January 2016: The Last Two Dreadbots Arrive
At the start of 2016, Spartan released the Dreadbots for the last two core factions that had not received theirs yet, the French and Russians. The French model was notable as it featured a never delivered Statue of Liberty that was “surfing” on a skimming craft! As with the Britannian model, it was classified as a fortification rather than a robot.
Overall, the Dreadbot release was met with a decidedly mixed reaction among the DW fanbase. The models were arguably the most idiosyncratic releases for the game yet; all of them took the DW aesthetic and “cranked it up to 11.” These models were physically among the largest models released for the game, which translated to a significant tabletop presence. While enormous Godzilla-sized models were cool in their own right, it did limit their appeal among those players who preferred a more “realistic” version of the DW setting for their games. Compounding that issue, the rules for the new bots were somewhat half-baked; some configurations were quite powerful, while others were regarded as a bit under-powered for their points cost. In some cases, the only way to deal with a Dreadbot effectively was another Dreadbot, and some players felt they were best limited to only large games of 2,000 points or more.
These factors, combined with the relatively high price of these models (MSRP for the Dreadbots was roughly $75 USD for a single model), meant that they were not exactly welcomed with open arms by the DW playerbase. Rubbing salt in the wound, these were the first releases for core nation players in 5-7 months (depending on which core nation you played), at a time when releases for DW in general had slowed considerably in favor of the Firestorm and Halo games. This led to a sense among some players that an increasingly precious wave of releases for the DW core factions had been “wasted.”
May 2016: “Fast Play” Arrives
After three months of no DW releases, Spartan launched a third DW spin-off game in May (the first two being Armored Clash and Legions). Marketed as a “fast play” version of the game, it used significantly different rules and completely different stats for the models. The initial launch was a new 2-player box set, the Battle for Iceland. This box was a reasonably attractive set, as in included some newer sculpts from the bombardment boxes for both the Prussians and Covenant. Also, all of the units in the box came in the right quantities for fielding a full squadron of them in normal DW. Fleet Action (FA) followed closely on the heels of a very similar game launched for Firestorm Armada, called Task Force (TF). The major difference is that FA had additional rules that TF did not in order to accommodate models at different height bands and terrain levels (something a space game like TF didn’t need to concern itself with). The box set was originally scheduled for April, but was delayed back to May instead.
A “fast play” version of both DW and Firestorm Armada might have seemed like an odd play for Spartan, but it must be remembered that in 2016 skirmish games were extremely popular. Games like Deadzone, Frostgrave, Guildball, and the perennial powerhouse X-Wing were driving model counts and play time alike downward. About this time, many players were starting to express concerns about play length on the Spartan forums. This is only speculation on my part, but I suspect that both Task Force and Fleet Action were the result of an attempt to both address player concerns and tap the red-hot skirmish game market. As for the game itself, I played a bit of Task Force, and discussed it here on the blog at the time. It was a chaotic experience thanks to the damage mechanics, but it could be fun if you were in the mood for it. Most of the online community was not impressed, and it’s questionable just how fast its “fast play” was. As a result, it seemed that Fleet Action gained little in the way of attention.
Rounding out the releases for May was a stand-alone Fleet Action rulebook for those that were not interested in the whole box set, as well as a Tournament Kit. This kit was interesting in that it included acrylic award plaques, token sets, and a bomber model that was previously released as a convention special in 2014. This kit was labeled for the “2016 Season,” suggesting that there would be follow-on kits in later years. However, it would prove to be the only kit produced.
September 2016: New Terrain, New Campaign
The rest of the summer was dominated by Halo and Planetfall releases for Spartan, with the first new products for DW not coming until September. This month, a new terrain set was made available as a premium for orders made from the Spartan store over the course of a specified weekend.
Also in September, Spartan began releasing a mini-campaign via blog posts on their blog. This campaign pitted the Covenant against the Prussians in a fight for Guinea.
October and November 2016: Kickstarter Follies
The next couple of months proved to be turbulent ones for both Spartan and the DW fanbase. In October, Spartan made a surprise announcement that they planned to launch yet another Dystopian Wars spin-off game, called Dystopian Empires. This time, the game would be a 15mm ground game, based on the Halo Ground Command rules. This was to have been the 4th DW spin-off, and the second one to release in 2016. The announcement also came during the year where Spartan launched the Halo Ground Command game, and Firestorm Armada Task Force, all while DW itself had gotten precious little new content. The community had reached it’s breaking point, and the announcement of Dystopian Empires was not well received. The negative response prompted a watershed moment for Spartan; instead of pushing forward with the Dystopian Empires Kickstarter, the company instead pulled the plug on the idea before it even went live and sent out a survey for their fans to fill out on what they would most like to see.
From what Spartan stated, they received thousands of responses to their survey, and in the end the answer to the question of what players most wanted turned out to be a desire for expansion and support of Spartan’s existing lines. In an admirable display of agility, Spartan moved quickly to act on that feedback, launching a Dystopian World Expansion Kickstarter campaign on 21 November 2016. The campaign was extensive, but focused on three key products: a new 2-player starter set, expansion boxes for each of the 7 core factions, and a revised 2.5 edition of the rules. Also included at various pledge levels were things like commodore busts, maps, t-shirts, dice bags, terrain elements, dice towers, even ships for a new mercenary faction. Stretch goals included new campaign books, “national guide books” that would consolidate the background material for a given core faction, and even a new, as yet un-named minor nation (which would turn out to be the Egyptians). High-level backers would even get the opportunity to collaborate with the Spartan design team to create their own models for the game. Whew! There was so much crammed into this campaign, they had to create a chart for it all.
For long-time fans of the game like myself, this sudden flood of new content was genuinely exciting. The campaign reached its funding goal by early December, and would nearly triple that goal by the end of the campaign. Spartan initially stated it would begin shipping rewards in March 2017, but hardly anyone (including myself) really expected them to meet that deadline. Over the past year, Spartan’s releases had increasingly seen one or two month delays, plus it’s almost a meme at this point that miniature gaming Kickstarters end up coming in behind their original schedules!
December 2016: Modular Battleships
Just before Spartan launched the Dystopian World Expansion Kickstarter, it announced in early November that 4 new modular battleship designs would be released in December, for the Prussians, Britannians, Blazing Sun, and Americans. These ships had been teased in the months leading up to this point, and given that plus the timing of the pre-order announcment it appears they were in the pipe well before the Kickstarter campaign was started. These 4 models were the first of two waves that would introduce a new battleship design to each of the 7 core nations.
Great recap. Thanks for putting it together.
I’d spoken and worked with Neil and company on the Firestorm Armada side in the few months before they shut down. I know that his health had contributed to a lot of the problems, just in not being able to commit all the time needed to run so many projects.