Dust, Dust Tactics, Dust Warfare and Paolo Parente

I was reading the Forum about Dust Warfare and there were some fellows asking about the relationships in the Dust universe. I mean who is who and what is what.
I though that maybe a short overview from what it was explained there could be useful for every one with interest in the game.
The whole idea of Dust and the Dust Universe is responsibility or creation of a guy called Paolo Parente.
Parente not only created the Universe but also designs everything (as far as I known) related to the universe, from comics to story line and of course the line of miniatures (soldiers and walkers) which run amok in the world of Dust.
This takes place in the hands of Dust Studios at Dus-models.com, which are the designers of the models set in Paulo Parente's Dust universe.
Dust-models.com is Dust Studios web site, and a great place to scout upcoming models, buy Premium pre-painted versions, and get extra odds & ends like decals and dice.

The main confusion point arrives from the fact that there are more games than one based on the Dust Universe. like also happens to other Universes, such as Star Wars, where more than one game is based on them (also books, comics, etc.)

There is borad game called Dust, a kind of Risk game, which takes place in the Dust Universe. Obviously is thematically related to Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare but it is a different game and a game on its own. You buy the box, you play it, you do not need anything else.

The relationship between Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare is a bit stronger than mere thema or Universe.

We said that Dust Studios produces the miniatures.
Well, those miniatures are sold in boxes for a BOARD game called Dust Tactics, you have also a started set which contains the boards for the board game, the rules, the cards with the stats of the units for the board game, some terrain elements (antitanks and craters) and the miniatures for the board game (some soldiers and some walkers).
Dust Tactics is a Boardgame using the Dust miniatures.

FFG took over the Dust Tactics game from AEG, iirc, and is the official supplier of Dust and Dust Tactics.

Then, a wise guy called Andy Chambers and his sidekick Mack Martin of FFG wrote a miniature WARGAME set of rules in the same Universe which uses the same miniatures from Dust Tactics.

So, one guy (Parente) designs the miniatures and the universe, together with some other guys take care of board game which uses the miniatures of Parente and another group of guys create a wargame using the same miniatures (think about it a a form of game-recycling :D )

The main difference between then is the set of rules which even if somehow similar have a totally different principle in mind, the board game uses a square grid, you have boards with maps to play the mission and so on; the other one is a wargame, so no board, only a table, a lot of terrain elements, people measuring inches here and there, some arguments about which miniature "sees" which miniature, etc.

But, remember everything in the same Universe :)

One universe, One set of miniatures, but Two games using them.

Landing Pad - Update

Ok, here I'm again.

This time with an update of one of my on going projects, the landing pad for 28mm miniature wargames such as AT-43 or Dust Warfare, my current obsession :)

On a previous post I talked about how to use some protecting cases for picture frames made of polystyrene as surface for the landing pad.

After painting the cardboard which will replace the picture frame and will give consistency to the landing pad, I just spray the polystyrene with black painting without primer and poured some decorative sand on it.

The sand I got from a normal outlet store for household items, looks like normal beach sand but a little bit bigger (I mean the size of the individual particles).

The black paint not only fixes the sand onto the polystyrene but will also dissolve partially the polystyrene and give it a more rough surface which will look quite nice.

A upper layer of anthracite grey, aslo spray, will not only fix the sand to the black paint but also give the proper colour to the surface as the sand was white originally.

The surface of the sand particles is slightly light reflective and give some nuances to the grey colour which makes it not uniform.

The border (not visible in the pictures) was painted with some more dark grey with the pincel and I will apply some light grey to highlight the surface as soon as I get some more time for it. 

I intend to paint the four corner in reflective green and maybe put some green and yellow light on then.

1st game of Dust Warfare

Ok, finally we played today our 1st game :)

We did a lot of thing wrong but it was funny, a bit slow, but funny.

We were using the list that we discussed here. For the Allies it was 

Comm: Ranger Attack Squad 25

1st: Heavy Ranger Assault Squad 28

2nd or 3rd (don't have here the list with me) Recon ranger squad

4th: Ranger Weapon Squad 20

Sup: Black Hawk 25

Hero: Rhino 22

Improved resources (to reroll the smoke screen)

Total: around 150

For the Axis it was

Command: Kommandotrupp 25

1st: Battle Grenadiers 17

3rd: Heavy Laser Grenadiers 35

4th: Recon Grenadiers 17

Sup: Hans 25

Hero: Lara 29

Total: 148

We took the mission March battle from the book, which has a deployment of unprepared. We used a 48" (120cm) x 64" (160cm) table as per the rule book with the long sides of the table as border of the off table deployment. We found the table a bit too big but maybe it was just an initial feeling.

According to unprepared deployment, first only the command section, the 1st section and the solo heroes enter the game.

I got the initiative, so the Allies used one order to call the smoke screen and I moved Lara into the board with Blitzkrieg, also the battle grenadiers I think. The Axis moved the command section close to a building and the hammers and rhino jumped 24" forwards.

I moved the command section into a building on my border of the table.

Every one was too far away so no attacks, no reactions.

The second round, again I got the initiative, Allies called the smoke screen again, Allies moved some units into the table and jumped further with the hammers and rhino into cover, at more of less 16"-18" from my position.

My command section was able to suppress them with help from the Recon grenadiers and the heavy laser grenadiers, but due to the hard cover and the armor of 3, was not able to kill anyone of them, also some blocked lines of sight prevented the full of my forces to attack them.

3rd round the walker came in, some blitzkrieg to move Lara into position, failed smoke screen, an reaction to the jump of Rhino I think, which obviously goes agains the rules. Anyway some hammers were killed by either Lara or my command section.

4th round, I lost the initiative, but anyway everything was looking good for the Axis, Lara was closing to the building were the allied command section and two squads of rangers were taking cover, the Hans was approaching also that direction, and the rest of the hammers were dead, but Rhino managed to land between the heavy laser grenadiers and kill one of them, Lara was hit but no damaged by the rangers in the building, we put a suppression marker on her but removed it after realizing that heroes do not get suppressed, we roll for cover in the close combat from Rhino and the heavy laser grenadiers but also discovered more or less in the moment of doing it that it was not so.

We completely forgot about the death of unit leaders...

We realized also too late that Rhino invert the combat dices...

We rolled for end of the game but not yet.

5th round, debacle for the Axis which not only lost the initiative again but also the hans as the blackhawk activated its special ability all in one, which rolled 4 hits, minus two for armor, 2 hits for 4 damage and ciao bella goes my walker...

Rhino went crazy and made a slaughter house of my heavy laser grenadiers, but got injured (2 damage) by my recon grenadiers

We rolled for end of the game and it was it.

Rule errors:

well, that I can think of without reading the book, only by reviewing the game, there was, the hammers and rhino with the special movement (jump) which does not provoques reactions, the death of unit leaders, the inversion of the combat dices for the rocket punch, the extra combat dice of the lasers, cover in close combat...

Some we corrected on the spot, some we will need to remember for later.

For sure more things will come upon reading the book tomorrow in my way to work.

From the point of view of strategy, well, the hans has artillery strike, my radioman was alive, but in a building on the border of the map... I need to re-read those Artillery rules, could have been nice to attack from behing full cover (blocked line of sight), my battle grenadiers were deployed on the other side of the table, did nothing in the whole game...

We were not having so much of the reaction mechanics, maybe the table was to broad or we were too afraid of the other as we moved our forces very carefully and reluctantly on the board.

At the end, the Allied got 35 points for the heavy grenadiers and 25 for the hans whereas the Axis only got 28 for the hammers

I think we need another round, maybe with some objectives and using the battle builder...

The feeling of my opponent about the game were mixed, he did not read the book, nor the units and he was bored with the waiting time in my command and unit phase, which he found too long in comparison with AT-43.

Landing pad for 28mm

I must say that this project actually started for the AT-43 game, which even if officially dead and with questionable rules I still like. Unfortunately I do not have too much time to play now nor to design or build thing for it.
Usually I try to make things which are not very difficult to assemble and with the materials I find around me. As a friend of mine put it once while holding a piece or random plastic "imagine this painted in black..."
So, I am always looking to what I have at hand and trying to see how it would look once is out of context, glued to something else and painted frist, of course, in black and then in the new context.
In AT-43 there are some maps which include a landing pad of a spaceport and in the now disband AT-43 forum there was a nice 3D home made version which made me wonder about trying my own version.
In the mean time Dust Warfare was released and even if we still did not play it, the game sounds great and in the next expansion "Zverograd" they are going to introduce the SSU faction which will include some aircraft units, so a landing pad could also be a nice addition to the terrain elements for that game ;)
It happend I was having some picture frames still in their styrofoam (polystyrene) covers and some pieces of isolation for the floor (the one you put below the laminate or other "wooden" floor) which I cut to fit inside as you can see in the picture.

The thickness of the isolation piece just an exact fit for the height of the styrofoam cover which was a bit bigger than the thickness of the picture frame.
Once they are assembled, they look like that.

The styrofoam will be painted as concrete and the isolation piece as red-white landing signals. For this I just cut a template in piece of thick paper, actually part of a cardboard carton from a package of something for the household, nothing fancy. Obviously the colours of the template are inverted, I mean the white would be red in this case and the holes is where I intended to paint with white, but this picture represents more or less the final idea seen from above :)

 I painted in dark red the inside "corners" of the landing pad in the isolation piece.

And using the template I applied the white colour.

Probably I will need to retouch a bit the border of the white lines but I will wait until see how it looks once the styrofoam cover is painted and on top of this piece. And the part which is supposed to be like arrows pointing towards the centre does not look like I have it in mind but, we will see...