Introduction
For this assignment the class was divided into ten groups, each group had to select one board game each to play and later analyze. The number of my group is ten, and the game that we chose is called “Dust”.
Game system
Dust is a strategy based war game where two to six players battle against each other for world domination. Domination is reached by controlling the most capitals and power sources, as well as achieving goals such as controlling the most land or water tiles. There is also a point given for being the one with the most production centers, which in combination with power sources determine the number of reinforcement you will receive. The points the players collect through the various dominations are at the end of each round counted and stacked at on the far side of the game board, the counter goes from one to forty, and the goal is to reach the winning limit first.
Phases:
There are five different phases that make up one round, setup, production, movement, attack and victory point phase. The setup phase is only implemented in the very first round as the name implies. At the start of each round all players have to select a card from their hand and place it visible to all the others, and the player with the highest numeric value of their card gets to have his/her turn first. It is very hard to explain the phase system without getting in to the cards a little bit as well, they are also further explained below.
Setup phase: The player with the highest valued card starts the setup phase whit selecting his/her capitol by placing a tank-class unit on the tile, after which the rest of the player follow with the same action in order of card value. After the capitals have been distributed the same procedure is done for the rest of the land tiles and power source tiles.
Production phase: When all land tiles are occupied by a tank unit, then the production phase begins. This is when the players get to place out their reinforcements, the number of units available for each round is determined by a point budget. That budget is in turn decided by the number of capitols, power sources and production centers that the player controls and all units have individual costs. An addition to the budget also comes from the value of the card that the player has chosen for the round. The players can also use production points to buy new cards, which is the only means of getting them. Once the player has placed hers/his units the movement phase begins.
Movement phase: In this phase the player can move their units from one land tile adjacent to another provided that they are in control of the land tiles in between the two points. Each point to point movement cost one movement point. When moving over water however, the movement from shore to shore is counted as one movement step. The amount of movements the player is allowed per turn is determined by the card chosen for each round. Movement is primarily used to mobilize troops for a coming attack. When the movement is completed the attack phase is at hand.
Attack phase: Much like the other actions available in the game, the attacks are limited to the number indicated on the chosen card of the round. An attack is carried out by moving units to an adjacent enemy land tile and declaring war. Depending on what type of units the two armies contain, one player has the highest number of tactical supremacy. Having tactical supremacy means that you get to roll the dice first, giving that player the chance to decimate the other army before it can counter. If the numbers are matched the defending party has the advantage. The game has its own dice system where the six sides have either “hit” or “miss” and the number of dice rolls is decided by how many combat points your army possesses. Light units have one combat point and heavy units have two. A battle can end in either win, loss or a cease fire, cease fire being when the players have rolled all blank dices three times in a row. There is a clear advantage in being first with attacking during the first round when all the other players stand without reinforcements.
Victory point phase:
Cards:
There are eleven different types of cards in the game, stacked in a deck of forty five cards in total. The player starts out with six cards on hand and can later buy new cards randomly drawn from the deck during the production phase. Every card has different numeric values or “stats” which are “combat points”, “movement points” and “reinforcement points”. All of these points were accounted for in the section about phases. The secondary function of the cards is that they work as playable instances of various capabilities, which all have a critical effect on the overall gameplay. As the cards have different abilities, they are also only playable during certain phases when their capabilities are relevant. The player has to choose strategically which card to use as an instance and which to use as their card of the round. The cards are the most influential force of change in the game, making a status quo as good as void at any stage of the game. A well planned move in combination with the right cards can sway the lead of any player.
Units:
There are three types of units in the game, land units, naval units and air units. The land and air types come in two variations each, one light unit and one heavy. The naval unit however only has one type. The main difference between light and heavy units is their statistical value during combat and the cost of buying them. A heavy unit has more combat points and abilities in connection to the cards, the downside however is that the still only have one hit point like the others. So for strategic attacks they can give a lot of advantages, but whenever they lack tactical supremacy they are at a double disadvantage because their loss would be more costly.
Power sources and Production centers:
Power sources are dedicated tiles distributed evenly across the world map, when controlled by a player they generate two important resources. On the one hand each source gives one victory point to be collected at the end of each round. On the other hand one power source fuels one production center, making it “fully operational”. Production centers are a sort of special stationary unit that gives a bonus in combat stats for the tile on which it is built, the main function of the building is producing units. All reinforcement-units must be placed on a land tile containing a production center and the number of units that can be placed per turn is restricted to five. In the production phase the production centers each generate three production points for the player to spend on units, given that they are operational. These factories are a crucial strategic limitation, giving the game a much needed predictability when anticipating the moves of your opponents, especially when the effect of the cards makes the game so chaotic.
Capitols:
The capitol is passively the most important tile in the game, it generates six production points by default, and possessing a capitol is part of the victory conditions. A balancing mechanism in the game is that it is prohibited for players to attack a capital until they have reached halfway through to the end of the victory point scale, after one capitol has been attacked the prohibition is lifted for all. In all combat situations the capital has a bonus of five combat points and the defender always has tactical supremacy, meaning they get to roll the dice first. However well defended a capitol is, it will still be vulnerable to certain card effects, especially one card that simulates a gas-attack. When that card is played all units occupying the targeted tile are forced to retreat to an adjacent friendly tile. The only factor that keeps this within reasonable balance is that there are several of these cards in the deck, so that a player can return the favor.
Victory points:
Victory points are the abstract measurement of the power that the player wields in the game. In other words how many strategic tiles they control and how many achievements they completed. At the beginning of the game a limit of points needed to win is set, the player who reaches it first and crosses it with the most points is the winner. There are three different achievement tokens in the game, each token received gives one victory point for every round that they are earned. The tokens are earned by controlling the most water- and land tiles as well as the most production centers. The points are counted at the end of each round and the achievement tokens can switch hands every time the points are counted.
Core system
The core system is as far as I can see the economy of points that the players have at their disposal for each round. The points for combat, movement and reinforcement are all the key features that tie together all decisions and shape all actions available to the player during any given round. The system that has the biggest impact on the points is that of the cards. So the points that the cards provide along with the massive impact that they have on the gameplay through their abilities, makes “cards” the core system. The card that the player chooses for the round will determine the actions that are available to him/her.
The most important system
In my opinion the most important system is that of victory points. That system takes what could have been a simple war game, and makes it a skill based strategy game that requires careful planning and understanding of social manipulation. Should there not be a victory point system to diversify the focus of the game from the importance of just fighting battles and hoping that lady luck blesses your dice rolls, to actually laying up proper strategies to maintain control of important strategic points of the map, points which will later result in victory in the long run instead.
During the first games of Dust that we played, most of us played it as we would a simple war game. We focused on just conquest and battles, however it turned out that the winner was not necessarily the player with the largest army and most aggressive play style. It was rather the one that had made the least noise and who posed the smallest threat to the other players, that player would often be allowed to keep their territory for the longest amount of time and thereby having the most continuous income of victory points throughout the game.
The negative
The process of getting started and understanding the basic gameplay is extremely complicated in Dust, there is in my opinion a lack of difficulty levels that are more forgiving for someone new to the game. As we started playing and going through the manual, all of us found that the rules of the game were presented in a very confusing manner. Every rule seemed to have at least a few exceptions during certain stages or instances.
One major source of confusion for us at first was the victory conditions, there was no straight forward explanation to how the game was won from the beginning. This resulted in us placing our units and planning our strategy based on absolutely nothing at all in the setup phase of the first round.
One striking flaw in this game is that it is constructed in a way very similar to a computer based strategy game. The mechanics and relationships between units and cards and strategic points of attacking and defending are so complex that they should be handled by a computer. Playing the game, you get a feeling that the developers thought that it would be really cool to make a mash between a computer game like for example Sid Meyers “Civilization” and a board game like “Risk”.
The positive
As mentioned before this game is quite strategically advanced, while this also makes it harder to learn than most board games, it also gives it a lot of dimensions to the gameplay once you get a hold of it. When it comes to board games my main reference is from playing Risk, which is a more straight forward war game, but it lacks the depth that this game has to offer. Another mechanic that this game has and that most strategy board games lack, is the card system that breaks the standoff between equally strong players in a very radical way.
Target audience
The target audience for the game is twelve years old and up. I find that it is a bit too low, I would put the limit at fifteen and up. This due to the many complex systems that the player has to keep track of to utilize the full capacity of the game. This game is probably best suited for players who are used to complex games and advanced strategy games.
Nils Wennergren 
Hello Nils!
Your review has a nice structure and you do address all the important issues in your analysis. I enjoyed reading it.
What I Disagree with
There is not much in your analysis that I can’t agree with, however there is one thing and it’s a big one. I cannot agree with the core system you’ve identified, not entirely.
I would argue that cards are a form of input to a system, be it the core system or any other, and not the system itself. The core in this game is, according to me, production of units, moving said units and fighting battles with those units. The cards provide input to this system that enables the player to use it, but they are not the system itself.
Let’s use an analogy. Think of the core system as a car. The car needs gas. You put gas into the car in order to drive it. How much gas you put into it determines how far you can go. In Dust™, you have, among other things, combat moves in your core system. The combat move is used to fight battles. You get combat moves by playing a card. Which card you play determines how many combat moves you get.
You do, however, talk about management of different types of points. This could be one way of describing the core system, but since you move from this and identify the cards as the core system I have to protest. Cards are no more the core system in this game than gasoline is the car it gets poured into.
What I agree with
When it comes to the most interesting system I have to assume it’s what you call the most important system (typo?). I can agree that the victory points system in this game is the most interesting one, or at least the consequences of that system have the most interesting effect on how the game is played.
Any system that makes strategic planning on the player’s part more important and the influence of luck less important is a good one in my book. It’s never fun to lose simply because you were unlucky, and there is little point in playing a game where your choices hardly matter (with some exceptions).
I wholeheartedly agree that the most negative part of the game was its complexity. I’ve rarely been so confused trying to learn the rules for anything, and I know the others in my group were as well. In fact it was so bad, that when we read that you should line up all your purchased units before placing them on the board to avoid confusion, we all burst out laughing.
One thing that added to this was the fact that the rulebook was unnecessarily long since it often repeated the exact same rules with minor differences when describing the movement for land, sea and air units. That could have been summarized instead, with the differences between the unit types listed in a separate box or something.
There is little to say on the positive side of the game other than agreeing with what you’ve already covered. I would like to compare Dust™ to Axis & Allies™ as well rather than just risk. In fact you have a similar production system in Axis & Allies™ with factories being the only place you can position new units. There is also a restriction on how many units can be produced by each factory in that game as well, though it works a bit differently.
As for the target audience, I also agree that the age rating should be somewhat higher due to the game’s complexity.
Nitpicking
There are a few things I would like to bring to your attention that I think would’ve made this review even better.
When you describe the setup phase you should mention the neutral armies that come into place if there are fewer players than capitols on the map. They may not be a huge part of the game but if you want a description of the game that is as complete as possible, they should be mentioned.
You seem to have forgotten to write about the victory point phase after the attack phase. The heading is there but no text, it goes straight to cards.
When you write about the different type of units you do bring up the fact that the heavier and more expensive units also die in one hit meaning there is a large risk in using them. That is good. However I do think you should have gone onto more detail about the advantages these units have. Especially that they add to the tactical superiority making it more likely for you to get the first attack. That can be what tips the balance in a battle.
When you talk about the power sources being used to keep the factories at full capacity you only speak of the Epic variant of Dust™. In the Premium variant, power sources are not necessary to keep the factories going. You should also have mentioned that power sources cannot be attacked in the first round.
Lastly I would have liked to see a bit more elaboration about the fact that each round the player who goes first is determined by the cards that are played. Because that player can do all of his actions before everyone else, including attacking and taking over areas, going first can be a huge advantage. This is also offset somewhat by how the order is determined. First you look at how many attacks a card give, then the amount of moves and lastly, if needed, that amount of stars a cards has. The amount of production a card gives is never used in this way as getting to go first and have a large production phase would probably make the card to powerful. This is further demonstrated by one card that gives you the first turn no matter what. That card has very low values on attack, move and production in order to counter this effect.
That’s all I have to say for now. Maybe we could have a discussion about our differences when it comes to identifying a core system?
Cheers!
/Niklas Svantesson