My First Game of Dust Warfare

I met GeekProtem last night on the east side of Indy at Saltire Games for my first game of Dust Warfare.  I had never been there before, so I had a look around while I waited for my opponent to arrive.  The store is laid out very nicely, with a lot of product displayed in a relatively small space.  They may have the widest variety of miniatures games in the city.  The standards from GW and Privateer Press were there, but they also carry Dust Tactics/Warfare, Mech Warrior, Infinity, Warpath, Spartan Games, and MERCS.  There may have been more, but I can't remember.  They also have several separate gaming rooms with plenty of space for all sorts of gamers.  I appreciate that.

We set up a small 4x4 table and got started.  The mission that we played was essentially Kill Points in 40k terms.  The game was a lot of fun, but I found myself over-thinking a lot of things.  Most of your actions are pretty intuitive.  For the most part, if you want your unit to do something, they can do it as long as they are not suppressed (or pinned in 40k). 


I found that even the most powerful units in our forces didn't really do all that much damage.  You really have to focus fire on a unit to wipe it out completely.  The main purpose of a powerful unit is to withstand a lot of damage and still be around next turn.  That being said, my Heavy Laser Grenadiers made quick work of his walker.  The idea of the game is to suppress as much of the enemy's force as possible while you focus on doing one thing, whether that be to focus on destroying one unit in particular or dashing toward an objective.

Here is a shot of my back lines.  The green model on the left is the Allied Commander.  He has what is essentially a jump pack and had shot straight for my lines along with his squad in an attempt to keep me busy while his other units maneuvered into firing positions.  These guys are really good in close combat, and would make quick work of any of my units if given the chance.  I had to shoot the squad with several units, including the walker that you see in the foreground in order to suppress them before the unit of zombies launched their attack.  Whenever a unit attacks you in this game, you are allowed to react to that unit with an action of your own.  Had the Allied unit not been suppressed, they could have attacked the zombies which would likely have killed them all, or moved away out of close combat range.  

My Command Squad, the Sturmpionieren have run forward in this shot in an attempt to suppress as many of the Allied units as possible while my other units deal with the Allied jump troops in my lines.  In the previous turn, the two Allied units on my right (one of which having been reduced to a single model) had both been suppressed.  The Sturmpionieren fired their weapons in the beginning of the phase, using an order (called the Order Phase), and then used their second action to fire at the unit to the left of the first unit.  The green tokens indicate that the unit has fired their Panzerfausts, a kind of grenade launcher that takes up an action to reload.  The Sturmpionieren held up the Allied units long enough for the zombies and the Luther (an Axis walker) to kill of the last of the Allied jump troops, but were all cut down in the subsequent Allied turn.

In the end the Axis scored more Superiority Points (in this mission, you got one point for each enemy unit that was wiped out-characters that are attached to units do not give up an additional point).  GeekProtem helped me through the game, and I had a lot of fun getting my feet wet on this new game.

I foresee myself playing this game more often in the future, but I'm still not ready to give up on 40k yet.  The models for Dust are pretty nice, but I'm still a Space Marine lover at heart.  I will leave you with a WIP shot of the Sturmpioniere squad.  I used an autumn camo scheme that I borrowed from [So]Rice from Lazuli Miniatures Studio