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Dystopian Wars is a 8mm Tabletop Wargame, originally created by Spartan Games. It depicts an alternate World War between several major world powers - The Empire of the Blazing Sun, The Federated States of America, The Kingdom of Britannia, The Prussian Empire, The Covenant of Antarctica, The Republique of France, and The Russian Coalition.

Currently, there are models available for all the powers listed above as well as for many lesser powers, such as among others the Ottoman Empire and the League of Italian States.

The first campaign book, Hurricane Season details the Empire of the Blazing Sun (With the Prussian Empire) campaign to take the Caribbean from the combined forces of the Federated States of America and the Kingdom of Britannia. Finally, the Covenant of Antarctica is planning to attack any other nation it encounters.

The second campaign book, Storm of Steel officially introduces the Russian Coalition and the Republique of France. It also introduces a multitude of smaller alliance nations: The Dominion of Canada, The Kingdom of Denmark, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Prussian Scandinavia. Also included are the Belgians, entrenched in a civil war between the Protectorate of Belgium and the Belgian Royalists. This book details the Britannian campaign to establish a foothold in continental Europe by supporting the Belgian Royalists. The book also elaborates on the alliances introduced in Hurricane season. The alliances are as follows.

The Grand Coalition: The Kingdom of Britannia, The Russian Coalition, and the Federated States of America and their allies: the Dominion of Canada, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, Belgian Royalists, and the Dominion of Royal Australia and New Zealand.

The Imperial Bond: The Empire of the Blazing Sun, the Prussian Empire, and the Republique of France and their allies: The Kingdom of Denmark, Prussian Scandinavia, the League of Italian State and the Chinese Federation.

The third campaign, Pacific Cyclone, introduces the League of Italian States, the Chinese Federation and the Australians (both Royal and Free Australia). This book details the attempt by the Grand Coalition spearheaded by the Federated States of America to capture the Blazing Sun held territory of Pearl Harbour.

It also has the sister 28mm game, Dystopian Legions about the ground forces.

With the closure of Spartan Games, the game became owned by Warcradle Studios. Part of the Dystopian Wars was retooled as Dystopian Age along with renaming the factions, integrating with the company's Wild West Exodus settings. However, the original name is still in use as of early 2019, when the third edition of its rulebook entered beta. Warcradle also produced Lost World Exodus, a 35 mm scale game with the ground forces of the great powers fighting over a transformed Antarctica.


This tabletop wargame provides examples of:

  • A Commander Is You: With 20+ different forces, there's quite a few choices for your commanding needs.
    • Main Forces.
      • Empire Of the Blazing Sun: Balanced/Technical. The Blazing Sun would've been a purebred Balanced/Generalist, if not for the massive amounts of ported incendiary weaponry. With no noticeable weaknesses, decent mobility and good boarding abilities, the biggest hurdle for a Sun player is lower than average hull strength.
      • Kingdom of Britannia: Balanced/Ranger/Brute. The Queen's fleet are remarkably sturdy and can fire on max efficiency for longer than most, which goes well with their longranged gunnery and copious amounts of torpedoes. Unfortunately, Britannia does less well in a straight-up tossle and wants to keep the firing line for as long as possible.
      • Prussian Empire: Brute/Gimmick. The Prussians are generally decent stat-wise, but uniquely among most fleets they have a massively aggressive boarding game. This means that most Prussian armies go for the Coup d'Grace in close combat, unless they get up against the Australians, who can give them a run for their money.
      • Federated States of America: Spammer/Ranger. Probably the best shooting faction all in all. On top of consistent die rolls, most models can turn on a dime, which allows them to sit way back and fire at the opposing fleet.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: So far, pretty much every Sky Fortress, with the exception of the Covenant, which behaves more like a missile platform (See Attack Drone)
  • Applied Phlebotinum: Sturginium (otherwise known as Element 270), the Ore used to make the Land ships and other huge weapons of the game.
  • Artistic License – Geography: The Prussian Empire doesn't apparently even include the parts of Germany that were to the east of the Oder-Niesse Line, including the vital regions of Silesia and Prussia. (Although this does sometimes happen with real countries, such as Benin).
  • Attack Drone: The Covenant of Antarctica use these instead of regular fighter planes.
  • Attack Of The50ft Whatever: The small tank bases are about the size of a regular modern day tank. Medium Tanks of the setting are roughly Baneblade sized. And it only gets bigger from there.
  • Base on Wheels: The American Washington Class and British Sovereign Class land ships.
  • Deflector Shields: The Kingdom of Britannia, the Covenant of Antarctica and the League of Italian states have these equipped on nearly all of their capital ships.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Several Prussian vessels mount a weapon called an Entropy Generator despite the fact that all weapons work by increasing entropy in the target.
  • Drill Tank: The Russian Coalition Vorkuta class Land Driller.
  • Elite Army: The League of Italian States has the best crew money can buy.
  • Hit-and-Run Tactics: The preferred method the League of Italian States regularly employs.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Prussian Metzger robot.
    • Also, the John Henry Robot is a FLYING Humongous Mecha
  • If It Swims, It Flies: The French Magenta Mk 1 Pocket Battleship.
  • Istanbul (Not Constantinople): From the names of the various factions alone, it's fairly easy to figure out who is the expy for which real-life historical country.
  • Jack of All Stats: The Empire of the Blazing Sun has average gunnery in all range bands.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: Or rather, Giant Victorian Steampunk Enemy Crab. It's the Covenant Landship.
  • Giant Squid: The Japanese have two Giant Robotic Squids that crush ships. Does this remind you of anything?
    • Combat Tentacles: Which naturally have many of these, some equipped with massive guns.
  • Green Rocks: The Covenant discovered bluish-green crystals in Antarctica which is the secret to their technological wonders, and they call it Element 270-Sturginium, after their founder Lord Sturgeon.
  • Lightning Gun: Tesla weapons, common on Prussian Empire units, which mount batteries of them as secondary weapons.
  • Military Mashup Machine: Several of the more exotic weapons in the game, most notably the Landships the various factions use.
  • Mighty Glacier: Many of the Russian Coalition capitals are like this until their ablative armour is removed.
  • Not in This for Your Revolution: The larger forces are generally in the war to win it, but the allied forces have little interest in the war. For example, the Ottoman Empire joined the side of the Imperial Bond to push the Russian borders, to allow for further expansion of their already-growing economy. Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Denmark is mainly in the conflict to protect their borders and avoid getting occupied by the Prussian Empire.
  • Quantity vs. Quality: The Russian Coalition ships have a LOT of crew, at the expense of them being poor in boarding actions.
  • Shock and Awe: A specialty of the Prussian Empire.
  • Spider Tank: The Japanese Taka Ashi Heavy Walker.
    • As well as the Covenant's medium and small scale Walkers. Their Land Ship is more like a Crab.
      • The Covenant's Mobile Airfield plays this more straight however.
  • Steampunk: Yes.
  • Tank Goodness: The smallest units available are light tanks. Infantry is represented by small tokens only.
    • Infantry are more prominent in the spinoff game Dystopian Legions.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The particle accelerator, a special weapon used by the Covenant of Antarctica. It is mounted on their battleships and dreadnoughts, while their armoured cruisers and mobile airfield are armed with smaller versions.
  • Zeppelins from Another World: Dirigibles are actually one of the tamer parts of the weird technology of the setting, but they still dramatically illustrate its divergence from reality.

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