Good afternoon all, and welcome back. Today I am proud to bring you the first campaign post of the blog! Due to the difficulties and logistics of land campaigns, the staff here have opted for a more nautical approach (read paining that many 15mm soldiers is a job). So what are we doing here today? Well I will be playing a campaign using a game system called Dystopian Wars (not sponsored!). Very quickly before we get started, for those who don’t know, Dystopian Wars is a steampunk naval game set in an alternate timeline. The current setting is in 1870 during the so called “interbellum” time, an uneasy peace as everyone is trying to expand but not willing total war. I’ll be playing the Union (the united states equivalent) and the Alliance (a coalition of the French, Italians, and the Socialist union of South America (SUSA)). I won’t get into all the lore here but if you’re interested in the setting, check out their page! (still not sponsored!!)
Anyway, lets get into this campaign. To lead this off, a bit of lore from our leader….
“It seems my efforts in reforming the current state of affairs have backfired. While the new breed of officers are assigned sleek new carriers, I am relegated to the backwater command of the South Atlantic squadron. Nearly two decades of service and I’ve been demoted, and assigned to escort merchants around the Cape of South America. I’m not sure who in Washington I’ve angered, but by Lincoln I’ve made them mad.
Officially, my orders are to take a squadron of old resource wars ships to re-invigorate our port at Paramaribo. Once established we are to protect merchant shipping traveling around the Cape to empire holdings. In contradictory orders, I am to not escalate tensions with alliance forces in the region This posting comes with a demotion to Rear Admiral for this affair, and I will command this mission from my flagship, the Gettysburg class cruiser “Kearsarge“. Her captain, Ida Hawkins, appears to be as uninspired about this deal as I am. This posting will no doubt test the old ships, and my patients.”
-RADM William E. Sykes, May 3rd, 1869
Easy enough? So the way this is going to work is that as my forces are sailing along (minus this first encounter), I will roll on a table to determine what I encounter. this could represent anything from Friendly, neutral, or enemy merchants, nothing at all, or enemy ships of varying sizes. Sort of like a dungeon crawl, except bigger, and with more blue. The actual victory conditions? I’m still working on that. but I digress, getting set up, I plotted a rough course on google earth (you know the deal) and calculated their rate of travel. For world map travel I just added 10 to the ships speed characteristic and by and large it works well. The ship left from St. Petersburg Florida, and traveled 6 Days at the 16 Knots (kts). Going forward I’ll have to manage supplies onboard which is why the above matters.
Upon their arrival…
As the flotilla approached Paramaribo, a shout came from across the bridge of the Kearsarge, “Bridge, Starboard lookout, warship bearing 129, range 6,600 yards, holding position.” RADM Sykes, ordered a message to be broadcast on open channels for the alliance forces to depart, or be engaged. 30 minutes passed before another update from the lookouts, “Warship, bearing 129, range 6,500 yards, closing” Unbothered, Sykes ordered the fleet to battle stations…
And so we have it, the first battle of the campaign. This game doubles as the first battle and my first time playing the game, so its not a fair fight but it was a good learning experience. So my set up for wargaming is not awesome, so I have re-created much of the battle with some graphics but I will intersperse some of the actual pictures. All that out, lets look at the battle. One more note, pictures from the actual table and the graphics are reversed (inverted?) you’ll see…
The Union is arrayed in two columns, with the Kearsarge and Boston Harbor (C) and their escorts (not pictured) forming one and the Corvettes (K) Pike, Avery, and Jekyll, and staring down the Alliance Lyon class Frigate (FF). The Union wins the initiative draw for turn one which you’ll see below.
The Union advances ahead, and opens fire on the Lyons, with the corvettes dealing 1 damage to the lead Lyon, with the Gettysburg finishing it off.
The Union takes the initiative again on turn two, with the Corvettes sinking another Lyon, before the damaged squadron makes a torpedo run on the Gettysburg, managing a hit and dealing 1 damage.
Obviously, the Lyon needed to pay, and with most of the Gettysburg’s guns in range…
…the Lyon is almost vaporized. I’ll go into the the mechanics in another post, but you deal damage by surpassing the armor value of the opposing ship. For reference the Lyons armor is 5, if your hits double the target ships armor you hit the citadel, which for small ships blows them up.
Starting turn 3, the Alliance secure the initiative, and promptly throw their ships hard over, and attempt to run. Despite taking one more loss in the form the trailing Lyon, they manage to escape.
So that wraps up the combat for today. Pretty successful all in all, we got to practice some maneuvers, got a little gunnery in, I’m sure It’ll be this easy every time! How about some thoughts from our good RADM…
May 18th, 1869
“We arrived off Paramaribo and encountered Alliance ships outside of the port. I presented them an option to depart peacefully, and instead they chose to close with the fleet. Overall their fire was successful save for a torpedo striking the Kearsarge, but luckily the angle was so poor that the damage was minimal. I was surprised to see the older Lyon class frigates still on the active in the Alliance navy. I’ll note it in my report to the command when we make port. We’ll pull in tonight, and begin repair work before we get our bearings in the region.
-RADM William E. Sykes, May 18th, 1869
So that’s it. I’m still working on the format, and I could get some better pictures but overall, I’m excited about this. I’ll add some posts soon about the fleets, some Bio’s for the characters, and a little bit more of the behind the scenes stuff.
Until, thank you for your time, and feel free to comment your thoughts! -Christopher