Dystopian Wars Tournament Report: World Domination 2025

It was once again time for the annual World Domination tournament in Warsaw, this year also taking the title for the first Dystopian Wars Tournament of the new edition (before the beta had even ended). I had a great time last year, and so another trip to the north was arranged.

 

Absolutely amazing Trophies this year!

We were playing Launch Beta 2, so Agitation weapons were still at 2M, and generator ships had 10” range. 1500 points, on 6ft by 4ft tables with a good amount of terrain. Clouds were treated as LoS blockers to aerial and fog for everything else. Islands were played at M6 for large and M4 for small.

My List

Moskva Heavy Battleship (All Guns, Chain of Command)

Norilsk Heavy Cruiser x2 (All Guns)

Kutsov Cruiser x2 (All Guns)

Stoletov Ekranoplan Harrier x4 (All Guns)

Dragunov Ekranoplan Brawler x4 (All Guns)

Hermes Supply Freighter

 

I was trying to get as many cruiser killing activations as I could, while still retaining 6 activations. At 1500 I think activation advantage is still more relevant than at 2K, and it worked out alright. 6 activations (and thus 6 drops) did mean I lost the first activation a few times. Listbuilding also felt quite a bit tighter compared to 3^rd; there was generally less on the table overall.

You might have noticed I like Gun Batteries. 30” on them is a godsend, and I doubled down on that. Of particular note are the Gun Batteries on the Stoletov. They can combine with the katyushas to still get 13 dice at closing, leaving you with almost the same punch as extreme range. It’s very hard to stay at extreme range, so that proved very useful. It also allows you an extra attack that can clear a M2.

Games

Sadly, I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have.

Game 1: Meeting Engagement

My first game came down to playing (pretty much) against the Enlightened list that I was also considering. Beamer Hypatia, 2 Agitator Tacitus, 2 Quintillians, 4 Agitator Euclids, 5 Diogenes, and 5 Merians. My goals for Deployment were keeping the Moskva away from the all the agitators, and my Ekranoplans away from the Quintillians, which worked out decently.

Notice the suspiciously Hypatia-shaped hole in the middle?

I finished deploying first, so my Stoletovs immediately got to play with the Hypatia. Their Katyusha volley immediately crippled it, getting lucky with a System Failure. The Dragunovs finished it with their torpedoes on the next. Meanwhile the Tacitus blew up one of my Norilsks. This pretty much set the tone for the encounter, with us blowing away each other’s units while I slowly advanced to the other side of the board to score the mission. In the end I’d mostly shot away the opposing fleet, while my dragunovs and kutsovs crossed the midline to finally score the mission Round 3.

The 2M agitators did not prove to be a particular problem, though I can see how 2M at closing could be unintended. Overall it was a fun game, but the generator ship deathstar tends to fall apart when you take out the keystone and that proved easy enough.

Game 2: Salvage Rights 

Vlastic brought an impressively hard Crown list lead by 2 Sabres and a Ganges, allowing him to bring 2 terrifying units of 3 Prydains, 3 Torpedo Pictons, and 3 Caliburns. He spread out his objectives on both sides of the table, while I clustered mine on my left, leading to something of a refused flank. However, he deployed his Pictons for the far objective, so that wasn’t too much of a detriment. My main goal initially was taking out the Prydains, since their damage output looks absolutely terrifying.

Absolutely terrifying

My opening moves were mostly trying (and failing) to score the mission and crippling Prydains, mostly failing to kill them in one go. The combination of unconventional target and guardian generators meant they barely survived a lot of shots that should have killed them, leading to annoying second volleys to finish them (a task which I usually use torpedoes for, which also doesn’t work here). And of course the cherry on top is being able to auto-pass crew checks to keep shooting. Meanwhile, the pictons and prydains got to work on my Moskva, crippling it. I played my ekrnoplans fairly defensively, which kept a decent amount alive through round 1, but my cruisers and flagship suffered in their stead.

Round 2 saw the Prydains taking a bite out of my lighter forces, killing 2 Stoletovs and a Dragunov. The Pictons also took out a heavy cruiser. The remaining Norilsk managed to cripple the Ganges, and the Prydains were also mostly gone by the end. My Moskva still hung on with 5 criticals, managing to cripple a Prydain.

While I had been in the lead round 1 and 2, the damage to my forces caught up to me at this point. The fairly undamaged Pictons and Sabres cleaned house, finishing up my Moskva and doing heavy damage to the Kutsovs and Dragunovs, while my return fire was mostly ineffectual. Still, we both tried to get lucky with salvage.

Round 5 started with us neck and neck, trying to pull ahead on points to win. I managed to still score the objective twice (Hermes ftw!) before a broadside from the Caliburns ripped through my remaining Dragunovs. Still, when we tallied up I was ahead by 1 point.

It really ended on a nailbitter, and was fun the whole way through. I dislike the random scoring on the mission though. I should have probably taken out a Picton and a Sabre earlier, but I focused too much on taking out all the Prydains first.

Game 3: The Oil Fields

Time to take on Kaptur. By the 3^rd game in a day I’m usually dead on my feet, but needs must. He brought a more balanced Crown list, led by a Britannia with attached Hotspur, 3 Albions, 2 Prydains, 3 Excaliburs, and 2 Athelstans. I again decided to focus on the Prydains first, and then the Britannia and Excaliburs. The Albions should have been higher on my target list. Note that we forgot about the secondary, though neither of us had deployed in a way that would have let us score it anyway. The Platforms also felt very far back on 6ft by 4ft, so we’d probably move them in further next time.

Festivities began with the Prydains taking out a Norilsk, but the main event was the Stoletovs throwing a full volley at the Britannia. 52 Katyusha dice, translating to 57 hits. But this is Kaptur. 4 SRS tokens, plus a pile of guardian points led to 42 defence results, leading to an anemic 3 damage. I think I should have hit the albions instead. Still, the rest of the plan proceeded as intended, with Prydains dropping from the sky and my Dragunovs advancing towards the opposing oil platform. Side note, skimmers ignoring submerged weapons may have caused some psychic damage to Kaptur. He was not a fan.

In Round 2 the Britannia opened up on the Moskva, crippling it. Battleships are no longer a joke. On the left flank, the Stoletovs and Kutsovs are fighting the Albions, coming out the worse for the exchange. On the other flank, the Dragunovs have a better time, beating back the Excaliburs with help from the Moskva for the Athelstans. This is basically the theme for the remainder of the game, with my forces slowly ground down as I try to take the opposing oil field. While my Dragunovs do succeed, they are wiped out right after, along with the rest of my forces.

Another amazing game, though I wasn’t quite able to pull it off. We actually scored the same on mission + kills, but he pulled ahead on cards, which I might be a bit salty about. I think my central mistake was going for the Britannia with my Stoletovs, I should have wiped an Albion instead.

Game 4: The Archipelago

Absolutely beautiful fleet

Jan’s list went all in on the Ice Maiden, bringing along a Konig chaser to keep it safe. The rest thus came out somewhat weaker, with 2 Ferdinands, 2 Bluchers, and some Sigimers. Since this was Launch Beta 2, the Ice Maiden’s front guns were definitely anemic. Still, I deployed to keep my Moskva initially hidden from anything with Voltaic, and tried to stay out of the path of the behemoth opposite. I planned to prioritize the Konig, since I did not want to chew through another 20 hits on the Ice Maiden, plus whatever defensive dice the shroud gen added.

The battle began with a war crime, the Ice Maiden taking out my poor Hermes. I locked in on the Konig, starting out with my Norilsk and Moskva, finally sinking it with my Dragunovs. I was sweating a bit there, it ate quite a lot of fire between the generators and the SRS tokens from the Ice Maiden. The 2 cruiser units my opponent brought proved insufficient for dealing with my forces, and after the Kanig sunk the writing was on the wall.

In round 2 the Ice Maiden reached the central island, but my Ekranoplans smelled blood and sank one cruiser after the other. The Moskva also contributed, dropping shell after shell onto a Ferdinand, eventually finishing it with torpedoes. My cruisers took the brunt of the incoming fire.

Round 3 started with just the Ice Maiden and Sigimers across the table. I cleaned up the Sigimers and hid my Ekranoplans behind the central objective, keeping them safe from the Ice Maiden and holding the objective. I elected not to go for the kill, since I had the game on mission points anyway.

Another fun game, with hiding from the Ice Maiden being the main goal. It’s clear that you still need to build for cruiser killer dice pools, double cruiser units only work if they can bring enough dice for that breakpoint. Defensive SRS looks like it might really work, though I’m not sure if you can bring enough coverage to stop your opponent from picking you off in detail. Still, if you have a priority unit, it might be worth bringing some SRS to help keep it safe.

Game 5: Recon Duty

My final game ended up being against Empire running a Yangtze, 2 Yaoji, 3 Osaka, 2 Ziwei, 8 Shanghai, and 2 Hermes. My opponent placed his indirect ships behind the large island on my right, with the rest of his forces more centrally from there. I placed my Ekranoplans on the right flank behind as much cover as I could, but with a clear line up the side of the table. The rest of my forces also went towards the center from there; I figured I would win a frontal engagement.

Stoletovs advancing single file to hide their numbers

And that’s what happened. There was only one unit that really brought cruiser killing firepower, the Osakas, and in my first activation my Moskva crippled one. The Stoletovs shot up the side of the table to take out one of the Yaoji Bombardment Cruisers, and things devolved from there. My opponent put up a valiant struggle, but his list just didn’t have enough firepower to have a chance. The Shanghais did end up doing some damage.

It was a fun game to close out the tournament, and I hope I’ll get to face Thagg again next time. Alchemical looks like another unique approach to the game, by stacking disorder on multiple targets in an activation.

List Notes

So overall, the list worked mostly as expected. Ablative was useful, but less than I’d hoped. Crown Guardian Gens definitely proved tougher against initial strikes. All guns ended up fine. I might have switched to a few railguns if we’d gotten the buffs already, but I don’t think it would have helped much.

MVP’s were definitely the Ekranoplans, Stoletovs into hard targets and Dragunovs for splitting fire and some great spikes into surface unit. The Moskva also pulled its weight, though I never got close enough to use the shockwave generator.

The lowest performing unit was definitely the Kutsovs, which was to be expected. The 2 cruiser units were also not as resilient as I would have liked; I usually lost a Norilsk before it activated. Dropping the Kutsovs and upping the Norilsk to 3 would have probably made for a better list overall. Chain of Command was decent, but the 10” range felt very limiting.

I realized after I sent it that my list would be quite fragile, but that’s the nature of the beast with M2’s.

The Hermes, on the other hand, was great. I never reloaded a limited weapon, but the spare activation, extra deploy, and extra hull for grabbing objectives were all very useful. It also gives a moral victory when my opponent commits war crimes.

Impressions

It’s the same game: If you liked 3^rd edition, you’re going to like 4^th (unless you were playing all carriers all the time). We were still throwing units of cruisers at each other and blowing away units. In a more competitive sense, the game still rewards positioning and target prioritization.

I had more fun than in 3rd: The core system is definitely smoother than before. It doesn’t feel as much as a forgone conclusion with certain lists, and the increase of closing range to 10”-30” makes more choices viable.

Big ships are more viable: With the baking in of Heavy Firepower, Battleships can’t be turned off by canceling their valor effects anymore. Also, a crippled battleship can (most of the time) throw out just as much fire as it did at battle-ready, making these behemoths feel tougher than cruisers.

Lethality is about the same: Dice pools went up, but so did required hits. I did notice that clever use of terrain is rewarded more, though this applies more to attacking cruisers and frigates than battleships. There might also be a possible play-style revolving around defensive carrier use, but that’s still unclear and my hit em in the face list worked fine.

On the topic of Lethality . . .

Scoring: VPR earned from kills came in the range of 40-60 points, Missions 20-30, and cards came in around 30-40 with some spikes. Most cards scored came down to kill something or have a M1-M2 unit near something. My close games ended up decided by who scored more on cards, which feels like one player got luckier with their hand. This also further reinforced how focused on killing the enemy the game was, and made the actual mission fairly irrelevant. Salvage Rights was also still a crapshoot on scoring the mission, and Recon Duty and Meeting Engagement mostly came down to killing each other.

Little ships are still strong, but suffer more from terrain: Obscuring and hampered mean a unit of M1-M2’s can give away ridiculous numbers of defence dice. If your opponent’s ship is partially hidden behind an island, they get the island’s mass for each firing model, so my stoletovs occasionally had to punch through +18 defence dice pools.

Special Deployment Actions look like a big downside: Since they count against your deployment count for getting first activation, most games I did not end up using my mines. This also proved disadvantageous for the japanese ships my last opponent brought.

SRS: Offensive SRS looks pretty dead to me. Doing 1 random critical to an enemy ship is not enough to make me consider bringing them and the few times SRS got used offensively didn’t move the needle either. Defensive SRS, on the other hand, might have a future.

As far as giving offensive SRS a bit of a bump, I would consider making SRS attacks deal 1 disorder in addition to the critical. Double down on the debuff, and adding a way to lower the output from the opposing ship. My other idea is making surgical strike convert one roll to the stated result, instead of doubling them. That could let you use some SRS types for a fixed debuff game plan. 

 

Conclusion

A big thank you to our organizer Kaptur, you put on a great event every year! I hope I’ll be able to go again next year, it’s always a great experience with an amazing community.

If you’re interested in participating, there’s 2 yearly international Dystopian Wars Tournaments here in Europe, one in the spring in Hradec Kralove, Czechia, and of course this one in the fall in Warsaw.

To add to that, I will be attempting to host an Armoured Clash tournament here at the Zinnfigurenwelt Katzelsdorf, my local gaming club. We’re aiming for the middle of May, so please let me know if you’re interested here.

And to Stuart and James, thank you for showing up (virtually), listening to our whining, and for the juicy spoilers!