Dystopian Wars Tempelhof 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. In this article, we're going to look at the Tempelhof Battlefleet Set which gives Imperium players the ability to flood the table with SRS tokens to swarm enemy ships and rain airborne fire. We'll take a look at the different ship builds available out of the box and 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 Imperium are the united nations of Central and Northern Europe, featuring a mix of solid, gun-heavy floating weapons platforms, and light Scandinavian assault ships. Most of their ship's weapons come with the Voltaic quality that fry generators and cause havoc with electrical systems, along with giving them a bonus to assaulting enemy ships. The Tempelhof Battlefleet also has access to the Lightning Raid special rule, where any of their Blitzen Bomber Special tokens can deploy during the first turn to attack any ship on the battlefield.

The Tempelhof Battlefleet Set has a resin Templehof Fleet Carrier, and two plastic sprues to build two of the Cruiser options, and four of the Destroyers options. The large resin Tempelhof comes clean and requires minimal work to tidy up, and only needs a single resin piece attached, and then some plastic turrets adding 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 Tempelhof Carrier has two options, The standard Tempelhof Fleet Carrier and the Tempelhof-Blitzen Fleet Carrier. The build for the carrier is the same, and it comes with a double-sided resin piece that fits on the back of the ship, where the elevator brings the aircraft up to the deck. If you paint both sides of the token, without gluing, it can be changed from game to game and used as either ship option.

The Tempelhof Battlefleet allows you to build two cruisers from three options. As some of the turrets are used on the larger Tempelhof, you have to build one Konrad Support Carrier, and then you can build either another Konrad or the Reiter or Volsung with your second option. The bridge piece, along with the mounting for the weapons systems of the different classes aren't easily interchangeable between the different ship types unless you make use of some very tiny magnets. So you will have to commit to your two types when you put them together. We built a Konrad and Volsung, because who doesn't want a huge floating weapons platform in their fleet?

The Destroyers can be built as either Sigimer Destroyers or Toten Heavy Destroyers, which have the same hulls, but different weapon options. Their unit comes in groups of three, which can have extra ships added to them. We built two of each to show their builds, but you will have to commit to either the Sigimer or Toten out of the box for the full unit.

The Battlefleet comes with four SRS tokens, two standard, and two Blitzen Bombers. It also comes with several bases that match the SRS tokens, and when deployed, can be stacked under the lead token to signify how many tokens are in that group. This keeps the tokens neat on the tabletop, rather than having to deploy several tokens every time they're scrambled from the fleet.

Tempelhof Fleet Carrier - The flagship for this force can be used as either option:

• Tempelhof Fleet Carrier - The Tempelhof holds eight SRS tokens, which can be used against enemy ships early on with the long-range sorties, which lets them deploy anywhere on the battlefield in the following round, or used to attack enemy ships within twenty inches in the same round, where it can also make use of its Volt Broadsides. Its triple Flak Vierlings help defend it from enemy SRS tokens, but with overlapping fire arcs, they can also be used effectively against enemy ships, and as they have the voltaic quality, can also boost the attacks of the broadsides.
• Tempelhof-Blitzen Fleet Carrier - The Blitzen build is five more points than the standard Tempelhof, and has half the SRS capacity. But it has access to the Blitzen Bombers, which can be used in the Lightning Raid described earlier. Blitzen's used in a lightning raid are removed after their attack, so if you don't want an empty fleet carrier, it's best to deploy one Blitzen Bomber and use the ability to boost the lightning raid for twenty-two points each for up to six additional tokens, for a deadly first turn attack, then sail with three tokens to deploy normally. 

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

• Konrad Support Carrier - The Konrad is a smaller version of the Tempelhof, carrying four SRS tokens to help fill the skies above the battlefield. Along with the Volt Broadsides, they also have torpedos with the voltaic quality.
• Reiter Flak Cruiser - The Reiter is an enemy SRS tokens nightmare, with four Flak Vierlings, which can also be used against enemy ships that get too close. It's further armed with Volt Broadsides and voltaic torpedos that all overlap with the voltaic quality that can do some extreme damage when used to boost the shots of the other voltaic weapons.
• Volsung Strike Cruiser - The Volsung build features the same torpedos, Volt Broadsides, and Flak Vierling weapons as the other cruiser options, but it also has the front-facing Sturmbringer, which has a very short range, but rolls twelve dice, that ignore shield generators, score three hits on exploding hits, and can reroll any of the attack dice. Having a few of these close the distance will have any opponent concerned.

Destroyers - The Tempelhof Battlefleet allows you to build four destroyers of two different types:

• Sigimer Destroyers - Sigimer's are light and fast, and units of three or more operate as a pack to gang up on enemy ships with their volt gun batteries and volt broadsides.
• Toten Heavy Destroyers - The more expensive Toten's have the same core stats as the Sigimer's, but upgrades its volt gun batteries to the short-range but powerful Sturmklaue, to which they also gain a bonus attack dice, and can reroll blanks when using them against ships of mass three or more.

Building the Tempelhof Battlefleet out of the box gives a huge variety in terms of what you can build. You can go full SRS token, and build two Konrad's, or opt for a more hunter kill option, and build a Volsung and a unit of Toten, backing them up with the SRS tokens from the Tempelhof.

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 Tempelhof fleet can be expanded with the Imperium Frontline Squadrons pack, which contains the same two plastic sprues from the Battlefleet, letting you building four more destroyers and two cruisers options, or you could add it to the core Imperium, Elector Battlefleet.

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