Maybe I should go up the middle sir.
A look back at the long (and complex) history of Dust—and a look at the miniatures!
Well, it’s not as ancient as some of the other games I’ve featured in this segment, but as I was showing you my recent painting jobs on these Dust bunkers, I thought I’d show you some of the rest of the range and chat semi-coherently about the convoluted history of Dust, illustrator Paolo Parente’s weird war creation. Because it’s been around for more than ten years now! From its beginnings as the inspiration behind AT-43 to its current Dust 1947 iteration, the game continues despite a rocky road from publisher to publisher.
For more, check out my support for Dust on the EOG: comprehensive summaries and references for Dust Tactics, Dust Second Edition, and Dust Warfare, an interview with past publisher Battlefront, and battle reports 1 (parts one and two), 2 (parts one and two) and 3 (parts one and two and three).
AT-43 was “my game” because it was prepainted 🙂 But tbh I was never a big fan of the rules system. It had its flaws – but all in all, it was ok. I always wanted to get into Dust to see if the rules were “better” but never jumped in. The prepainted stuff was a bit expensive and the people that played AT-43 with me had had no interest in it. So it is one of those “sometime I will get this” games for me. With the mix of alien tech and Cthulhu theme added lately it really looks like a fun game.
I don’t know how you’d get armies together affordably these days; the models are sold direct from Dust Studios and they ain’t cheap, and Ebay isn’t cheap for anything. And I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the mish mash of Cthulu and 50s aliens they have happening now, it all looks to be a bit of a stylistic mess. Anyway, check out my batreps if you haven’t already!
Here in Europe, you can get some Dust stuff online. A starter (walker, hero and a unit) is around 52 Euro for the assembled and primed version. Dust Studio is also present at Spiel in Essen and some other cons….so it is not that bad here. But I do think that the US is the main market and shipping is quite expensive…especially for volume stuff like boxes with minis. I am not sure how the fluff comes together….but I am sure you can play just fine without Cthulhu. And of cause have I seen your Dust vids! 😉
For Europe the main distributor for Dust 1947 is “warfactory.pl” from Poland. Another distributor is “ammodrop.eu” from Italy. There you can get unassembled, primed or premium painted versions of the models.
For the U.S. it’s “dustusa.net”.
Thankyou for that info!
Interesting addition Peter!
I’ve been in and out since the FFG “coffin box” days. I do have the current Dust 1947 rulebook, as well as a Mythos and SSU army, but no one I’m aware of has played it locally since FFG purged it. I enjoy it for what it is, but I’m surprised frankly that it’s still holding on so many iterations later.
I get the impression it’s Parente’s pet project, so I guess if his studio is busy making plastic miniatures for other publishers, he can afford to keep it going.