Dystopian Wars - victory for the French

Bank Holiday Monday saw some gaming action in the form of Dystopian Wars Chez Pete

1000pts were the order of the day.

Amazingly enough, I won.

Setup, from right to left: Epaulard subs, Furieux scoutships, Vauban sky fortress, tiny flyers, Voltaire heavy interceptors, Lyon frigates flanking Marseille cruisers, and a Mk.1 Magenta pocket battleship on the far left.

Playing against Pete's Covenant of Antarctica, the Furieux died early trying to spot for the subs' mortar weapon and lay mines across the front of the CoA line. Frigates perished early too.

Then Pete pulls some surprise move involving teleporting his Battleship onto my left flank - it has some beam-mounted energy weapon and had the potential to wipe out my whole line in one go. Some supremely unlucky dice for Pete meant it did nothing. He then tried boarding my Magenta, and fluffed that too.

The Magenta counter-boarded the battleship and captured it.

As the lines moved forward, the balanced nature of my fleet meant I was concerned about it's ability to deliver a knock out blow. With six Icarus flying cruisers on the CoA side in the middle (seriously difficult things to kill), the Magenta delayed by dealing with the battleship, the Furieux shot down, the Epaulard subs doing nothing, and the Voltaires taking a hammering, I decided to move the very shooty Vauban into the middle to dish out some pain.

As the Vauban was moving in, the Voltaires tried to stem the CoA tide, but weren't packing enough punch

The Vauban closes up to support the Marseille cruisers (left) as the Voltaires also endeavour to bring down the Icarus flyers. By the end of turn 3 the Vauban was in the middle, over the top of 4 CoA destroyers, the two Marseilles, the Icaruses, and the Voltaires. The Magenta too far out to lend any significant weight.

Predictably the Vauban started taking damage, but overall was tipping the balance when... the as-yet unused CoA carrier moved up and threw a long range salvo at it. Some very good dice for Pete saw two critical hits and on the second crit roll he got snake eyes = catastrophic explosion! The Vauban died, in a big way, and took out everything within 4" (which was most of the remaining fleets of both sides)

Ironically, this kill assured me victory as Pete was basically left with a Carrier, and four frigates, whilst I was left with both subs, the pocket battleship, and a cruiser.
So, we called it a day. Totting up the points saw that I'd won, but only by capturing the CoA battleship (double VP) otherwise it would have been a drawn.

Another great Dystopian Wars game, and a rematch is expected soon.