The rules do not feel finalized. There are still issues the online community want fixed. For example, I expect them to tweak Weapons Free and/or Launch soon.
The current state of WF/L gives customers a reason not to get a plastic Super Battleship, the Super part doesn’t function well for the launch builds.
They've been dripfeeding out orders for a while. My order of 3 battlecruisers arrived the other day.
I think its another sign of why they are so keen to retire the resin from their line. Not only are there quality control issues that make people avoid them; but they also have the issue that they can't ramp up production fast enough. In theory the shift to plastics should allow for faster production and that should mean that they can grow and market and if the game spikes in sales it shouldn't cripple them
Love the new scourge design, but also they kinda stole the shaltaris thing.
Overread wrote: They've been dripfeeding out orders for a while. My order of 3 battlecruisers arrived the other day.
I think its another sign of why they are so keen to retire the resin from their line. Not only are there quality control issues that make people avoid them; but they also have the issue that they can't ramp up production fast enough. In theory the shift to plastics should allow for faster production and that should mean that they can grow and market and if the game spikes in sales it shouldn't cripple them
They arent keen to retire resins - theyve keot the entire range available, and have repeatedly comfirmed they have no intention of stopping production of them (including sometime in the past week when i asked via facebook if the resin battleships were being retired).
My guess is they'll retire resins on select models once they have the majority of the range in plastic. That way its a clear message and direction.
Of course the other option is they just keep them but keep only sending out plastic sets to 3rd party stores where a lot of sales will happen and be generated and just keep the resins for their own store.
It's possible, I kind of feel like going all plastic and ditching resin might still happen or is at least a valid risk of happening one day.
Certainly I'd treat resins higher than plastics in the purchase priority if you're keen on a faction and after some specific ships.
My favorite look of all of these is the New York and Delhi*, big launch top with the little sensor nub on the bottom leading into the lower sensor/AG array triangle. But I like the resin versions of those ships better.
I would only be able to justify the plastic ship if I built it as a super battleship. However, the launch top and the massive weapons wanting to go WF seem to be in conflict. Is there an actual good choice of super battleship?
*Not to be confused with the New York Deli. Dammit, now I want pastrami and mustard on rye.
Overread wrote: I'm not used to seeing new models released at the same price as the old ones!!
I do find it weird how they've gone all in on it being the "Commander IP" rather than the drop-verse, but that's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things (though I do wonder how they think such a generic name is going to help 'sell' the IP vs the one thing that was always a kind of USP).
Mini's look lovely, but after the cluster of the dropfleet 2.0 rules I'm inclined to wait for retail if I were to get into this. Nice to see so much plastic too, if a shame that all the vehicles are resin.
Is it me, or are the PHR missing in action...?
Edit: And also, the strike vs battlezone starters are the same price despite the battlezone one having double the minis...?
Edit: And also, the strike vs battlezone starters are the same price despite the battlezone one having double the minis...?
That's because they are not the same models - it's mentioned in one of the comments that the plastics in strike have more options while in Battlezone they are mono pose with less/no options. Which I think makes sense for the scale of each games.
I also think that Dropverse is a better IP name.
Originally I "wasn't interested" ™ but after wanting the Hannibal tank things spiraled...
Theres already a competing wargame series using the "commabder" branding specifically so a bit of a poor branding choice to not continue to focus on the drop brand.
Bit of a skip for me, theres not much there thats compelling in terms of sculpts. The original con preview ucm and resistance minis were very unique designs, its a real shame that they seemed to completely abandin those aesthetics and go for something way more generic.
All the human sized minis being the size of primaris marines is a no from me.
(At least their saying this is 32mm instead of 28mm like carnevale still probably not right but closer)
I am temped by the large scale Saber tank, which I've always thought a brilliant if subtile concept. Fluff wise its pretty small which is good for me too. The terrain is also a bit tempting.
I got one of the scourge 32mm infantry model from an event exclusive. They are big, real big. Would have preferred the smaller scale as well, keeps me from investing a lot into this. Other minis find a home in Necromunda or five parsecs, but these ... Difficult.
I did pick up some paint sets, they go well with regular old Dropzone Commander and I want to support projects with plastic miniature production.
First up today we wanted to bring you a fantastic new add on for this campaign that means you can play battlezone straight out of the box.
These are early mock ups (We think we will remove some doors and windows) but 12 of these card buildings are going to be available as a £20 add on. Better yet we are including them FREE in the battlezone 2 player box. Oh and we're going to include them in the faction commander pledge level too
They are sturdy and hold a good number of troops on top. When you are done playing you can even fold them flat again for easy storage.
We've been reading the comments and messages and have seen a common request for a slightly bigger pledge level that covers both box sets. As such we are today bringing you DUAL COMMANDER.
This pledge level contains both starter boxes and it also comes with a Hunter and a Sabre. This means you not only have access to more miniature options for your striketeam games but when it comes to battlezone, you have two great size armies to fight it out on a fantastic looking battlefield (Now with buildings) right out of the box.
Thanks to the sprues you get in the two starter boxes and your stretch goal unlocks you can now field the following for your UCM and Scourge.
A 5 man legionnaire command squad, a 5 man legionnaire missile launcher squad, two 10 man legionnaire squads, 6 hazard suits, 6 praetorians and a sabre.
A 5 man warrior command squad, a 5 man warrior assault squad, two 10 man warrior squads, 6 eviscerators and a hunter.
Hordes of versatile troops backed up by a pair of powerful vehicles.
The next thing we have read multiple times is about getting added value for backing pre retail. Thats a fair point and so we are setting a new stretch goal at 100k. If we hit that then we're going to add an extra sprue to all 18 of the infantry boxes on this campaign (thats 50% additional value over their retail counterparts!)
The 6 core bundles will get an additional sprue for each of the two infantry within them to ensure their value still remains a little keener than buying the squads on their own. Oh they also ALL now have a commander miniature in them that was unlocked as part of this campaign!
Another great reason to back NOW is that we had to take an educated guess on a few prices and may have low balled them a touch. We just printed the Genitor and this thing is HUGE. There is no way it will be the current price at RRP!
We also tried to best judge with infantry how many we can fit on a sprue with their optional builds. The numbers we've advertised in the box is the least you will get but you might end up with more! As an example we took another look at the Shaltari scout suits today and figured rather than 3 we can get 5 on a sprue. As such their box number has been updated to 10 (15 if we get that extra value unlock).
Remember these renders show one build but there will be a ton of options. We just haven't had time to sculpt them all yet. The more funding there is on the campaign the more parts and options there will be.
Speaking of trying to hit that extra value unlock we figured it was probably a good idea to open the campaign to people who just want to back for the odd item for painting or adding to their collection. As such a £1 observer pledge will be added tomorrow.
Lets push it over the 100k and get everyone some more miniatures!
Looks like 100k£ stretch goal has been reached and more sprues will be added to the infantry boxes. I might add some specialists to my pledge now, I have enough basic infantry. The Shaltari scouts look very cool, the additional minis move them from expensive to acceptable for me.
The Bioficer’s Genitor Arks fulfil roughly the tactical role of the crude APCs of other races, but its utility and sheer horror is on a different level. As deployed, Genitor Arks contain a supply of small arms, control nodes, and the raw biomatter with which this machine can rapidly weave fresh Drones, Hulks, and other nightmarish bio-constructs. These leave the Ark combat ready.
As an anti-grav vehicle, the Genitor Ark is fast and can zip over difficult terrain to attain the perfect ‘deployment’ position.
Drop games have always gone for real-scale in their models as much as they could. In the Dropcommander that was always things like the tanks being able to physically fit in their transports.
So it stands to reason that their tanks and apcs and such are properly scaled to the infantry. Many wargames the tanks are often smaller than normal
The Scourge are jellyfish-like parasites, they didn't need a human sized cockpit in the tank.
The saber (UCM MBT) was said to be operated by a single soldier, who is not sitting upright. The Dropverse lore (at least, the old V1 books content) was very well thought out, imo.
Dropteam would have fit with what they’ve gone for using the team aspect.
But whatever they did it should have been drop.
It’s soured me on the whole thing a bit actually, which is ridiculous but it has..
I am feeling pretty torn about this KS. I'd really like to support it on one level, as I've always been a fan of Dropzone/Dropfleet but it just isn't quite working for me.
The tanks/vehicles do look a little on the small side (except for the Bioficers!). Though the Sabre looks ten times better than the Hunter anyway.
And it does feel a little daft, but the name really doesn't help sell it. Dropteam / Droptroop would have worked IMO.
Dropteam would have fit with what they’ve gone for using the team aspect.
But whatever they did it should have been drop.
It’s soured me on the whole thing a bit actually, which is ridiculous but it has..
DropSquad Commander was coined before Striketeam was a whisper of a rumor. DropTroop Commander was also popular.
Using Commander instead of Drop, TTCombat really …dropped the ball.
Thinking about it, both 32mm scale games don't really have Drop element in the actual gameplay (yet) - I don't mind it too much.
New Stretchgoals have been added, most interesting for me would be the wolverine scout. I always loved that model and fielded loads in Dropzone.
Kinda wish the striketeam commander mat was cardstock like the folding boards from Blood Bowl. Paper mats are....not particularly great. Still tempted to buy into this, as I quite like the setting.
Striketeam looks like a nice light beer and pretzels type game, I don't want to have to deal with all the terrain that the other version seems to require.
Anyway, now every Battlezone starter comes with a plastic Wolverine buggy and two plastic Prowler walkers. And Striketeam gets a new map. More plastic vehicle stretch goals announced tomorrow.
Duskland wrote: Kickstarter over at 194,000 pounds. Everything but the resin->plastic tank upgrade unlocked.
TTCombat also announced that people using the late pledge can contribute to the final amount, maybe unlocking plastic tanks is still on the table ...
Very excited for all the small plastic vehicles unlocked.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The update says they’ll count late pledges towards the stretch goal. I think they’d be nuts not to put in the rest themselves if necessary.
Don't forget they lose 10% to Kickstarter. So if they've got the money themselves they'd not want to pledge to their own campaign cause they'd just be giving 10% to KS itself
I don’t mean pledge the money to themselves. I mean when a company sometimes says something like “We’ve come so close to that last stretch goal we’ll just say we passed it”.
The potential market for a plastic Sci Fi tank is so much bigger than the market for another resin tank that I can’t see them bringing the Saber to market in resin. From what they’ve said in the videos, the kickstarter was more to test the market than solely to fund the new games.
Yeah plastic tanks is the difference between me not touching this vs. buying in even for display/paint purposes. I will not deal with TTCombat's bad resin ever again. I got back into Dropfleet in a big way because of plastic, and I'm someone that literally casts my own very high quality resin. I just cannot accept the terrible standards in resin I see from every company.
axotl wrote: Yeah plastic tanks is the difference between me not touching this vs. buying in even for display/paint purposes. I will not deal with TTCombat's bad resin ever again. I got back into Dropfleet in a big way because of plastic, and I'm someone that literally casts my own very high quality resin. I just cannot accept the terrible standards in resin I see from every company.
I'm pretty similar. I've been keeping an eye on this for plastic tanks. I don't need another game, or more foot models. I have more than I'll paint in my lifetime already and more rules than I get to play. I do like tanks as extra terrain though, but not expensive resin ones. I do have 3 large DZC armies in small scale, so they get my money in otherways.
I want to see the upscaled vehicles, what new details they have. Just curiosity and appreciation for a design I like. I have no use nor desire for them in 32mm scale. It's why I was so disappointed to see the demo Hunter print had zero changes from the DZC model, just someone loading the CAD masters and dragging the scale slider to 320%
I've changed from cautioning people about the new release to just telling them flat out Do Not Buy. Just inexcusable behavior from TTC.
Dude is from my local play group, but the first I learned of his misfortune was him crossposting in the AT18 Titanicus facebook group and I'm shocked at the level of "toxic positivity" (or just plain corporate simping) there.
He cross posted it a bunch of different places, and I count at least three other people that have received a box with only 5 buildings. So far none of the corp-simps have a rebuttal for that one.
Makes me sad to see so many people struggling to defend and excuse what is obviously just a shoddy packing job. TTC gave bad instructions to their minimum wage untrained warehouse staff, and then decided the profit margins were better to just slap a 'randomized' label on the box instead of fixing it. It's that simple. And just perfectly in character for those bastards.
Having interacted with the two brothers that own Troll Trader (and by extension TTCombat), it's really as simple as they're lazy greedy bastards. The most callous disdain for customers I've ever seen, and I've spent 15 years working for a university with a business school famous for arguing an ethics credit requirement would make their graduates less competitive with their peers.
slyphic wrote: Having interacted with the two brothers that own Troll Trader (and by extension TTCombat), it's really as simple as they're lazy greedy bastards. The most callous disdain for customers I've ever seen, and I've spent 15 years working for a university with a business school famous for arguing an ethics credit requirement would make their graduates less competitive with their peers.
It's no surprise considering that at one point they had the entire "epic" scale game market and spaceship game market pretty much all to themselves. 3D printing wasn't big; GW wasn't doing anything; Privateer Press had upped and died and Warcradle would take another 5 or so years to just get Dystopian Wars back on the market. And yet Dropzone and Dropfleet never really grew in that timeframe at all. If anything they feel like they shrunk. I still can't honestly work out why or how they managed that, but then again considering their resin quality control has been spotty and they appear unable to retain staff its no shock.
Heck I suspect their random card stock set might just be down to them having such a rotation on staff that they cut corners on training cause why bother lots of training when the staff will be gone so fast .
Dropgames languished because they made no investment into distribution or marketing. People wont buy your product if they cant find it, and they wont go looking for it if they dont know or remember it exists.
I've changed from cautioning people about the new release to just telling them flat out Do Not Buy. Just inexcusable behavior from TTC.
Are the starter sets the same way? The cardboard buildings I got from the DZC starter sets are some of my favorite terrain.
I saw in one of the Reddit posts that customer service had refused to help and was rude, and there was speculation that the terrain CS was different from the DZC/DFC customer service team. Any indication this is so? I’ve had no issues getting replacement resin parts from TTCombat. I just received a replacement part last week, and I only had to send one email with a photo, receiving no arguments or back-and-forth hassles.
The Battlezone starter from the KS was supposed to come with paper terrain, right? Did they mention in any small print of the selection was going to be randomized?
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Overread wrote: For every step they take forward they make one to the side and two back it seems with TTC
Heck their new plastics for Dropfleet are awesome - however for some reason the went from really high end bases to honestly pretty rubbish ones
The laser cut acrylic ones? Those they can manufacture in house, where the old plastic bases were not.
Are the starter sets the same way? The cardboard buildings I got from the DZC starter sets are some of my favorite terrain.
... speculation that the terrain CS was different from the DZC/DFC customer service
The laser cut acrylic ones?
The 2 player starter set has no buildings. It has two folded single sided 3x4 foot posters. The paper terrain set has the same folded posters, the old double sided city block tiles are gone. Between Reddit, Discord, and a couple forums, I've talked to 6 people now that had boxes with only 5 types of buildings in them. And three people that got a reasonable mix, at least half unique. So I am even more certain that this whole problem is because they gave some minimum wage kid from rural England a table full of boxes to stuff and never checked his work. And then refused to put the effort in to fix their own inventory.
The dude speculating about different CS people pulled that out of his ass. It's all the same few office people at their warehouse. TT/TTC is a small company, like 20 people, and most of them are doing different jobs. The CS queue is just a shared mailbox whoever is on desk duty that day clears. There's not different teams, different managers, it's a very flat place. There's a bunch of employees, and the owners.
The new clear bases aren't actually circles, it's like a 40 sided polygon. Which is bizarre because they have acrylic signs for their Infinity line of terrain that are perfectly smooth cuts.
A polygonal not quite circular base seems be when when they wanted to do a circle but did a half-arsed job of it. I have seen this with cheap, but unusable, 'round' bases from ebay.
It's not just the "not really cut right" the actual way they marked them also looks really crude. It's so strange to see them turn around and spend a lot of money clearly on improving plastics considerably and then cheap out on the bases so much so.
Still at least flight bases are something you can find elsewhere
There have been some cool 3D printed bases shown in the Facebook group. I still have a bunch of the old plastics, but I also don’t tend to have all my ships on bases at the same time.
All 3 of the new battleships up for pre-order today, and showing off all the variants which is really nice. Particularly for me as I wasn't sold by the PHR one they previewed, and not a massive fan of the "super battleships" in general, but there are some nicer alt builds for this one including a PHR uber carrier interestingly. Much prefer the resins for the Heracles/Minos though, shame the new version has lost the 'under bite' IMO.
Spoiler:
Super-heavy carrier?
And I think this is the best of the Bioficer options IMO...
I've a very similar thought to you on the PHR - I think the new plastic is a design evolved from the Sarpedon style of ships and is a big step up from them in style.
On its own I think its a great plastic kit perhaps hampered only by the fact that the super-versions don't appear to be much bigger/more grand than the regular (whilst the UCM and Bioficer super designs really stand out); however that might just be a photo thing and real world models will stand out all the more.
But yes I do agree that the original Heracles design really has a lot of great icon parts to it - the underbite; the recessed missile tubes on the hull and all.
Of course right now whilst TTC have resins and plastics alongside each other its not a problem you can mix and match whatever you want into a fleet and the plastic kit covers all ground so its only a visual loss if they pull the resins one day and focus on only the plastics.
The new Bioficers look awesome - my only nit-pick is that they feel a bit simple in weapon choices in that the supers don't really bring any "new" weapons or variety that the regular don't have. It would have been neat to see something fresh for the fleet appearing; but we still have the dreadnought class for that ^
Also that kit should be really visually adaptable because of their hull design and panel placement so that's going to be a LOT of creative fun!
My only worry is do I risk placing an actual order - if I do I know that right after GW will suddenly unleash the Soulblight that I've been waiting on them to do for ages!
The plastic PHR BBS are a huge improvement over the Sarpedon type. Unlike UCM and Scourge, I find their new plastics similar enough to the resins to make resin vs plastic a hard decision. Same with the Shaltari plastic battleship.
Assembling a plastic UCM or Scourge plastic battleship as a standard BB rather than the super feels like a waste.
For the limited editions, I love that they finally made a “KS exclusive” style BC for Resistance and Bioficers. The resistance KSBC is really cool looking.
Yeah esp considering that Bioficers only have one style of Battlecuiser hull the exclusive one is a great way to add some variety for that hull type. Although I'm very tempted to take the ones I've got and swap the core hull from resin to plastic so I can use some of the sensor parts on the top mount spot for the hull.
My gut feeling is that at some point the resins might vanish. The plastics just WORK whilst TTC has never really managed to build itself the right resin working system to create reliable supply.
They are in that bracket where quality control is just bad enough to be offputting to many and where some things - like gates - can be super thick or oddly placed.
So basically I feel like the long term goal would be for them to pull the resins at some stage.
When that stage is would be hard to tell - right now they are happy for side by side. Perhaps when all core ships are plastic - light, core, battlecruiser, battleship - stations. Leaving pretty much just the dreadnoughts
Then we might see them retire the older sculpts either outright or shifting them to "event only" or other limited print runs.
We've already seen them shift them to direct only products so 3rd parties won't really profit from stocking them at all.
But considering the roll-out speed of plastics I'd wager there's at least a year or two before we hit that stage. Unless they nail expansion soon or they accelerate shutdown of their resin capacity
Theyve said they want to support resins as a direct sales item as they can make them to order. Dont see them going anywhere so long as TTC has other resin products on offer.
Getting rid of the resins would be foolish and detrimental to the look of the game. The plastics are really nice, but the resin battleships look superior in most cases.
Oh I don't deny they look cool - heck the new PHR battleship kit I think loses a lot of the charm of their 1st battleship kit and is more an evolution of the 2nd style.
The turrets look larger than the existing Remnant ones which are already bigger than the space station ones which were bigger than the UCM guns. I had a bunch of spares from the UCM and station sprues and my friend that plays them wanted to really go piecemeal with his ships, so I've seen them arrayed with each other for scale comparison. And there's very clear scale creep. It's happening across both DFC and DZC. Like all kinds of scale creep, I am opposed to it.
**NEW RELEASE**
Dropzone Commander: Operation Artemis is available to pre-order now! This is a game of fast combat in the far future. Decisive thinking is key as brave PHR pilots attempt to capture or destroy the newly discovered Bioficer beacons on Tlalocan's moons.
Seize control of the battlefield by eliminating your foes with devastating attacks or breaking them down with constant waves of damage over the game's 6 rounds. Predicting your opponent's next move will be critical to victory, whilst powerful command cards could turn the battle on its head.
This box contains everything that two players will need to start playing games of Dropzone Commander: Operation Artemis. Each box contains opposing forces of PHR and Megafauna, with a variety of miniatures for both.
As combat intensifies, the Noise and Threat go up. Many actions will increase the Noise, which will in turn increase the Threat. The higher the Threat Level, the more aggressive the fauna will be. PHR Commanders will have to choose wisely when to go loud during combat and when discretion is needed.
In the box, you'll find 20 hard plastic miniatures along with terrain, a rulebook, command cards, dice, fast play sheets, noise meter, and a 3x3 card mat.
There were also some new dropfleet bits on display at UKGE, I was totally rubbish and didn't take any photos though (sorry!) - hopefully some will appear online.
Did have a brief chat with Dave Lewis too; the Bioficer dreadnought is plastic (is built using one new sprue and 1 of the existing battleship sprue). No plans for the other dreads to be switched to plastic. Looked awesome though!
Also plastic battlecruisers are coming for all factions. Had the UCM, PHR and Shaltari on display. Build variant battlecruisers, 'super' cruisers (between a heavy cruiser and a battlecruiser apparently) and light battleships. All the factions get variants with droppable permanent structures (I guess building on the concept of the Bioficer modules - except that these ones are landed on the surface), supposed to reemphasise the "drop" element of the game and add more need for bombardment weapons, etc. Examples looked like surface based weapons/missile and comms systems plus some uber large bulk landers. Kinda neat with the UCM one at least which is easily attached/removed from the bottom of the ship hull.
I was a bit surprised that the Bioficer Dreadnought was the battleship+extra parts when the others were all quite significant original works. That said chatter, photos and such in the discord all shows that its got some really neat updates - including a whole launchbay flight deck with small ships and that the main gun of the battleship is now a secondary with the new main weapon on show there being a massive lightvice. The sprue also got shown off and it looks like the other weapon will be huge decan gun like the battlecruiser
Dropzone Commander: Operation Artemis is available to pre-order now and includes multiple new miniatures usable in Artemis and Dropzone. As our team wants to ensure that you get the most out of your new starter, we will be releasing rules and stats for the Type-9 Frontier Walkers to be used in games of Dropzone. Thankfully, you won't have to wait much longer for these rules as we will be uploading them to our website before Artemis pre-orders end.
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