"Dystopian Wars vs Aeronef" Topic

I would like to know what people think of these 2 miniature games.

I've been into Aeronef for several years and have enjoyed playing the game I really like the look of the various Fleets.

Aeronef is set in a hypothetical world where industrial advancement has led to the introduction of flying vessels and armoroured juggernauts into the arsenals of the Great Powers over fifty years before they did historically.

Whilst fictional,the background will be familiar to any student of history,echoing many historical personages from the Victorian period.

The rules are very simple and one can easily pick up on it very quickly.

But since I've never tried Dystopian Wars I want to know from people who have played this game to find out what they like about this game and how it differs from Aeronef.

Also what time period does Dystopian Wars take place?

I played through Dystopian Wars 1, 1.1 and tried a few games of 2nd edition.

My verdict: I want to like the game, but I think I actually hate it. I think everything I actually like about DW is the miniatures and I was willing to give the rules way, way too much time as a result.

Every attack really only produces three results. Nothing, a hit or a crit. The problem is that you go through a convoluted process of building dice pools, rolling more dice from exploding sixes, counting successes, your opponent doing the same thing with any applicable defensive dice and then finally figuring out if you did nothing, a hit or a crit. Very, very rarely you could get a double or triple crit, but it's so rare it's not really worth considering as part of the normal operation of the system.

A friend and I were talking yesterday of selling all our DW stuff, and I think I arrived at the conclusion that I'll just keep the miniatures and use them for another set of rules.

Who will enjoy DW? Those who enjoy eeking out incremental advantages by building the most efficient dice pools possible through allocating different weapons in the optimal combinations. The strength of the convoluted process is that you have a lot of control over how and what you shoot. So if you enjoy target selection and combining attackings in the most optimal way, DW is for you.

Miniaturesperday sums it up perfectly with regards to DW. After playing DW for a few months (but mainly after painting the lovely minis and building terrain for it) I was utterly done with it. I don't know Aeronef. But perhaps I should try it.

The venerable Ironclads & Ether Flyers by Frank Chadwick is still an excellent game that allows you to combine air, sea and land combat in a fantastic 1889 setting. It uses an SSD for ship control and is better for small squadrons rather than large fleets, but has a range of ship designs (plus ship design rules), altitude bands, etc. Lots of fun!

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Never played DW – but do enjoy the simplicity of play and mechanics of Aeronef.

I play my Aeronef with 1/300th scale flyers and have had great games with them.

Tony

Dystopian wars minis are showing up at a discount at various online retailers. Are the DW minis compatible with Aeronef?

They certainly could be, if you chose to make them so. I do love the beautiful eye candy of DW (although I think Brigade will be catching up as they continue improving on their digital design prowess), but the simplicity of Aeronef is what gives it such replayability.

I have only played Aeronef once, years ago. As I recall it, I enjoyed the game.

Dystopian Wars has going for it a larger player base, I think. The base mechanics are pretty simple and can be easily learned. However, every model has special abilities. This can be difficult to track, especially when first playing. If you don't like that sort of thing, I would move on.

Basically, you alternate activating squadrons. Once a squadron is done, the other player activates one. In an activation you basically have a prep phase, a move phase, then a shoot phase, then an end phase, then change sides.

Attacks are buckets o'dice. Each weapon generates a certain number of attack dice, you roll them, looking for hits (usually a 4, 5, or 6). 6s are good – they usually count twice and you get to roll again ("exploding 6s"). Each unit has a DR and a CR (Damage Rating/Critical Rating). If your attack gets hits equal to or greater than the DR, you do a point of damage. If you beat the CR, you do a critical hit (usually 2 points of damage and some other effect). If you roll 2x the CR, you get two critical hits, and so on.

The models are very nice. I like painting them.

As far as time frame, it's vaguely 1880-1900s, maybe. The copy of the rules I have handy (2.0 Admiral's Edition) doesn't specify. Other versions may have more fluff.

Hope this long rambling diatribe helps?

Oh, and the Dystopian Wars rules are now available as a free download from their website. Spartan Games have apparently decided the real money is in the models.

miniatureperday,

That feel applies to all of Spartans games, not just DW.

Have read DW but not played them. I like simple systems and for that Aeronef fits the bill. Good game, nice models, and lots of replay. Ironclads and Ether Flyers is a good game but a bit more complicated than Aeronef. I still vote for Aeronef. You can always add a couple house rules if you need them. I have done so but tend to return to the basics.

For ground warfare which can be interlocked with air combat you should also look at Land Ironclads. A good little game.

Must agree that the DW minis are nice but they just don't do it for me.

Allen57 I do agree with everything you've said about Aeronef.

I've been getting Aeronef ships for some time now many of them I got used some painted and many unpainted but I really like the look of the ships and to me each fleet is special to the Nation it belongs to.

For example the American Fleet has many ships which look like Civil War Ironclads(Confederate mostly)but others which look Union.

Also the ships are easy to build and very nice to paint and they don't take a lot of time to do that.

I also have several of the Land Ironclads as well and am learning the ground rules as well so all in all Aeronef is a fun set of rules that don't take a lot of time to learn and I'm happy to have gotten into it.

I do have to say that I love the level of detail of the Dystopian Wars ships (and the land-based tanks and things), but some of it is just too over the top. Like this one:

I hate the 40K minis that look like flying monasteries, but this one looks like they just stuck St. Paul's Cathedral on tracks and called it a tank. There's just a little too much such silliness like this in the DW minis lines for my personal taste. YMMV, of course.

Aeronef is fast and simple, altho I recommend Ironclads And Ether Flyers not only due to it also being a simple system, it includes design rules!!!

Depends. Areonef sticks pretty much to the point of an aerial adaptation of naval warfare with a Pre-dreadnaught approach, while DW is a combined arms game, naval, air and land – And I personally enjoy both.

Covert Walrus let us not forget Land Ironclads which is connected to Aeronef this is the land portion of Aeronef and then we have Aquanef which deals with the Naval portion so Aeronef is a Combined Arms game as well it's just covered in different rulebooks.

I could come up with some scenario which'll have Land,Sea and Air elements in it.