I keep looking at Dust but never got into it. I had thought that it was in the same vein as Tannhauser, which I already have, but it is it’s own thing.
Tannhauser, the board game and expansions was published by a French company, Take On You, in 2006. The system was bought by Fantasy Flight in 2009, and a revised edition was released in 2010. The background is that World War 1 did not end and that it still rages on 35 years later.
Dust was created by Paolo Parente, a former fashion designer, who then became an artist for games and Magic cards. He designed Dust as a series of 1/6 scale action figures, and then comics to go with them. In his design World War II did not end thanks to the discovery of a crashed alien spacecraft in Antarctica. This tech leads to the creation of large walking vehicles.
He worked with Rackham to bring this to a game but they did not like the WW2 German forces, so they changed the setting slightly and designed AT-43 (After Trauma: 43) in 2006. This was a miniature game with Weird War figures and man-sized walking tanks. The company was spending more money on its fantasy line Confrontation, and ended up closing.
After that ended, he brought out Dust Wars with Image comics, and model kits in 1/35 and 1/48 scale. There was also a Risk-like game that came out in 2009. I had a bit of trouble finding it but was able to track down a copy of that when I thought it was an extension of the Tannhauser milieu. I have also picked up the Battlefront Dust Tactics rules in a previous sale.
AEG helped bring together Dust Tactics as a board game with figures but this was bought by Fantasy Flight just before being released in 2010. There were expansions and a revised set was published in 2011. This led to Dust Warfare in 2012 as a gridless miniature game. Another edition came out with a messy kickstarter in 2014 through Battlefront.
Then they got it back and published it themselves in 2016 as Dust 1947. They had upgraded cards to be able to use figures from all the sets, and even brought out new factions in Cultists (Cthulhu), (Japanese), and Mercenaries. They always had figures available in prepainted and also just primed but finally sold unassembled figures as well for a lower cost. I just found out that they have stopped publications last year in 2021 partly due to the complications of production with the pandemic.
It’s a big system to get into. I don’t know anyone locally who plays it. I’m not looking to buy and store multiple forces for another game. I’m not even a big World War 2 fan. Now that it is a dead system it is going to be hard to track down figures.
But it is a pretty looking game with a great table presence. It’s supposed to be fairly simple compared to heavy wargames, and has a really strong supportive following. It will probably come out again at some point, especially since Paolo had plans for taking it into space and moving the setting forward to 1963 during the Cold War. The rules are still available on their website so I will probably download them and give them another look. I can keep an eye out for clearance sales and for people clearing their collections in lots. If I can find someone to play with, I can always design counters for the figures and vehicles to try it out.
Miniature Market is having a Spring cleaning sale and I missed picking up a few Dust Tactics operation/mission boxes for the figures and maps. But I was able to pick up the Dust Warfare rules and a couple of the campaign books.
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