on Crown and Scandinavians, as well as French Surface Ships.

Crown can also, in most cases, practically deny the first volley via their Guardian pool.

Point or Trade Efficiency

Looking into our calculations above, we see that 3 cruisers can sink 1 in their activation, giving us a 3 to 1 ratio in points spent to points sunk and a 1 to 1/3 ratio in activations spent to activations prevented. The first model removed usually has an outsized impact, since it weakens a unit enough that it can’t do the same in return, except for units that don’t need to combine fire. This is more of a general rule of thumb than a hard and fast calculation, but it’s useful to keep in mind.

Firing Unit	Point Efficiency
Cruisers	3 to 1
Heavy Cruiser	2.5 to 1
Point-Blank Focused Cruisers	2 to 1
Frigates (M1)	2 to 1
Battleships (With Heavy Firepower)	2.5 to 1
Battleships (Without Heavy Firepower)	lol
Submarauders	1.5 to 1

Defenses

As a small aside, here’s the difference between Guns and Rockets at closing, using our earlier cruiser against a Blucher.

Unit	Cripple Chance	Sinking Chance
3 Cruisers, Guns & Torps, Closing	99%	73%
3 Cruisers, Rockets & Torps, Closing	97%	64%

As you can see, while allowing defenses does drop your chances a bit, it’s not a dealbreaker.

Special Rules

Fortunes of War

To illustrate the necessity of bringing a fortunes effect, how does the battleship fare? And more importantly, how does it fare without heavy firepower?

Unit	Cripple Chance	Sinking Chance
Battleship, 3 HFP HBG’s & Torps, Closing	93%	50%
Battleship, 3 HBG’s & Torps, Closing	63%	7%

With Heavy Firepower, battleships have a very good chance to cripple and a decent chance to sink a cruiser. Without it, the battleship’s chances look much bleaker.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Double activation cards let you reduce the combat effectiveness of at least 1 extra unit in your initial activation, reroll any dice effectively staples a 1.5 multiplier to an attack, and there’s several other valor effects that push attacks from crippling to sinking.

Lacking Fortunes thus leaves you at the card’s mercy. Bringing only a single counter effect (Devil’s Own Luck, Dark Hand) does protect you from getting double activated on, but in my opinion this is not enough.

Conversely, assuming the competitive list is bringing Fortunes means that you should not bring units that rely on having a valor effect to do damage.

Objectives and Victory Points

What about the thing that actually wins you games, Victory Points? Most missions have some amount of objectives scattered around that you’ll get 3 to 5 points for holding. There’s a few that score based on table quarters, and some that give you points for having surviving units. In my experience, this mostly amounts to where the battle takes place. Since you can score off cards, and wiping your opponent also gives 5 victory points, going all in on objectives is only possible on very few missions (and even then, only if the dice favor you).

What I’ve found is that you want to be able to reach at least 2 objectives on your half of the table turn 1 (usually requiring around 13” of movement), as well as having enough activations around that you can move a second unit onto the point turn 2. This depends heavily on the missions you’re playing, so when planning for a tournament you should evaluate what the missions require.

Fog of War does present an interesting hurdle, but as long as you’ve taken it into account during list building it’s not an issue.

1500 vs 2000

From what I’ve noticed, in traditional engagements, 1500 places a higher priority on activation advantage and range/LOS control, while 2000 leans more towards target priority and activation denial. On a 6’x4’ table, a 1500 point fleet will be able to hide well enough to deny an enemy good shots on some units on deployment, while at 2000 almost every unit will have something to shoot at. 1500 also makes it a lot harder to bring multiple 3 cruiser units, so denying an activation is more difficult.

Aerial

The big boogieman of the meta. I think the most important part is ignoring submerged weapons. As we saw above, a cruiser’s torpedo volley is necessary to ensure a good chance of sinking an enemy cruiser. So if the torpedoes can’t connect, the aerial cruiser can still return some fire (This also combos well with ignoring crippled guns on the Prydain). Ignoring LOS can be mitigated with aerial terrain, and the range band increase should not bother a list built around long range fire anyway. 

Prydains laying down fire

 

SRS

End of turn damage is a huge impediment to a playstyle revolving around reducing enemy firepower. You can stack every SRS token you own next to my ship, and I’ll still get to activate at full firepower. As such, you generally want just enough SRS to play Fog of War and maybe cripple/sink a cruiser, but any heavier quickly becomes a detriment. There are a couple of hyper efficient choices (Imperium Bombers) that can be used to take out a high priority flagship at the end of turn 1, but I think they’re not sufficient into optimized lists.

Frigates (M1)

I really like M1’s, but they do generally have a problem for competitive play, range. There are few M1 options that do optimal damage at Long range, and even those that do are generally worse than their cruiser weight competitors.

However, they do have several advantages too, generally hitting harder up close (usually being more point efficient than cruisers), faster and more maneuverable, and usually being difficult to engage efficiently.

Forward Deployment

If you want to be able to reliably use point blank firepower, this is pretty much your only option, and there aren’t many units that have access to it. The standout choices in my opinion are the Enlightened Haunebu and Euclids and the Imperium Malus.

Submarauder/Unexpected Arrival

The gold standard here is probably the Imperium’s Einherjar, having a very good chance to sink a cruiser in one activation, and a second if it can get the valor effect off. That would be great, but the problem is that this costs you the most important activations against a long range list. At 1500 this can be mitigated via terrain to some degree (hiding your main fleet), but at 2000 I think the opportunity cost is too high.

It’s rare to find a unit isolated enough that your opponent won’t be able to deal with the submarauder that turn. You also tend to eat a lot of incidental fire that otherwise wouldn’t have a target (Broadsides), meaning the cost to your opponent is lower than it should be. 

Aerial Units are also a hard counter to most of these units. 

(Strategic) Reserves

I’ve not had this be impactful against me, even under optimal conditions (point blank unit coming in turn 1 on an exploding result). First, the math on how firing on crippled effects your results.

Unit	Cripple Chance	Sinking Chance
3 Cruisers, Guns & Torps, Closing	99%	73%
3 Cruisers, Guns & Torps, Closing, Crippled	93%	18%

That’s already looking pretty grim, and that’s what happens 50% of the time. For point blank units which can put out excessive fire this might still be worth it, but to me the biggest downside is that you definitely won’t reach objectives before turn 3. The incidental broadside fire downside of submarauder also applies here.

I’d love to see someone make this work, but I’m doubtful it’s currently possible.

Columbia crashes in from reserves to sink some destroyers

Blast

Either your opponent stays clumped and you can get some juicy double or triple damage shots, or they spread out, making their deployment, maneuvering, and objective play much more difficult. As long as they can still sink a cruiser, I’m generally ok with bringing some as a more inefficient choice that forces your opponent into suboptimal choices. Enlightened Heavy Particle Cannons, Imperium Berthas, or Union Washingtons are all valid choices in my opinion.

It’s also possible to bring blast as a counter for m1’s specifically. They’ll have to clump up to hold an objective, which they’re otherwise quite good at. If you’ve got the option, it’s probably worth it.

Goals

Now that we’ve gone into some of the realities about how the game functions, let’s get into what that means for actually winning the game. Your goal is to reduce your opponent’s firepower faster than they can reduce yours. This leads to a snowballing effect, as more of your units will retain combat effectiveness compared to theirs. There’s a couple of different philosophies for this that I touched on earlier, so let’s go through them.

Activation Denial

A sunk unit doesn’t get to shoot. Failing that, a unit missing models won’t shoot as effectively, and so on. Conversely, a unit that has already lost models is less likely to sink enemy ships, so activating it should generally be left until after your units that can still reduce enemy firepower. The parameters you should be looking at is how much can I reduce incoming fire, and how can I deal maximum damage to the opponent (Wherein the priority is Sunk > Crippled > Damage)

Activating a unit that has lost combat effectiveness for “At least I’ll still get some shots out of it before it sinks” is you falling for the Sunk Cost fallacy. It’s possible that a reduced unit will still be able to reduce enemy firepower, but will it do as much as another undamaged unit?

With Catastrophic Explosions being what they are, you should prioritize full units that have not activated yet. If you can knock them below the cripple threshold in expected hits, it’s a whole lot more likely that this unit’s activation now won’t be able to reduce your output.

Range/LOS Control and Activation Advantage

Through clever use of terrain and range during deployment, the idea is that your opponent, acting first, has to make inefficient shots that fail to reduce your combat effectiveness, while you can then move to optimal range and blast their activated units. Your early activation can be spent on support ships or moving lighter units behind terrain.

This primarily works when both players are bringing closing or point blank focused units and little in the way of aerials, but falls apart against long range focused lists with aerial support. With 2000 point lists, it also becomes very hard to actually hide everything. I think you could make this work at 1500, particularly with aerial terrain, but a long range list will be an uphill battle.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try to deny your opponent every advantage. Priorities Activation Denial, but every shot you can make worse for your opponent is another incremental advantage.

Objectives

In most cases, playing mission objectives occurs naturally as you’re dismantling your opponent’s fleet. If your opponent tries to hang back to hide from your guns you can generally build up your score and put more units on objectives, making you harder to dislodge.

One thing I’ve noticed is players like putting their extreme range artillery ships in the corners for safety. The problem there is that they’re generally too far away from the action to contribute towards holding an objective. I generally aim to have 2 units able to reach objectives turn 1, and then another 2 slower units that can reach them turn 2 if necessary. If that’s covered, you should still align any artillery so that they can reach an objective turn 3 if necessary.

While a single crippled ship remaining from a unit can still score, in the initial exchange of fire, focus on knocking down your opponent’s firepower as much as possible. Knocking multiple units down to 2 cruisers will let you pull ahead in the damage race and then clean up later.

A lot of this depends on the mission though, so planning for what will be going on at the tournament you’re going to is essential.

Tooth vs. Tail

To misuse a military term, this is the percentage of your list spent on offensive units versus units that don’t contribute to sinking your enemy. I would go so far as to consider any unit that isn’t reducing your opponent’s firepower in the initial exchange of fire part of the tail (no, fury olegs are not a good choice).

One common problem I see in this direction is forcing yourself to bring Supply Depot for your Limited weapons. If your opponent doesn’t wipe out something like a unit of Washingtons immediately, you still need to actually roll a blank for it to be a problem. If you’re in a position to worry about it during the game, you’re already in a pretty good spot. Still, Supply Depot units usually have other useful abilities as well, just don’t consider them a must-take if you have Limited weapons.

Closing

I realize this draws a very narrow circle around what is potentially competitive, but I haven’t exactly seen much that makes me think I’m wrong. It was interesting that there were less aerial units being played at the tournament. My current theory is a potential over-correction for the addition of aerial terrain, though I think the final effect was small.

I’ll probably work on an analysis of the top lists from the last couple of tournaments next, or possibly a quick faction overview, through the lens presented here.