I'm just pleased that they're actually making a tank, instead of walkers, walkers, walkers. Although the original designer (some day I'm going to look up that japanese hobbyist's name) certainly had a thing for big, big, big guns. (Which does tend to be an anime staple…not to say fetish!) So where are our excellent German tanks, and the American ones? (Not hoping for Brit tanks; theirs sucked until the 1950s.)

So when is the next FAQ?

Destroying a building is no easy matter, really. Managing to do so in the space of a single game session would require either a lot of explosive power, or carefully designed blasting charges. The US Army today has the latter, I am told (by a friend who used them): A rocket-propelled charge meant to collapse a small building in on itself. And even then it leaves ruins. Ruins would be better than an intact building, I guess - they wouldn't be a multi-level sniping roost. Reducing a building would be possible, I believe, but the only weapon in the game so far that would do it would be repeated barrages from the US 9" gun batteries, available to "The Boss" command squad. About one battery barrage per floor, maybe? Don't even roll damage; buildings don't duck.

1/48 B-36 has a wingspan larger than my own, which is to say wider than my arms' reach of 6'. Huge. Absolutely huge. In 1/32 scale? (A scale I believe is exclusively Monogram.) Gee whiz! You'd have to have a separate building to store it.

Right you are, Shadowace. Dumbest model I ever saw was a Tiger I in 1/48 from Tamiya. It was one of their complete line, meaning that it had ALL its internal machinery, right down to the cotter pin holding the seal on the fire extinguisher. And when the innards were completed, you put the hull top on and viola! never did you see all that internal work again. 1/48 was, and still is, very very popular with aircraft. That scale was the intermediate size for aircraft since the 1960s - yes, I was around then! And you haven't seen BIG until you've seen a B-36 Peacekeeper in that scale!!!

One word: RAILS. Too useful now, too useful for even a fanciful future to ignore.

Adding my $0.02 USD… As someone familiar with game publication, I also am unsettled by the idea of paying to playtest. Traditionally, playtesting has been a JOB, usually paid in merchandise (and often in a playtest byline). I'vd got a lot of game books I earned just that way. And while it's at least made a bit more fair by making the money up front essentially a down payment on the complete PDF, I would have been a whole lot happier if A) FFG had been completely, bold-print up front about the cost - what happened smacks of bait-and-switch internet marketing ******-baggery, and B) if the very act of doing the work of playtesting got the playtesters a complete copy of the finished PDF, in essence giving a half-price copy for the play-testing work. As for PDF books, while I do enjoy the hard copy, I would love to have every 40K RPG book on PDF, simply for the convenience of carrying them. You try to carry every darn book in the series. Heck, try to stuff more than three of the core books in a back-pack. Sure, you can get them in, but the mass adds up. Now add supplements. Go on. Uh huh; thinking of fetching a forklift, aincha? As for the psychic rules, the old WFRP rule, which were copied without thought into DH, suck bad. There's too much dice rolling as it stands. Simplify, simplify.

The 'phaser' is actually one of the quirkiest miracles of reality: Ball lightning. We've actually managed to produce it, by the way, and it's a lot higher energy than the fanciful numbers given. (Never heard of the Japanese screwing up technical details in anime, oh, no, never!) The U.S, military actually worked with the idea of making weapons that work that way for years. Largely during the 50s and 60s; I don't know if they're still trying to weaponize ball lightning or not. I hope they're not still wasting money on it. Even the natural stuff, of which we have no idea how it's generated, is the quirkiest energy around. A ball of this contained energy can and does pass through solid matter, roll around on the ground, follow electrically-conductive material, explode violently, or just earth itself with a relative lack of harm. Or it can just fizzle out of existence. How all these characteristics? We don't know. Apparently, the Vrill managed to harness and weaponize a variant of ball lightning, and that's a 'phaser.' Wish he hadn't called it the same name as the Star Trek weapon; it gives the wrong impression. (I've family history with ball lightning: My maternal grandmother was struck by the stuff while she was on the phone, back in the late 19-teens. My grandfather and her brother were watching; a ball-shaped glow 'rolled' down the phone wire and out the handle, and Estelle was knocked to the floor. Simple electrical shock. Granddad never did say if the date they were supposed to go on came off after that incident or not…)

Was a bit petulant; I chalk it up to just having come off World of Tanks and having had to suffer a great deal of MMO idiocy. Still fuming a bit then… The Dust humans still look a bit off next to my scale model 1/48 scale humans. Vehicles? Wouldn't matter so much, I guess. The point is that I'm talking a well-established modelling scale, in an industry that solidly established the 6' height human standard long, long ago. I'm quibbling about the technical scale, you see, not necessarily the actual sculpts of Dust Tactics minis, which are occasionally varied (Experiment X is a much better sculpted model than his zombie brethren). The 'argument' about historical human heights and all is a bit facile: The established scale-model scale does not care. Its parameters have already been set. Actually, I'm guessing that the original scratch-builder creator of the line worked with 1/48 bits - I'm not sure; the only reference works I can find online are in Japanese, which is not a language I understand, much less read. That the actual soldier minis aren't as exacting as a military model (particularly those made by a Japanese company - they are brutally exact!) is, I suppose, to be expected of game models. (Can't complain about the price difference, though. Try buying a Hasegawa 1/48 scale tank. The Dust walker sets are fantastic bargains by comparison.)

Huh, so 40mm guns are only just as effective against armor as 20mm guns. Hmm, this just goes to show me that the Tactics rules writers really need to study anti-armor warfare more…they're quite off about penetration, which is the actual measure of anti-armor warfare. (Their downgrade of the M2 .50 cal vs. infantry class 3 shows they don't know a **** thing about armor penetration, and they're just winging it. That's fine for imaginary weapons, like a bolter, but when you have real stuff, with quite well-known characteristics, then you'd better have your ducks in a row…)

[ADMIN: Edited for content.] I'm going off the model scale rules that a soldier is 6' tall. This has been in existence for a lot longer than modern minis games; it comes from model railroads. So, since that is the classic scale, I am going with the 6' tall standard human model.

Fear the cows! FEAR THEM!!

Sadly, the best remedy to the Angela/sniper combo is possessed by the Germans: Work an artillery spotter team into LOS out of her range and pummel her team with indirect fire from a Hans. A Steel Rain doesn't get to shoot as often, but it does rain a lot…and at 42 points, Angela and her sniper team are not a massive bargain, costing more than any other unit except a superheavy walker. The Americans need something to do the equivalent of a Hans. Hmm. Perhaps an open-topped Mickey with a real 75mm pack howitzer? That didn't require a Reload, because it actually has enough crew to do the job?

Yeah, measured them. They're 35mm, not the touted and adverted 28mm. That would make them about 1/56 scale. I still have some 1/48 scale left from my youth (about 5-10 years before Shadowace's) and Dust minis look like midgets next to them.

Let's get something straight: Dust miniatures are NOT 1/48 scale! The measure of model scale is based on the size of the models relative to actual size, of course. With human figures, this is measured on a 6'/1.83m standard, meaning that the average human model is assumed to be a scaled 6'/1.83m tall. With this in mind, 1.83m divided by 28mm (the stated height of an average Dust miniature trooper) comes to 1/65th scale. If they were truly 1/48 scale, they'd be 38mm tall. As a modeler of long standing, this is sort of meaningful. So please, everyone stop claiming that Dust minis are 1/48 scale…

I hestitate to use Dan Abnett's fluff for anything, even pillow stuffing. The man writes novels that wouldn't even be able to fly in the old Mack Bolan series. He's ignorant, a bad writer, and I hesitate to even call him a hack, although the field is so lowered nowadays that I suppose that label fits…

I'm just happy to see someone bring up the PKAs again! I have two boardgames from Japan about that world…it's a much rougher place than Dust. The laser-firing hovertank would WASTE anything in the Dust universe, ton for ton, short of alien technology…

On a quasi-related point, I would just like to note that a full gorilla platoon (4 boxes + Op. Seelowe) comes to approximately $125 USD MSRP, which is just a tad more than buying a 5-man squad of the new Ork Meganobs from GW's new 40K massive price hike series ($23 USD @). I don't know about other people, but I call that a bargain.

I've been wanting Dust units for Flames of War! That way I could use some real-world tanks and artillery with my mechs.

It's been said before here: with over a million worlds to chose from, you're going to find a staggering diversity of cultures, equippage, customs, etc. I think that the Guard units should be allowed damned near ANYTHING that the Imperium has to offer, except Astartes progenoids and so on. Besides, I still have my Guard army from Space Marine (Epic), and it damned sure has both jump-pack troops and a LOT of bikers! As well as Predator tanks, all the heavy artillery, and two Leviathan command forts for CCC.

Odd, the Cobra/Rattler box says "with four weapons systems" or some such. So what are they gonna put on the KV47 box, "Comes with six separate weapons systems" or something like that, since it comes with 6 arms? That's deceptive marketing. (Or, in other words, lying. Oh, yeah, that's marketing in a nutshell, innit?)

By the way, can anyone tell me what weapons packages come with the new level 3 walkers? (the Cobra/Rattler and the Mk III.)

Me too! Who knew it would eventually end up making me money? I bought it because I drove an old '73 Fury III, a 4500lb road cruiser that actually had enough spare room under the hood for a couple of M2HBs (I figured). And with the retard traffic around here ('buckle of the bible belt,' and rural rubes to boot), there were a lot of times I wanted those twin .50s…At least Car Wars allowed me a game of that fantasy. 1981. 31 years ago. I'm old.

Strom is right; the thread title is incogruously hilarious…

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, it's not rocket science. Given that this system is way simpler than, say, Car Wars (remember that, anyone?), with a lot smaller point spread, I don't think that highly tuned balance was a concern of the designers. I mean, there's a 5-point difference between the laser/quad 20mm and the Hans rocket armament…and the Hans armament is a massive step up, considering the splash and tank-killer qualities, along with the indirect fire ability. But let's go ahead an look at the MkII armaments as presented. The Luther's ranged 5cm gun makes it 5 points more expensive than the Loth's double kampflange, and the Ludwig's dual 88/L56 guns make it 10 points more expensive than the Luther. The Lothar is a special case, with its double MRLs, but it still comes in at 40 points. Extrapolating from these numbers, I'd guess that the base-line cost of a MkII (with MG) is 20 points. Each kampflange costs 5, a single 88L56 costs 15 and the double adds 5 (it really doesn't add that much; based on other double weapons, it seems that the dual-weapon mechanic generally adds a single die to each category. More on that later), the 5cm costs 5 points, and each nebelwerfer costs 10 (those seem to have multiple effects, doubling their dice instead of just adding one). This is without knowing any design calculations; just simple extrapolation. Running with those numbers, then there'd be a simple shopping list. A MkII with kampflange and 88L56 would be 20+5+5=40 points. With 88L56 and MRL? 20+15+10=45 points. As for the dice numbers for the formerly dual armaments, the single 88L56 gun line would lose half its dice firing at infantry - these guns apparently use only AP ammo, which makes sense given that they're auto-loaded - and has one fewer dice shooting at armor. The single nebelwerfer would halve its dice on all categories. There you have it. Try it out, folks; tell us what you find. And don't bloviate on about 'game balance' and other frak until you've tried it! Dust minis give us the ability to mix and match, and the background supports it (check the photos!), so why shouldn't we? (BTW, my mention of Car Wars - anyone play Aeroduel, Car Wars Tanks? Check the author's credits. I've a little experience with game design.)