Dystopian Wars

I don’t know about you, but occasionally I find a game that I think just makes me go “woah!” and I just have to have it.

I remember playing Talisman (1st Edition) for the first time and thinking what an amazing boardgame. I had before playing Talisman only played boardgames like Monopoly, and Talisman was so very different. That was nearly thirty years ago…

Since then other games that have had a similar impact include Car Wars, Twilight 2000 and Space 1889. I really enjoyed playing Car Wars and spent many hours designing vehicles and playing it back in the 1980s. I loved the concept behind Twilight 2000 and though I never really got a chance to play it for a lengthy campaign, I did enjoy reading articles and scenarios for it. Space 1889 was one of those ideas that I hadn’t really considered before and was my first introduction to Victorian Science Fiction (well the First Men in the Moon aside). Since then I have really enjoyed VSF and steampunk, I really liked the Difference Engine and even wrote an article on wargaming in the world of the Difference Engine.

So a few months back when I was a gaming shop in Birmingham and noticed the Dystopian Wars, I was like a moth to a candle! This was one of those games that I just had to have and would have to play.

Imagine a world similar to our own, but subtly different. Now imagine the year is 1870 and the Industrial Revolution occurred decades earlier than in our own world. Technology is far advanced, and in many cases, unrecognisable, which has led to the development of fantastic naval vessels, hulking land ships and terror from the skies in the form of airships and war balloons.

Looking at the models, unfortunately the rules had sold out, there was one model that caught my eye and that was the model I had to have and would set me down the path of the Dystopian Wars. It was the Prussian Sky Fortress.


Having decided that this was a definite purchase, I realised that I would also need an opponent and looking at the boxed sets, I decided to go with the Kingdom of Britannia.

A few weeks later I managed to get hold of the rulebook and was very impressed with the content and production values.

So time to get painting.

3 thoughts on “Dystopian Wars”

  1. It’s well worth a play, a friend and I have recently bought into the world of 1870 (Prussians for myself, KoB for he) and we’ve now convinced a third who will be fielding the Covenant of Antarctica when they come out.

    The miniature production is lovely, detailed models with (so far) no moulding errors. I did have a piece missing from one of my sets but they sent it the missing piece very quickly.

Leave a Reply