"The demise of the Dystopian Wars" Topic

"I was saddened to hear of the demise of Spartan Games, the company behind the wonderful Dystopian Wars and hope the future bears well for all the staff there.

The Dystopian Wars is one of my favourite games, though to be honest I've not played for a while…"
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Amicalement
Armand

DELETED……

Oh, no! They did such beautiful work, too. I do think Dystopian Legions wasn't the best product line. If they'd done it in 28mm or 15mm, it probably have done better.

Javelin98,

Agree, I really liked Dystopian Wars and their earlier fantasy version.

But Dystopian Legions was non starter, way too big in scale. If they had gone for a 15mm large skirmish/battle system they would have had more success I think, even 10mm, as thier Planetfall would have been better.

Shame though a good line of miniatures have now gone

If Dystopian Legions had been either 15mm or 28mm, I would have bought hundreds of dollars myself. I think you have hit the nail on the head there.

But the nail in their coffin was HALO. What I am sure were pretty hefty licensing agreement fees, added to limited marketing strategy and a relatively low margin industry… doomed. It has happened to other companies before.

Really sad….

Amicalement
Armand

I'm going to quote the Man Battlestations blog here – " A game is never dead as long as rules and players exist, or rather, a game is as dead as players want it to be".

Plus which, let's not rule it out that the IP and such might be purchased and renewed ( Preferably by a better management team, let's be honest ). It's happened before.

I wonder what the HALO license cost them. I can't imagine that licensing an IP that belongs to Microsoft would come cheap.

Going from individual packs at a reasonable cost to only battle group sets at a very high cost made it hard to stock in depth with that product line.
In the Southeast USA, the most popular was the naval system, significantly fewer games of the land system was played at shows. The over sized D. legions system as was mentioned earlier was a 'none starter'.

Only just heard this.It's always a sad day to see a company go under. But I think some of it may of been brought on by trying to change the market rather than going along with it. I think super sizing was an unwise move. I'd of bought a few of their work if in 28mm.

Hope their staff find work soon and the owners a new path soon.

I wonder what the HALO license cost them. I can't imagine that licensing an IP that belongs to Microsoft would come cheap.

True, Javelin old chum. And if it was anything like the Crimsons Skies and Battletech contract with FASA, full of legal fishhooks as well.

Oh by the way, nothing is dead that can eternal lie . . . :D

Now have new owners:-

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Interesting, note that Halo is not mentioned!

Follow on from my blog post with the news from Warcradle.

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It was really nice to hear that The Dystopian Wars is to be reborn! Warcradle studios have announced that they have acquired the rights to The Dystopian Wars.

So they are a Wayland Games product now.

Yes.

I'm going to be PO'd if they start selling the miniatures that a friend and I paid for but never received in Spartan's Dystopian Kickstarter…

The DW ships are stunning, game rules were slow to play though, they were late with a fast play/big fleet set. Hope they resurrect the ships

The overscale legions were just dumb, a lot of ppl with VSF/Steampunk 28mm (like me) would've bought that stuff for other projects if it had been in scale.

Yes I'd bet that Warcradle will use the bankruptcy to dithh HALO

Some of the later Dystopian Legions figures are multipart 28mm and quite nice. They stupidly started with 32mm and apparently realized that it was a mistake and changed to 28mm along the way.. I have examples of almost all the figures and there is at least one example of a figure that was released in 32mm but was resculpted in 28mm and I think became multipart.

Can't say I was surprised to hear this.

So, does anyone have a recommendation for rules to use with DW ships?

Cheers!

Imperial Skies… it's what I've just bought and Will be playing this Sunday…

Some interesting news from the report by the accountancy firm handling Spartan Game's insolvency -

"In October 2016 the directors, in the face of a considerable reduction in trade sales, sought advice from Tim Close of Milsted Langdon LLP. At the time of this meeting the Company was in the process of launching a Kickstarter campaign that it believed, if successful, would enable trading to continue. It was concluded at this meeting that if the Kickstarter was unsuccessful then an insolvency procedure would most likely be required."

In other words, the firm that eventually took over as administration was the main source of Spartan's financial advice.
That advice was to go ahead with the Kickstarter in the hopes that it would make enough money to keep the company afloat.
That seems . . . A little odd. But then, I'm not Something In The City as the British say, so maybe this is standard practice.

Thanks Madan Mitra -- taking a look at those rules.

How did your game go on Sunday?