Dust

Morning all, could I request an opinion from the hive-mind-of-Ameritrash-Greatness?

The opinions I require are those on Dust.

I have read it's a Risk clone. I have read it's much more than this.

I was wondering how many of you had played it and what your thoughts on it are. (And most importantly, is it fun?).

Cheers,

Alan.

I owned a copy for a while, but never played it. eventually i traded it on. from looking through the rules and components, it seemed a little closer to the milton bradley game master series than straight risk. A bit more Axis and Allies but not quite as long.

I'm embarrassed to say I also owned this and never played it before selling it off. It seemed like a good enough game and I liked the setting, but it got put in a clearance sale when I moved out of my last apartment.

I had a game group that loved it. Played it about 20 times over three years.

The good: The game is simple, but well done. It probably has close to the same number of rules as basic Risk. I would have no problems teaching this to a first time boardgamer, but it's enjoyable even for those who are used to more complex fare. The game lets the players play each other, without having to struggle with their understanding of the rules, or having to jump through the hoops of an artificial system.

The game runs on a constantly moving VP track, so no matter how badly the game state ends up, it will end with someone crowned as a victor. As a bonus, VP is clearly tied to controlling area, so it never feels like a weaselly win - no bullshit secret objectives here. As a further bonus, given the above, the game knows to give itself time to breathe. Unlike other VP based games that end just as the game goes into swing, in Dust the VP clock gives you enough time for a few epic battles. Games ran about two to three hours for a four player game, maybe up to four hours for a six player game.

Since army strength is unbounded, the game encourages you to bunch up the majority of your units into one big army. Which means that it's futile to try and split your forces to defend your various cities and holdings - you'll just get steamrolled by a player that throws everything he's got at you. Once players realize this, the majority of their territory will be held by only a token defense. In this way, turtling is discouraged, attacking is rewarded, and the map is constantly dynamic.

On the downside, this means that it's really easy for a player to get ganged up on (even inadvertently) and suddenly lose their territory due to no tactical fault of their own. Once you are put on the backfoot, you become food for the superpowers. Technically, there is no player elimination in Dust, but there are no catch-up mechanisms either. The only thing stopping strong players from devouring you at their leisure is that they would rather much gang up on the leader.

There were a variety of units and one-time use cards, the balance of which were questionable. At some point we realized that nobody wanted to buy mechs, so we had to house rule their stats a bit so that they would have the amount of prominence that the theme of the game would imply. The one-time use cards were kinda poor, and near the end of my run with the game I toyed with the idea of developing variable player powers into the game to make each army more unique and to play up the theme. The game really ached for an expansion to enhance the game and fix a few bugs. Once I realized that I was trying to house rule the game into something it was not, I decided to let it go and move on.

I'll be straight with you buddy, you should probably just buy Kemet.

Thanks for the replies so far everyone. I considered Kemet, but the euro-ish tech-tree put me off somewhat.

I'm not averse to Euro/Ameritrash hybrids - Chaos in the Old World being one of my favourite games - but I was looking for a rules-light but strategically-heavy bash-em-up DOAM game with "take that" type combat (i.e. dice) and I thought Dust might fit the bill. (I have Risk: Legacy but can never get the same group together consistently).

I like Dust, but it feels like they tried to take Risk and hybridize it with the VP track. Good, and different, but far from great.

Cyclades is the winner here. I've still never played Kemet and from what I understand it's a lot more in-your-face and actively pushes fighting, and if that's the case, I'd pass on that. Cyclades is just so brilliant that it's unique. There are tons of ways to win, and I have yet to have a "you took Australia so you win" moment occur. Fights happen organically....when needed and when it suits the player initiating.

There's far too many games that try to be a wargame with some other stuff tacked on and Cyclades is the only one that gets it right, IMHO.