The wait is nearly over! I'm finally in the last stages in preparing Dawn of War for Print on Demand. The road has been littered with challenges, most of them self-inflicted in my eternal quest for perfection! Since we're so close to being done, I thought I would share a sneak peak at what's heading your way.
The Dawn of Iron - First Anthology is a compilation of all of the Dawn of Iron releases to date. This includes:
The Dawn of War Rulebook
Battle of Hampton Roads Battlepack
Battles of Plum Point Bend and Memphis Battlepack
Battle of Albemarle Sound Battlepack
That Devil, the Arkansas Battlepack
Battle of Cherbourg Battlepack
Battle of Mobile Bay Battlepack
Battlefield: Riverine Terrain Pack
With 104 pages, there’s actually a lot of new content in there. I’ve spread out the rules a little to add some more space for diagrams and clarifications coming in from playtest games and proofreaders. But there’s more brand new content as well. Let's have a look!
History Section
The biggest single block of new pages is a general history of the war, backed by a map of the country and a timeline of nautical events. This will give you an overview of the war and how events at sea tie into the greater story.
Coastal Battlefields
I’ve expanded this section from a single page into a deeper dive into coastal battlefields, similar to how I focused on the Riverine battlefields. So you can expect some more detailed terrain rules, such as tides and rocky coastlines, as well as a series of maps to help you build your coastal battle table.
Ship Yards
This section has been often requested by players. The Ship Yards lists of all the 100 ships that have been currently published and their characteristics. For this I followed a sort of old-school Flames of War arsenal format so that players can quickly reference it for ship characteristics and weapon batteries.
Index & Bibliography
The index is another often requested feature. It’ll help you locate rules and other helpful pieces of information. I’ve also included a bibliography of all the books that I referred to when creating these rules. If you’d like to seek out more information about the American Civil War at sea, then these will help get you started!
Scale-inclusive Maps
I’ve re-worked all Mission and Scenario maps to include measurements for both 1/600 and 1/1200 scale battlefields.
Remastered Tokens
I’ve updated all the icons and the tokens to match the style of the rulebook and ship cards. They were one of the first things I made for the game and desperately needed updating! I’ve also enlarged them to 1”/2.5cm to help with clarity of reading and improve handling.
Remastered Ship Cards
I’ve enlarged the size of the ship cards from the standard US-Poker size to a tarot card size. This means that the information is more clear and readable than before.
I also caught a calculation error in the spreadsheet, where 40 to 60pdr rifles were not calculating the proper range so I’ve fixed that. The down stream effect is that these corrected ranges have added a point or two here and there to various ships, so you might find some ships are inconsistent. The good news is that the old points are consistent with the shorter ranges, so there’s no serious panic if you want to willingly take a hit in range for a discount of a few points. Moving forward, I’ll be updating these and will issue free updates.
Remastered Mini-Cards
I had to change the size to a standard mini-card size for printing purposes, but I’ve taken the opportunity to also increase all of the fonts on the mini cards to help with reading. In the process of updating these cards, I took the opportunity to fine tune a bit of the wording on a few cards and will make these new versions available so that you can update your decks accordingly.
How & When Will the Anthology be Available?
The Dawn of Iron: First Anthology will be available for general digital purchase as a Print-on-Demand book OR a digital PDF version via Wargames Vault. Decks of ship cards and mini-cards will also be available on the site.
Errata & Updates to Current Releases
Over the course this publication, I've taken the opportunity to fix a few problems and errors that have been brought to my attention. All of the rules-critical changes, such as errata and the mini-card updates, will be made available, free of cost, to all players. Moving forward, I’ll update every one of the current battlepacks with new PDFs so as I refresh them, you’ll be notified that there are new files available for download (also free!).
Thank You!
I want to close saying a huge thank you to everyone that has poured their time and energy into making Dawn of Iron a reality. Many thanks to those tireless proofreaders who’ve stuck with me over several versions of the manuscripts, to all of the players for sending me encouraging messages and photos of your Dawn of Iron games, to my fellow designers out there who have helped me refine and improve the rules, to everyone who’ve given me some airtime on podcasts and videos to discuss this passion of mine, and finally, to my Patreon supporters who help keep the lights on in my small studio. Thank you all so much, and I can’t wait to share this new publication later this month!