Dystopian Wars Borodino Battlefleet Set Preview

Dystopian Wars is a nautical wargame set in an alternative Victorian Steampunk-eqsue timeline, in the same universe as Warcradle’s Wild West Exodus and upcoming Lost World Exodus skirmish games. Dystopian Wars was recently rereleased by Warcradle and started with the Hunt for the Prometheus two-player starter set. The Borodino Battlefleet Set gives Commonwealth players access to the same ships in the starter-set to either expand their forces or build the different variations of cruiser options. In this article, we'll take a look at the different ship builds available out of the box. If you'd like to know more about Dystopian Wars, check out our Hunt for the Prometheus preview.

Before getting into the set, players will need to print out, or access digitally the assembly instructions for the ships, along with the ship stat cards, and also the faction army list, know as an Order of Battle (ORBAT), and these, along with loads of other resources including the rules, are available for free on the Dystopian Wars website. 

The Commonwealth ships are known for being very sturdy, with solid Hull values and ablative armour which automatically removes an action dice from your opponent's pool, and the Borodino Fleet is no exception. Ships in the Commonwealth navy also have access to the Hammer Sweep, which allows them to increase their speed by one, and gives them a bonus to their ramming pool, as long as the ship heads in a straight line. The Borodino battlefleet takes this one step further, adding a further extra dice to the ramming pool if the battlefleet requirements are met, which they are building out of the box.

The Borodino Battlefleet Set has a resin Borodino Class Battleship, and two plastic sprues to build two of the Cruiser options, and four Rurik Class Frigates. The large resin Borodino comes clean and requires minimal work to tidy up, and only needs a few resin pieces attaching, and then your choice of plastic turrets from the sprues. The hard plastic ships are extremely easy to put together, but we’d advise you to do a little research into each different ship type before deciding on the type to build for each one. You can see a brief overview of each of the cruiser ship options below. The turrets for the ships can be left unglued, and rested in for games until you know which turrets you want to use, or until you start to paint your fleet.

The Kutsov Class Cruisers have four different body types, so you will have to commit to two of them out of the set. If you're expanding from the Starter Set, then you probably already know which cruisers you want more of. If this is your first entry to Dystopian Wars, then read below to see the different options.

Borodino Class Battleship - The flagship for this force. The Borodino is slow but well-armed, armored, and full of troops ready to meet the enemy face to face. It has three Heavy Gun Batteries, and Heavy Broadsides to back it up if the enemy dares to get too close.

Cruisers - The Borodino Battlefleet comes with two sprues to build two different cruiser options:

• Norilsk - The most expensive of the four cruisers, but with good defenses and armed with an extra Gun Batter at the front.
• Kutsov - The Kutsov and Sineus are similar points, but the Kutsov has slightly better armor and an additional Heavy Gun Battery.
• Sineus - The Sineus trades armor for speed against the Kutsov and has a single Heavy Gun Battery. 
• Oleg - The Oleg is the cheapest of the four types, nearly half the price of the Norilsk, but armed with only a single Heavy Gun Battery. 

Rurik Class Frigates - Very lightly armed and armored, but lightning-fast for getting in quick and disrupting enemy plans.

Building the Borodino Battlefleet out of the box, if you build a Norilsk and Kutsov cruiser, puts the force at 494 points, giving you a few points to put a generator on the battleship or cruisers to take you to 500 points. Or you could build the smaller cruiser options, and you would have more flexibility in points.

If you haven't played Dystopian Wars before and you haven't got the starter set, you can start playing Dystopia Wars straight away with this set and the Rules and Gubbins set, which includes a printed copy of the rulebook and victory and valour cards, and all the dice, tokens, and measuring accessories you need to play. The Borodino fleet can be expanded with the Commonwealth Frontline Squadrons pack, which contains the same two plastic sprues from the Battlefleet, letting you building four more frigates and more cruiser options, or you could add a pack of Commonwealth Support Squadrons, which has two new cruiser options and the airborne Stoletov Ekranoplan.

The Borodino Battlefleet Set used to produce this preview was provided by Warcradle Studios.