Dust Tactics to Dust 1947

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.

Tannhauser - complete

Having had time to go through the Tannhauser deal, it was very complete. It looks like it is missing a few basic tokens from the basic set, like smoke, and fire tokens from the Daedalus but nothing major. I ordered another Daedalus, a Frankenstahl, and an extra Itami (to paint red) to complete my set. I also ordered the last novel – Enigma, and picked up a Sky Full of Stars for Babylon 5 Call to Arms, and a Za! 30 Minutes or Free.

This means that I now have all of the Tannhauser set unless I want to continue into Dust Tactics, and I have crossed another minor item off my Grail List.

We did get a chance to set up Tannhauser at Jimcon and started to play it but, since I always forget that Jimcon only goes to 4pm on Sundays not 6pm, we had to stop before we got into combat. We only had time to pick our load outs and had a few turns of moving before we realized our error. Still it was interesting enough to warrant picking up the remainder. I look forward to playing a full game of this while on holidays after Christmas.

More Tannhauser - nearly complete

I got an offer on a set of Tannhauser that I found hard to pass up. It had been bought at Pendragon’s by a member of the armed forces who was hoping to play with his buddies but then they all got shipped out so he sold it to someone else. It seems to be complete (I’m still going through all the counters to verify) and includes Tannhauser, Novgorod, Daedelus, Hinansho, the equipment pack, the revised rules, the first two novels, and all the figure packs (except Frankenstahl). Originally it was $250 which was a good price but more than I was willing to pay for the remainder I needed.

Then he offered it to me for $150.

I still had to mull it over for a week – I was going to the States and was going to see if they had any available down there. They didn’t, so I picked it up.

It seems in pretty good shape. The previous owner had punched out all the tokens and sleeved the equipment cards and sorted all the tokens into bags. This is actually slowing down verifying the sets as some figure sets had extra tokens for factions or even other characters.

I now have a lot of doubles that I will probably end up packing away. I could sell them but that always seems like a hassle. This way if anything gets damaged or goes missing, I'll already have a spare.

More Tannhauser

I really should play Tannhauser before getting more of it. I have read the rulebooks and it definitely seems like it should be fun. It does have a lot of paperwork – with stat cards for every figure with tokens their equipment load outs. So I’ll need to actually try it to see if that gets in the way of the enjoyment of it.

That said, I have already picked up the Operation Novgorod expansion set and more of the figure and troop expansions. I already had the expansions for Yula Korlitz, Ramirez, and Gorgei. When I got the Novgorod at Pendragons, I also picked up the figures that they had – Oksana, Hoax, and Edison.

Last Friday we popped into Game Knight on the way home. They were expanding and moving around their games. As we were standing there, looking at the racks of games, one of the clerks came by with a handful of boxes, looking for a place to put them in the racks.
“You wouldn’t happen to want some Tannhauser, would you?” he asked jokingly.
I had to smile, “Actually, I just might.”
He was glad to give us a deal of the lot so I picked up another five sets – Asteros, and Natalya, as well as the Union, Reich, and Matriarchy troop packs.

As it stands now, I am still missing the two expansion map sets Daedalus and Hinansho, plus the figures Wolf, Hoss, and Frankenstahl, as well as the Shogunate figures Mizakage, Itami, Iroh Minamoto, and the Shogunate troop pack. All of which are available from Miniatures Market but the shipping on the map packs is pricy so if I can find them locally, I’ll get them here. Once we play it, I’ll probably pick up the remainder as needed.

Tannhauser

I’m a little late to the Tannhauser party. I got interested recently from the guys talking about it on The Dice Tower lists. I’ve checked it out online and it seems pretty Hellboy-ish, with a neat targeting mechanic. I’m not sure why I never noticed it before. The only thing that I can think is that I must have thought it was a Dust Tactics spinoff and I never got into that either.

It sounds like it would be worth giving it a try. Except now that it’s been out of print for a few years, it’s not as easy to find as it was. Most of the sets can all be found online with the exception of the equipment cards. This wouldn’t be so bad except they apparently make the game much easier to play.

I was lucky enough to win a used copy with both the equipment cards and a printed PDF of the updated rulebook. This seems to be the perfect pack with which to start. It all looks so pretty. Plus the background is interesting - World War I never ended, both sides have gotten into the mystical - more so the Germans. Tesla is helping out the Russians, and it includes a Japanese faction as well.

There are a couple of websites with extra scenarios and rules for other figures – like the Hellboy figures from Heroclix. Front Towards Enemy was a great one but is no longer being updated. Savage Tales has some good custom sets, as does Black Sheep Archive, and the Tannbunker - when it is working again.

Heroclix even offers a lot of extra figures that can be used for mods – Batman, Hydra, SHIELD, Hellboy, even army figures. I've read through the original rules and am almost finished the revised rules. I want to play a few games to verify that it is as awesome as it seems before I spend much more money getting more of the figures, maps, and sets.