New game excitement: Dystopian games

Very little beats the excitement of starting a new game system. So when the postman delivered a box full of fresh new toys I couldn't wait to get the packing open and my hands on new game goodness.

Every now and then our club will run a little tired of the current games we are playing and will reach out for the thrill of something new.

The game is Dystopian Wars from Spartan games. Spartan games are a company not too far from my home town of Exeter, and have grown a great reputation through games such as unchartered seas and Firestorm Armada. I choose to buy the rule, pack of cards and the starter set for Federated States of America.

The Rule book is soft back and looks to be printed to a good standard with quite a few colour plates. I have not read the rules through yet, but first impressions are that the layout could do with a little tinkering. However it is a nicely presented book.

The book comes complete with a plastic coated fast play card.

I also brought the random cards. Although I have not looked at these in detail, there appear to be around 50 odd random events or buffs which will change the way your force work.

Then comes the bit I'm most interested in, the box of figures..

When you open the box you find that the figures are tightly wrapped in bubble wrap which are then pushed into the box. Its like playing pass the parcel.

I have photographed the figures next to a British 50 pence piece for scale. The bags contain..

10 plane tokens..

Two bombers...

and 13 ships of varying size.

With their bits and pieces...

The ships and the plane tokens are cast in polyurethane resin and the detail on these are to a VERY VERY high standard. True there is a reasonable amount of flash, but this was cleaned off in under 10 minutes and I am left with a set of models which are all screaming "paint ME first".

Time to abandon all other projects and start this one!

I only hope the game plays as good as the ships look.

Now where are my paints?