[DZC] - Dropzone Commander, even littler wardollies!

mr_mich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_zgDFXfSI&list=UU-aSLyvFLGEmNFcGomzL47w&index=7&feature=plcp

Dropzone Commander is a new miniatures battle game based in a future era where mankind is trying to re-take their civilization from scary aliens. Developed by Hawk Wargames, it presents a lot of interesting features for a modern tabletop game:
-10mm scale (compared to 15mm Flames of War and 28mm Warhammer)
-Air and land combat, including interceptors and aerial transports (hence the game's name)
-Rules for garrisoning, assaulting, and destroying buildings
-Awesome new resin material that bends in and out of shape, and is super-resilient
-6 "regular" and 6 "special" objective-based gametypes, including multiplayer scenarios
-All existing races included in the main rulebook ($22), with promise for PDF releases of new rules/units

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RACES

United Colonies of Mankind (UCM) - The UCM represent modern humans fighting to take back their former worlds after an alien invasion. Through clever use of articulating weaponry, they can conceal their tanks behind cover and deliver an impressive array of firepower from a very versatile battle line. With some of the best air support in the game, they can take a proactive or reactive stance to enemy actions in the air or on the ground.


The Scourge - Having pushed mankind away from its homeworlds, the Scourge are fighting to conquer more and retain what they've got. Their swarms of vehicles carry devastating, although short-ranged, weaponry that puts fear into men's hearts. Taking other lifeforms as hosts, they're able to bring the resources of other races to bear in combat.


The Post-Human Republic (PHR) - The PHR represents a separatist group who splintered away from mankind in its time of need. Hideous triumphs of man and machinery, these cyborgs take to the battlefield with superior armor and weaponry. What they lack in numbers they make up for in firepower, their uncanny integration with their equipment making them an elegant vehicle of pure slaughter.


The Shaltari - The Shaltari are a mysterious alien race, who have often been caught supporting both sides of the war between mankind and the Scourge. Using mysterious gate technologies, their units seem to "teleport" around the battlefield rather than ride. The immortality of their consciousness makes them fierce, elite warriors, as their prowess is never truly lost on the battlefield.

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WHERE TO BUY
Due to its recent launch (late July) and enormous response to pre-order options, models are trickling into the US distributors bit by bit. Your best bet right now is probably The War Store in the US. The game will be distributed by e-Figures, which will expand options considerably once production meets demand.

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HOW DOES IT PLAY?
The game does not follow the traditional I-go-You-go pattern. Here's a quick breakdown:
-Your army is made of battlegroups, which are each made of multiple squads (a squad being 3 APC's filled with infantry, for example)
-You take turns activating battlegroups, meaning that you'll activate a series of squads and then I'll activate a series of squads.
-Models must maintain coherency within a squad (i.e. your 3 APC's with infantry must stick together) but not within a battlegroup
-Shooting is based on a to-hit/to-wound system. Models may have active countermeasures, reducing your effective range when targeting them, or passive countermeasures which grant a save.
-To-wound rolls are 1 step more difficult than 40k (i.e. the equivalent of Str7 vs. Toughness 7 requires a 5+ to wound)
-Infantry must embark into buildings in order to search for objectives, but can be assaulted/grenaded/flamed out of buildings. Or you can just bring the whole building down!
-Aircraft can make strafing runs, can intercept aircraft that are strafing, or even intercept other interceptors!
-Artillery can fire indirectly, but templates scatter, unless another scouting unit has LOS to the target and relays the information
-Command units determine your likelihood of first activation in a given turn, as well as allow you to pick up and play neat (although not really overpowering) Command Cards for 1-time buffs.

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MORE INFORMATION
Hawk Wargames Facebook page
Hot-LZ (An unofficial DZC fan forum)
DZC Printable Buildings - Download and print these PDF's, then glue to card/foamcore to make terrain!
DZC Printable Roads - Same as above, but for roads to build a city

kaliyama

Looks pretty awesome. What's up with the resin material? Is it discussed on the web site?

mr_mich

It's covered on the Hawk Wargames Facebook Page, and also shown in this video by Golem Painting for a bit.

Crovaxan

This looks amazing. I'm gonna look for some gameplay because this could be the wargame that i finally convince my friends to pick up.

mr_mich

I'm staying tuned for one of Blue Table Painting's amazing batreps, but basically if you didn't preorder it'll be another week or so to get models. That being said, there are some people kludging games together with what they've got. I say kludging because people don't have a ton of 10mm/n-scale terrain lying around and models were preordered before anyone had the book of rules/stats. There are some batreps up, including some at this DZC forum, as well as these YT randos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNf8MpsRgnQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dn24uNRDek

I've got the rulebook here if anyone's got specific questions. It's paperback, but beautiful and glossy and well worth $20. I ordered it on the Warstore and it shipped here in a day.

Crovaxan

My main question is whats the pros and cons of the different races, Why do you want to pick UCM over the Cyborgs. Probably realting them to 40k factions would be easiest. I like the cyborgs from what I've seen, they seem to be like space marines.

Nobody

I picked up the rulebook over the weekend and read through it.

I'm going with UCM mainly for the aesthetics, they remind me a lot of the GDI faction from Command and Conquer with their vehicle designs. My second choice would have been PHR because I'm also a sucker for mechs and their aesthetic looks very much like Eldar and Tau collaborated on vehicle design.

I will also say that the list building rules are delightfully more complex than they initially appeared. I'm actually trying to build a spreadsheet template for UCM army construction and I'm not quite done yet.

mr_mich

@Crovaxan, that's a great question.

UCM seem like a general all-around race. I wouldn't necessarily compare them to the Imperial Guard, although that's certainly the first comparison to be made. They have a lot of robust tanks and most importantly, a number of air combat options. They're pretty reasonable all-arounders.

The PHR are more elite. Whereas you can get a main UCM battle tank for under 40 points, you're looking at 50ish for a main PHR walker. The PHR walkers basically have 2 wounds, and the heavy walkers benefit from both active countermeasures (reduces effective range when shooting at them) and passive ones (gives them a 5+ save, fairly rare).

The aesthetic is definitely a thing to consider, as mentioned above, but looking at army construction you start to see the difference. The UCM tanks, for example, basically come in one of two loadouts. The PHR options are more flexible, but more expensive. UCM come in triplets, whereas PHR come in pairs.

This doesn't even take into consideration what their relative transport options are, PHR pays for abilities similar to rending, whereas UCM ships tend to have less bells and whistles and cost fewer points.

Crovaxan

I agree with Nobody, the armored mech thing just gets me, it's why i like the tau and that elvish race in warmachine. Plus I like the elite warrior concept so the PHR just seem to draw me in. If i convince my friends to get this im picking either them or the Shaltari because teleporting is too good an ability to give up.

Nobody

mr_mich wrote: »

@Crovaxan, that's a great question.

UCM seem like a general all-around race. I wouldn't necessarily compare them to the Imperial Guard, although that's certainly the first comparison to be made. They have a lot of robust tanks and most importantly, a number of air combat options. They're pretty reasonable all-arounders.

The PHR are more elite. Whereas you can get a main UCM battle tank for under 40 points, you're looking at 50ish for a main PHR walker. The PHR walkers basically have 2 wounds, and the heavy walkers benefit from both passive countermeasures (reduces effective range when shooting at them) and active ones (gives them a 5+ save, fairly rare).

The aesthetic is definitely a thing to consider, as mentioned above, but looking at army construction you start to see the difference. The UCM tanks, for example, basically come in one of two loadouts. The PHR options are more flexible, but more expensive. UCM come in triplets, whereas PHR come in pairs.

This doesn't even take into consideration what their relative transport options are, PHR pays for abilities similar to rending, whereas UCM ships tend to have less bells and whistles and cost fewer points.

I think the countermeasures are backwards...Active is the one that reduces range and Passive gives a ward save.

That being said, pretty much every unit (except some infantry) have Active Countermeasures, so unless you are shooting at those units or buildings you are going to be using the shorter range on the guns.

Also, one thing to consider in comparing PHR to UCM is that walkers (save the Janus) are slower than the equivalent UCM tanks, and the UCM dropships (save the large one, the Albatross) are faster than their PHR counterparts.

mr_mich

Teleporting is interesting for Shaltari. Basically, you have a number of "Gates" instead of dropships. Your units can come out of any gate, which is huge because a lot of the missions require you to carry intel or escort a hostage off the table. Gates are bought in sizes, and units all have mass. Each gate can move a certain amount of mass per turn. If all of your gates are killed, you pretty much lose the game...whereas other armies just lose mobility when their dropships go down.

I'm really digging on the PHR, but UCM looks neat, and they have some killer looking aircraft.

Edit -- good catch on the CM mixup! Also, at second glance the Shaltari tanks look really survivable. Like, ACM, 4+ PCM, and good armor/wounds to boot. They seem like they'd be fun to play, but their visual style really doesn't do it for me.

Crovaxan

Here's a question, the UCM seem to have the most aircraft avail right now. How Is and viable(this might not count since the game is so new) is it to make a list based off. "I want to use aircraft to harrass my enemies ground forces while Infantry does mission objectives.

Basically am I shooting myself in the foot bringing alot of aircraft with less infantry.



On another note with the Shalari can you blitz forward a gate, enter a building, save the hostage enter the gate and exit a gate at your table edge to win the game? Cause that seems like itll get abused pretty quick.

Nobody

Crovaxan wrote: »

Here's a question, the UCM seem to have the most aircraft avail right now. How Is and viable(this might not count since the game is so new) is it to make a list based off. "I want to use aircraft to harrass my enemies ground forces while Infantry does mission objectives.

Basically am I shooting myself in the foot bringing alot of aircraft with less infantry.



On another note with the Shalari can you blitz forward a gate, enter a building, save the hostage enter the gate and exit a gate at your table edge to win the game? Cause that seems like itll get abused pretty quick.

On the Shaltari part I have no real knowledge of.

The UCM part is easy: You can't build a list that's all aircraft (you are limited to 0 fleet battlegroups in smaller games, and up to 3 in the largest one), and you absolutely have to have a infantry battlegroup and a armor battlegroup (as well as a command one in games larger than 999 pts). You can toss the Raven gunships into some battlegroups as a special choice (I believe), but your Archangels and Seraphims are limited to fleet battlegroups.

EDIT: Corrected name of the interceptor.

mr_mich

To answer your first question, there's a sort of force org that as mentioned, is more sophisticated than 40k. The size of the game determines how many of each type of battlegroup you can bring. For example, a Skirmish game (0-999 points) will only let you have 5 total Battlegroups, 0 of which are "Fleet" type battlegroups. A full Battle (2000+) will let you have 7 Battlegroups, 0-1 of which are Fleets.

Then each race has their own prescription of what makes up a "Fleet" battlegroup. Aircraft is pretty standard, but some Battlegroups may require 3+ infantry squads, or r2-4 of something else.

Then each squad has a valid squad size for each engagement. If you're playing a Skirmish/Clash/Battle game, a squad of Janus Walkers has 2/4/6 walkers respectively. This way as you go up in point size, the number of Battlegroups goes up, as does the squad size within those Battlegroups.

To be honest, you wouldn't want to short yourself on infantry. Plenty of missions have all of the objectives in buildings, or give you extra points for holding buildings, so they appear to be a really big part of the game. I'd recommend building around infantry in your army...get them APC's, and get the APC's dropships. Then bring fun toys

As for Shaltari, the game types usually have a LOT of objectives (like 10). I do imagine that AA will be a pretty important thing in this game, because even regular dropships give a lot of mobility. Shaltari units are also really expensive, so it's not like you're going to have a ton of ablative gates or infantry to soak up losses.

EDIT -- Looks like I didn't finish reading the Shaltari section. Their infantry can only be teleported by small APC-type gates (which conversely can only teleport infantry). That means that you have to deploy APC's through a gate, and the APC's are skimmers rather than flyers. Objectives can't be "teleported" per se, if you go into a gate with an objective then that particular gate holds the objective, and must fly off the table itself.

mr_mich

Man, this game looks awesome on a good table:

warder808

Dont know if me posting this is a Necro post.

I just had a demo of this at Templecon last weekend. The game seems very cool. The models are unbelievable. I'm leaning toward PHR. Just waiting to see if anyone at my local shop is interested in getting this.

Nobody

I know in my local shop there are several people who've bought models (myself included) but I haven't seen any games yet

mr_mich

There's been a ton more demos...none of my local group seemed interested in playing so I haven't pursued it at all.

That being said, I know Blue Table Painting has run some demos, one with the Hawk Wargames creator himself...the game definitely looks awesome. Where are you guys located?

Forar

This looks neat. Due to limited funding (can only justify one miniatures game, sad to say) I don't think I'll be able to convince my group to give it a go, but really I just wanted an excuse to say holy shit 10mm scale??.

I know it's not that surprising, but as someone with negligible artistic talent struggling to paint 28mm scale figures, 10mm strikes me as terrifying.

Like, even if I pulled off any assembly needed I'm pretty sure I'd wreck it in the priming process, let alone getting any semblance of detail in there.

mr_mich

On the contrary...I think it's way easier to paint a 10mm mini than a 28mm (although I've never tried).

I just have to imagine that it's easier to make a tabletop-standard windshield or camo pattern look good if your eyes can only see so much. From what I remember playing Epic (6mm) it's more about having everything look uniform than actual technique

Draeven

Your not painting individual faces or annything, its more block out your main colors wash, highlight etc etc.

mr_mich

Also basing...that's like way more important than it is at 28mm.

warder808

We are located in NYC. We play at a hobby shop called The Compleate Strategist.
I had my first game last night. Game seems fun. But Warmachine has totally spoiled me. Not having cards for your unit stats/abilities seems pretty silly now. I think I may have to make my own.