I'll be the dissenting voice about drop, I actually like the landing craft aspect of DFC quite a lot. But I like focused games, regardless of genre and period, over generalist wargames.

You don't even need houserules to exclude it though. We've played scenarios without sectors, but controlled table quarters, or destroy merchant convoys, or blockade runs, or admiral assassination. It's a completely trivial change. (There should still be more published scenarios, reams of PDFs, but see:TTC laziness)

chaos0xomega wrote:
I thought TTC was an appendage of one of the larger hobby distributors in Europe (Golden Distribution or something like that?)?

Kingsley Distribution, and they have their own Troll Trader retail stores.

Dave did another build log, this time for his personal Shaltari Behemoth. - https://community.ttcombat.com/2022/09/08/wip-daves-shaltari-behemoth-blog/

God I've missed this man.

"Oh, and I just counted how many I painted with the help of multiples and Excel: roughly 15,722 dots"

There's that classic Hawk Wargames insanity that brought us the Avenger!

I simply wonder why there is no ,Deep Space Fleet‘ xpac book for DFC yet. They wouldn’t have to drop the identity of the game this way, just introduce some new fresh way of playing. This could work so well and I see a lot of design space to make it work. Also it would provide a reason to finally get those awesome space stations they have released a while back. Imagine what you could also do in terms of campaign games.

But meanwhile I also see the potential problems that would need a rework:
-Orbital Layers
-Dropships and Bombardment Ships in need of a repurpose

As for TTC as company: Their distribution to shops is awfull and unreliable and brexit made things worse and more expensive for order from EU. Ordering is basically requesting the product and not knowing if the full order will arrive or if things are dropped due to lack of stock according to our LGS. There is no proper way of checking if products are in stock at all: LGS has to order and simply hope stuff arrives. This is backbreaking to hear when you want to start the game with friends. Imagine you order 4 whole fleets: Player A and C get lucky and receive their order, Player B lacks the cool additional ship he ordered and Player D has his Main Ship but the starter box was simply not available. All after waiting 2-3 weeks for delivery. This can ruin the experience and the game quite fast.

To be fair, direct orders from TTC work quite fine and their customer support is always friendly and supportive. But the additional fees that come with delivery to EU let the prices skyrocket in to a range where taking the risk of a new game becomes not worth it.

charles_the_dead_lizzard wrote:
I simply wonder why there is no ,Deep Space Fleet‘ xpac book for DFC yet. They wouldn’t have to drop the identity of the game this way, just introduce some new fresh way of playing. This could work so well and I see a lot of design space to make it work. Also it would provide a reason to finally get those awesome space stations they have released a while back. Imagine what you could also do in terms of campaign games.

But meanwhile I also see the potential problems that would need a rework:
-Orbital Layers
-Dropships and Bombardment Ships in need of a repurpose

It's really not as complicated as you make it seem. Space stations see plenty of play in the base game. Like half the scenarios use them. They're just orbital instead of 'ass end of space for no sane reason' stations.

We've played a few games in deep space. We just left the bombardment ships out. We either did station assaults with strike carriers as, or made them cargo ships as part of a convoy, of just tried boring ass fleets fighting it out in deep space. Basically you have to change 0 rules at all. The only thing we considered was making a high/med/low orbit for deep space, but without atmo, it kinda didn't matter at all and we just all stayed on one layer.

Why no xpac? Because you need like a 2 page pdf to cover everything.

Join The Resistance! We Have Behemoths Now!



Still not a fan...

beast_gts wrote:
Join The Resistance! We Have Behemoths Now!



Still not a fan...

Design is terribad.

My God it looks terrible. Why are it's feet can openers?

I like the overall shape and design, but yeah, some of the details of just don't look good.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Why are it's feet can openers?

Possibly it can melee like the Pizzaro?

Like it. It's absolutely mental. Though, why the resistance gets one as well, jars me somewhat

 zedmeister wrote:
Though, why the resistance gets one as well, jars me somewhat

Me too - same as their DFC fleet (and I play them in DZC). I understand the Kalium angle, but they might have worked better as a stand-alone minor faction.

I feel like both it's rear and front half would look better on their own than while being haphazardly stuck together.

TT is soliciting feedback and suggestions for the next revision of Dropfleet - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y6NBPwk0__dOscDebVBBjtEgEE0g1vkvTYTGLaj6-ik/edit

Seems pretty lively. No idea what will actually come of it.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
I feel like both it's rear and front half would look better on their own than while being haphazardly stuck together.

I would agree with that. Looks/feels like two different half-finished designs that individually could have been pretty good were merged together to produce something super meh.

Also agreed that Resistance getting a Behemoth (as well as a DfC fleet) is jarring/doesn't fit the faction well.

It’s the only one I really don’t like. The other 4 are pretty great imo.

I would agree with that, seems the weakest of the five designs by a significa

Don't know why it took me so long to see the obvious problem with the Resistance Behemoth.

So there's many kinds of resistance, Feral, Allied, Kalium.

* Feral is scrappy and patchwork, civilian vehicles repurposed.

* Allied is UCM tech on borrow and maintained EAA kit.

* Kalium is old pattern but brand new brutalist designs.

It doesn't actually fit ANY faction for want of trying to fit all of them. Kalium would NEVER do something this wasteful and if they did it would be more utilitarian, nothing on it looks civilian or industrial to be a Feral weapon despite the claws, and it doesn't have a single scratch on it to be a relic of Allied EAA equipment despite the EAA era curves.

Much like the UCM behemoth, it just doesn't fit at all. It fits even more poorly than the BFE renders.

Dave, mate, sometimes you have to leave the set incomplete to fit the design. The Resistance was always that faction that didn't mirror others in their unit composition.

Yeah, I like the Allied EAA aesthetic (generally), and the Kalium aesthetic. I wish both of these were really stand-alone separate armies from the Feral aesthetic which I don't care for at all. Kalium at least can build most of an army without ever touching the Feral stuff, but Allied doesn't have access to certain things in non-Feral sculpts (unless you use Kalium sculpts).

Haven't they done away with a lot of the feral units? Not played for a while, but Gunnar and Salakhan seem to have vanished.

As an aside, this unit would be a better fit as a unique to represent a recently liberated area containing this prototype and some warleader using it as his chariot

 zedmeister wrote:
Haven't they done away with a lot of the feral units?

Yes.

Every Resistance unit TTC has released since the Remote Bomb Bus has been a clean sculpt. Tempest, Swifthawk, Hydra, Circe, and Patton all have no scrap panels. And that's ignoring the Kalium variants entirely.

They released non-scrappy versions of the Lifthawk for the starter, and the Hellhog, and the scrappy hellhog has vanished from their storefront.

So yeah, they really have dropped feral from their attention.

That's a pity. Kalium look great but I did like the rag tag technical look of the original release. Luckily I've got Gunnar's lifthawk - love all the embelishments. Shame I wasn't able to grab Salakhan or Karl Foley when I had the chance

Yikes. I'm not a fan of that megabits design. Dropzone had a cool look and premise initially but I suppose it figuratively and literally outgrew its focus.

I find it weird they are getting a behemoth that is a giant walker.
Idk, I thought they where getting some sort of train on tracks with a giant cannon. Seems more app

Resistance Behemoth Stomps Forth

beast_gts wrote:
Resistance Behemoth Stomps Forth

The claws are Energy 15. It's 9am, I'm watching the Alex Jones trial livestream, but I'm confident that's the stupidest thing I'm going to see all day.

slyphic wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
Resistance Behemoth Stomps Forth

The claws are Energy 15. It's 9am, I'm watching the Alex Jones trial livestream, but I'm confident that's the stupidest thing I'm going to see all day.

E15 and 8" range!

beast_gts wrote:
8" range!

That's because of how the game awkwardly measures melee weapons. It measures from the center of the model, and this thing is so big it takes 4(5?)" to get past the front from the center, and then it's giving itself a couple inches of reach beyond that. It looks weird, but it makes at least some sense.

slyphic wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
8" range!

That's because of how the game awkwardly measures melee weapons. It measures from the center of the model, and this thing is so big it takes 4(5?)" to get past the front from the center, and then it's giving itself a couple inches of reach beyond that. It looks weird, but it makes at least some sense.

That's a very good point - I hadn't considered its footprint.

Dropzone Commander Post-Behemoth Balance Pass

Can they make a post-behemoth asthetics pass and go back to smaller models?

I kid... sort of. Does anyone really like the huge models in the game? Serious, no sarcasm intended here despite the earlier joke. I'm genuinely curious if the change in focus is popular with the (dakka) community or strictly just a business move. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the apocalypsification of 40k either so I am a bit biased in that regard.

beast_gts wrote:
Dropzone Commander Post-Behemoth Balance Pass

Just finished reading it, L OV E the changes (and that there's a changelog again, huzzah!)

They fixed most every major complaint I had about units, and the CQ fix I want to test but sounds like a reasonable compromise with simul-CQ, which appears to be a hill they will die on.

Would have been nice to see collateral and fast movers tweaked as well, but I get wanting to only change one piece at a time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:
Does anyone really like the huge models in the game?

I hate them. My friends group hates them. I know of one guy out of a dozen drop players locally that likes them, but I think he likes them in a memey way more than as actual gameplay or modeling.

 warboss wrote:
Can they make a post-behemoth asthetics pass and go back to smaller models?

I kid... sort of. Does anyone really like the huge models in the game? Serious, no sarcasm intended here despite the earlier joke. I'm genuinely curious if the change in focus is popular with the (dakka) community or strictly just a business move. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the apocalypsification of 40k either so I am a bit biased in that regard.

I’d likely buy the UCM or PHR ones if the prices were greatly reduced. I still think they violate the core conceit of the game and feel wildly out of place, but they’re so shmexy.

 warboss wrote:
Can they make a post-behemoth asthetics pass and go back to smaller models?

I kid... sort of. Does anyone really like the huge models in the game? Serious, no sarcasm intended here despite the earlier joke. I'm genuinely curious if the change in focus is popular with the (dakka) community or strictly just a business move. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the apocalypsification of 40k either so I am a bit biased in that regard.

I think they're a bit... too large? They also aren't what the game really needed right now. If the game was healthy and vibrant, I wouldn't mind them at all, but they seem kind of like misplaced priorities given the other issues.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


I’d likely buy the UCM or PHR ones if the prices were greatly reduced. I still think they violate the core conceit of the game and feel wildly out of place, but they’re so shmexy.

Agree with all but the shmexy part (referring to the behemoths). I think the term definitely applies to UCM and PHR in general though as I'm a fan of the asthetics. I bought some models and terrain kits simply because I like the asthetics but I can't call myself an actual player (just a small demo game played once and watched a few dozen videos years ago) so admittedly I'm not the target demographic. I just really liked the premise that gave the game its name, namely dropping units onto the field. Maybe it was naive of me to think that they wouldn't try to outgrow/expand beyond that though....

TBH I always found the "drop" part of the game to be overstated. The costs of the drop vehicles generally seems to be too high (IMO), the mechanics of embarking/disembarking too restrictive, and the length of the game too short for the tactical mobility afforded by the drop vehicles to really matter. Generally you're disembarking your entire force in the first couple turns, and maybe holding a quick response unit back for another turn beyond that, but thats about it, and aside from late game objective grabs, you're rarely re-embarking once you've dropped your forces off.

Thats been my experience with the game anyway, admittedly I haven't played at all in the last 18 months or so, and even before that I've only played about 7 or 8 games right after 2nd edition was released (played a lot more in 1st ed), so I don't know if errata and new releases have shifted the meta/gameplay dyanmics at all.

I fully admit that it's a bit of a gimmick but it was a cool one for me. Even if just used in the beginning with deployment on turn 1 and then sparingly if ever afterwards, I thought it was cool in theory from watching (again... not a player myself). The extra tasty icing on the cake was that the models actually fit onto the dropships for that added level of modelling coolness.

That seems to have been lost with the transition to megazords commander.

I have to admit that I like the behemoths (except whatever that resistance thing is), I played three games with them now. They do change the feeling of the game completely. But depending on the mission, there impact isn't as bad.
I won a mission where the only way to score was infantry inside buildings (forgot the name of the mission), I played 2000 points shaltari without a behemoth, my opponent played PHR with a behemoth. It was a fun game of dancing around the behemoth, redeploying via gates etc.
I think in the context of the smaller vehicles released in the beginning of this year, the behemoths aren't too upsetting. I like them as part of the sci-fi universe, and the mission design of Dropzone doesn't encourage them that much. But they are really intimidating on the table and definitely not very beginner friendly.

Brickfix wrote:
I have to admit that I like the behemoths (except whatever that resistance thing is), I played three games with them now. They do change the feeling of the game completely. But depending on the mission, there impact isn't as bad. I won a mission where the only way to score was infantry inside buildings (forgot the name of the mission), I played 2000 points shaltari without a behemoth, my opponent played PHR with a behemoth. It was a fun game of dancing around the behemoth, redeploying via gates etc.

Are the gates their version of redeployment via dropships? Are the gates size limited (certain gates can only move certain size models/stands)? I remember seeing them in videos but it's a bit fuzzy years later.

I think in the context of the smaller vehicles released in the beginning of this year, the behemoths aren't too upsetting. I like them as part of the sci-fi universe, and the mission design of Dropzone doesn't encourage them that much. But they are really intimidating on the table and definitely not very beginner friendly.

As long as you and your opponent had fun, that's the most important thing. Are the rules very different for the behemoths? Or is the non-beginner friendly thing that they're very concentrated power that new players may not know how to handle properly and instead just piecemeal throw their own units into the grinder?

Let's see if I can work out quoting on my smartphone ...

 warboss wrote:

Brickfix wrote:
I have to admit that I like the behemoths (except whatever that resistance thing is), I played three games with them now. They do change the feeling of the game completely. But depending on the mission, there impact isn't as bad. I won a mission where the only way to score was infantry inside buildings (forgot the name of the mission), I played 2000 points shaltari without a behemoth, my opponent played PHR with a behemoth. It was a fun game of dancing around the behemoth, redeploying via gates etc.

Are the gates their version of redeployment via dropships? Are the gates size limited (certain gates can only move certain size models/stands)? I remember seeing them in videos but it's a bit fuzzy years later.

Yes, Transport capacity is limited for gates. They have a transport value they can maximally embark and disembark. The rules even allow embarking one squad and disembarking a different squad from the same gate in the same turn, if they are both in the same battleground. It also allows to reduce the number gates compared to the dropships other factions bring, was one battlegroup may deploy round one and another reuse the gate round two.

I think in the context of the smaller vehicles released in the beginning of this year, the behemoths aren't too upsetting. I like them as part of the sci-fi universe, and the mission design of Dropzone doesn't encourage them that much. But they are really intimidating on the table and definitely not very beginner friendly.

As long as you and your opponent had fun, that's the most important thing. Are the rules very different for the behemoths? Or is the non-beginner friendly thing that they're very concentrated power that new players may not know how to handle properly and instead just piecemeal throw their own units into the grinder?

The rules are a bit more complex then regular units. They have three different sections with degrading effects when damaged, which encourages decision making which to destroy first. To completely destroy the behemoth, all sections must be destroyed. The rules concerning the behemoths "spread" value took some time to completely work through. With all the other mechanics in play a total beginner might be overwhelmed but after some regular games it shouldn't be too hard to get into. I like the degrading profile because it creates a better interaction with the enemy vehicle, the life points aren't just a huge damage sink.
But what I really think is that a beginner might focus to much on the big thing and forget the game objectives. There are several missions where infantry is the only unit type that can score, or multiple objectives are spread out on the table. The behemoths can only be in one place when scoring is concerned. And in combination with dropships, most units are far more mobile then the behemoth. And in the new edition, they may still shoot (yes with a to-hit modifier but that's fine). We had a friend who isn't into small scale wargames watch and he totally misjudged what was going on in the first round.

Now the new resistance "colossus" behemoth changes some thing's as it has a massive anti-air arsenal, but 12" range and sensible use of terrain may mitigate that. I doubt I will ever see it action, I won't buy it and I don't know anyone else who showed any interest in it. I will also have to see how the balance changes pan out, some factions received some potent upgrades to their guns.

warboss wrote:Are the rules very different for the behemoths? Or is the non-beginner friendly thing that they're very concentrated power that new players may not know how to handle properly and instead just piecemeal throw their own units into the grinder?

The rules aren't wildly more difficult to understand, but before the FAQ yesterday there was a lot of slop in how their measurements work, and I think the whole 'Drop Harness' rules are a noob trap and the better play is ALWAYS to ignore them and have it walk onto the board from an edge. Also, a huge part of the recent update was adding in the phrase 'but not behemoths' to like half the rules and special abilities in the game.

But the biggest thing that makes them noob unfriendly is their size and cost. Every one of these models is 500pts, and in a 2000pt game (a typical size for including them), they cost more than the other 1500pts of models in real world money. And their mass is also greater than the rest of the army.

They're blatant whale bait.

New variant for the scourge cruiser:
https://community.ttcombat.com/2022/09/21/wip-wednesday-new-scourge-wyvern-cruiser/

Additional commentary on the plastic kits:

Now we should make it clear that this is just an updated sculpt we’ve been working on and won’t be replacing the existing plastic cruiser kit.

I like the sculpt, but I prefer the plastic cruiser look.

Brickfix wrote:
New variant for the scourge cruiser:https://community.ttcombat.com/2022/09/21/wip-wednesday-new-scourge-wyvern-cruiser/

There, was it that hard to just say these are alt-sculpts in the first place?

Not particularly excited by them. They're so flat and 2 dimensional looking.

The only downside is it reminds me of the worst thing about scourge models - lots of little vain/dimples all on the freaking mould line region. Otherwise I like it, nice sleek design and unique compared to the original whilst sharing similar design traits to other ships.

Alt designs is always interesting in my view and something I like to see supported long term; it lets you get more diversity and variety on the table without bloating the model line.

Dang is that an awesome looking cruiser.

That one model will get me to start a Scourge army. I like the scourge battlecruiser, hunter-killer, and monitor designs but hated the rest of the sculpts. But this cruiser makes it possible to have a fleet that I think will look *baller*.

New starter set for Dropfleet coming soon with the new sculpts they showed of the other day & version 1.5 rulebook!

https://community.ttcombat.com/2022/09/27/dropfleet-commander-update-news/

Excellent news regarding the DFC starter.

Is there are solo 'plug in' for it does anyone know? No way o could get any mates interested in it, but I like the idea of a space fleet pew pew session.

Perfect timing on the new starter- I've been eyeing this game for some time, and it sounds like this is the perfect time to make the leap

Any idea what the price point will be on that starter?

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Any idea what the price point will be on that starter?

Previous starter set was 65 GBP. Hopefully the new set won't cost too much more than that.

Wait, are the new alternative sculpts not resin? So resin and plastics mixed in the new kit? A weird decision, I assume ordering the plastic sprues got harder or something like this…

Man I hate resin. It's such garbage - it could be okay but at this point so few companies do proper quality control. Mold slips along major detail? No thanks.
The dropfleet plastics were really fun - only space fleet game with good plastic sprues.

To be fair, TTC has quite good QC control and similar to GW will resend any miscast models that slipped QC. Biggest issue are bended models that need to be bent back in shape. Especially with models like space ships this can be an issue as if you do not get it right as it looks wonky. This is just something for more experienced hobbyists.

For a beginner product it seems just weirdly out of place: The starter should make the entry as easy as possible. Habing to buy 2 kinds of glue, to clean the resin models and bent them back of required, before glueing…all additional and uncomfortable steps that clearly may put of newer players.

Buddy of mine bought a Shaltari fleet pack, had a huge blast building the plastic models but had such a horrible experience with the included resin battleship that he literally stopped the whole project there and did not bother to dive deeper in to the game.

It is already hard to convince people to give the TTC games a fair chance to extend the playgroup…still haven’t found more than 1 other player for Carnevale in my area :(

The new ships are single piece casts, so besides some bending and flash removal no increased workload for a beginner.
But I do find it weird that they mix plastic and resin, would have thought an expansion pack would make more sense for the new resin ships.

It's curious because starter packs and such are designed to be mass produced to get the most people in so often favour plastics over resin components because you can fast cast plastic, then you use resin for smaller production lines.

Then again Dystopian Wars has a starter with two big chunky resin ships inside.

Mantic firefight 2.0 also contains PVC minis next to the plastic, and the Dropzone starter contains the two commanders out of resin. So it is not a first. Still would have preferred 3 plastic ships next to the two resin ships, this would allow a greater variety of rules that can be covered with the starter set. Fighters and bombers, bulk landers, orbital bombardment is all available in the plastic sets, but with the only one sprue the options are lost.

I do wonder though, the image for the new starter contains a Moscow heavy cruiser. The heavy cruiser requires two sprues to be built, as each sprue only contains two main guns. The Moscow needs four ...

I wonder if they've cut a new starter plastic mould that only has the starter set models. Since if I recall right most cruisers don't come on their own separate sprue to start with and the starter only shows 1 plastic cruiser per faction.


Also another thought is that including a resin model in the starter set means perhaps less of a shock when people find resin in the rest of the range. A downside to plastic starter sets is that customers then expect everything else to be plastic as well.
So getting out of the door with both means new people learn about both. Yes it might mean 1 more pot of glue for startup, but I'd consider that a tiny investment barrier

I doubt they recut the sprue to build a cruiser variant that only requires two small extra guns. Much easier to just cast those two in resin.
Good point on introducing two different materials though, cuts down on some misplaced expectation. This happened to me after buying the Dropzone starter years ago und wondering why my plastic glue would not glue the new tank a bought together.

While I’ve mostly had great experiences with their resin, I find this a bit troubling. Are they just not able to get more of the plastic sprues?

At least they had the good sense to make the starter ships one piece to ease new players into resin.

charles_the_dead_lizzard wrote:
To be fair, TTC has quite good QC control...

My friends and I have had very different experiences with TTC. There's a bunch of stuff making it through 'QC' that are obvious problems at a distance so egregious they require replacement. Bubbles so large they destroy a chunk of the model, snapped off ends, flash that wipes out textured areas, gates and vents in absurd places like it's someone's first day in the casting room, uncured pieces that are floppy and sticky, missing bits, wrong bits.

We've seem basically every problem possible in resin casting from TTC. Any of them would be excusable, except for how many and how frequently we've seen them.

TTC has been good about replacement pieces, but basically every ~$100 we spend requires a second shipment to complete, and with transatlantic shipping, some of those pieces have taken literal months to arrive.

I've ordered quite a bit and have been extremely lucky - only had to replace one Alexander turret, got send the special commander one (Salakan?), which doesn't have any rules.
But some gates are rather poorly placed, I agree on that. Worst are those in the scourge vehicle "eyes" ...

Slyphic, when did you guys place your orders? I wonder if they did have a new guy at that time.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Slyphic, when did you guys place your orders? I wonder if they did have a new guy at that time.

Between the four of us, about every third month between June of 2020 and 5 weeks ago.

From what I gather pandemic times messed them up more so than normal and they've only more recently (last half a year or so?) made bigger steps to improve their workflow.

Honestly its really in their own interests; higher fail rates reaching customers means more money lost in postage and more potential customers lost (not just the direct customer but all the ones they discourage. Both at the internet level and the local level)

Dropfleet Commander 1.5 Update!

“With the introduction of resin ships into the 2-player starter, are you stopping making the plastic sprues? “

No. Absolutely not. Plastic sprues are staying and not going anywhere. Only the 2-player starter has the resin single-piece ships (due to box size constraints) and no other starters are affected.

They addressed my concern that you can't build a Moscow with a single sprue and announced a new heavy cruiser that can be build from a single sprue. I like the principle.
I just don't get why you would ever take that new cruiser, as long as a Seattle does the same (barring weapons free, and then you can't turn to point the laser at a target).
I'm excited to read through the errata, but I'm afraid it won't really change my opinion on most of Dropfleets problems.

Initial thoughts on skimming the changes:

Wasn't expecting quite that degree of doubling down on the Haemetite. "Being able to burnthrough-12 on a 2+ while turning on regular orders is cool and fun and and and you're the ones that are wrong!" Bloom is better than the nothing that is the 25 point increase, but these changes don't actually address any of the repeated problems brought up about it.

Also wasn't expecting to see the 6" thrust on the Istanbul without any other changes.

Reyk deserved that nerf batting, and I think that was the right amount. I'm reserving opinions til table time.

Sig reduction across the board for BBs I'm not a fan of. Makes little sense, a hull increase of a couple points would have been better. Fusillade-2 on the UCM BBs should make them more of the threat they should be, rather than the current meh they represent when they enter the board.

All the PHR changes are either minor/ok or nice little tweaks. A little surprised the Belle gets a buff with no points increase. Agrippa seems reasonable.

I'm going to assume they Traffic James and completely forgot about the Harpocrates, because that ship is still an unfun coin flip that belongs in a shorter sillier game.

Not enough table time with Scourge yet, but they at least addressed the elephant in the room that was the Parasite.

Despite a decent number of games against them, I can't readily tell what the changes to Resistance will look like on the table. I wish they'd have simplified the token system on the Galileo.

I really wish they'd have waited a couple weeks, or asked for feedback earlier, and done something about the core rules that were brought up in the feedback.

Does UCM have a laser/carrier cruiser? I forget.

If the heavy cruiser is just guns and laser, it will be pretty useless for the extra cost, no?

I think the Perth has a laser carrier combo.

Perth has no Carrier capability. There was no previous BTL/Carrier, the Johannesburg was probably the closest carrier/gun hybrid.
Agreed that the Burnaby is looking extremely mediocre. Someone stapled a BTL and 2HP to a Seattle, and they want 48pts for that? Its only 15pts less than a Johannesburg and inferior in every way, significantly so.

I'm glad to see some spit and polish, and very glad to see nerfs to the big trouble pieces (Parasite, Reykjavik and Agrippa). Need to actually test these but on paper they seem to be much better. Similarly I am extremely happy to see improvements to Battleship classes across the board.

What I'm less happy with, is the absolute clusterfeth that is the Resistance fleet. Galileo remains utterly essential to every BG and a 5pt increase doesnt change that. They've stuck to the nonsense Overcharge that makes Heavy Frigates obsolete, and then removed NWSS anyway. Strike Carriers got cheaper despite already being a no-brainer and then buffed as well. The Armstrong is now the highest damage-per-point ship in the game while also having 2+ armour and 6 hull. I fully expect swarms of Armstrongs and Galileo to be the new meta (Active scan gunspam? Same as the old meta!). This is a supposed exploration ship, but there is a continued trend of repurposed civilian tech absolutely mogging dedicated military hardware and its really frustrating to see it happen again and again.
Also very sad to see the stubbornness about changing the Haematite. This ship is straight-up bull**** and has been since release, and it's not got anything to do with points. It is a mess lorewise, internally to Shaltari, and a non-player experience because of its insane point-click reliability.

Other instant reactions:
- The Umbra and Shedu feel dead now and I am sad to see standoff Scourge removed as a viable style. It could have been nerfed without breaking it entirely.
- Still have done nothing to fix the Harpocrates or Senator and the Nuuk needs a mechanical change, not just a race to the bottom in points.
- All of the new cruisers feel very poor for their cost. Its much better than being overtuned but it feels overly cautious, like obviously so.
- Changing USRs like Mauler and Impel is a great thing; doing so without revising the points of affected ships is less good and feels like a lot of the balance has been shifted. I feel like the Aquamarine/Sapphire stand out here, suddenly becoming extremely reliable tools for turning off WF. I think Shaltari have suddenly picked up some hard counters to a lot of ships, especially since the Caesium counters everything small.
- Credit where it is due, I appreciate some of the balance changes, even if its not how I would have done it. I like the reduced G for Collins and the buffed PHR turrets. I appreciate the attempt at rebalancing Resistance Cruiser systems. I agree that the Venice needed reining in, although I'm not convinced it still justifies that price cap.

Really wish they had held off the ship balancing until after they had digested the community feedback.

On the 14th they are releasing new cruiser sculpts for each faction. They look like single-piece resin casts.

New Two player Starter scheduled for 14 October release.

Mozzamanx, please elaborate on the changes to Resistance and rules like mauler and impel: what was changed? It’s been too long since I’ve played, and I never had all the rules memorized across all the factions.

WIP Wednesday – UCM Space Station

If that's a space station then a SCUD missile launcher is an RV too, lol.

 warboss wrote:
If that's a space station then a SCUD missile launcher is an RV too, lol.

The article states it's an "Orbital Munitions Platform". I'm wondering how it reloads...

Darn it the UCM have enough space stations - Scourge and others need some too

beast_gts wrote:

 warboss wrote:
If that's a space station then a SCUD missile launcher is an RV too, lol.

The article states it's an "Orbital Munitions Platform". I'm wondering how it reloads...

Carefully!

Orbital fabrication for the missile, and back it into the launcher. Unlikely to be a quick process.

 Overread wrote:
Darn it the UCM have enough space stations - Scourge and others need some too

Either a more ramshackle looking conversion kit or a deticated, military Kalium one for Resistance would be nice.

I like the design as a defense satellite. I also really like it from a lore perspective since torpedoes are not affected by Scourge stealth, and tend to force scourge alpha strikers to veer off their attack runs or die.

 Overread wrote:
Darn it the UCM have enough space stations - Scourge and others need some too

They have a Shaltari station and a PHR station. They also sell Scourge upgrade bits to make plastic Earth stations into Scourge-occupied stations.

And the plastic kits come with so many extra bits you can make a decent station from them.


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beast_gts wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Darn it the UCM have enough space stations - Scourge and others need some too

Either a more ramshackle looking conversion kit or a deticated, military Kalium one for Resistance would be nice.

The plastic space station kit represents pre-war Earth/Cradle World technology, and covers most Resistance needs. The new resin upgrade for the plastic kit has more “modern” weapons that could serve UCM or Kalium.

That said, I’d love a more brutalist Kalium designed defense station with massive mega vent cannons:

Teaser Tuesday – Dropzone Resin Terrain & More!

Dropzone Commander Resin Terrain

First seen on the recent TTCombat paint range Kickstarter, these Resin buildings have been designed for Dropzone. Made from partially recycled resin, this terrain is perfect for 10mm tabletop wargames if you’re looking for line-of-sight-breaking opportunities. Additionally, the rooftops provide plenty of opportunities for gaining the best vantage points. Below are just some of the new buildings which will be available.

Due to being made out of Resin, these buildings are greeting looking, sturdy and HEAVY! Whilst you can easily transport them, it will certainly be a good arm workout.

Wow, they're bringing back the resin buildings? Nice, they were quite expensive

I hope they aren’t too too expensive. That Spacey Art Deco building really rocks.

Unfortunately they seem to be cast as a solid block?
I was really hoping for a return of the smaller pieces, allowing to build a house as you pleased.
I had some crazy layouts planned on my head, unfortunately stopped selling back in the hawk days.

WIP Wednesday – Pungari 32mm Auxiliary

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I hope they aren’t too too expensive. That Spacey Art Deco building really rocks.

120£ for the set of 8. If they sold the set as STLs I would be interested.

That Pungari is cute. Smaller than I expected.

As for the buildings…I’ll have to see what Black Friday or Boxing Day hold for me.

The resin buildings aren't as outrageously expensive as I had assumed. £20 each when a MDF kit is £10-£15 is nice. Heck there cheaper than the old 4Ground MDF kits!

Might pick a few up at some point.

First of all, they teased two new battleships: a UCM battleship with embarrassing cannon and Scourge battleship with baffling barrels.

Then they teased even more 28/32mm minis for what some are calling “DropSquad Commander”. So far we have a Pungari, a Shaltari, a Resistance fighter and a PHR specialist of some kind.

My thoughts: the battleships look kludgy and over the top. I love the hull for the UCM BB mark 2, but I would want to replace the cannon with something slightly more subtle for the scale. The Scourge ship just looks like a Frankenstein monster of the sleek BC and the chonky BB to make the fat Greyhound-Corgi of battleships.

All the 28mm minis look awesome.

The angle of the render for the Scourge ship makes the gun almost look like its just randomly placed there. I think a 3D view would be far superior at showing off the post and style. I'm certainly not opposed to ships with big guns on them - but yeah it looks a little odd from this angle.

I don't like the oversized guns on the spaceships, it makes them look more 40k like and less grounded.
I'm really excited for a 32mm Dropzone game, but i fear that it takes focus away from Dropzone and Dropfleet. One-off recent minis would be preferable in my opinion

My friends call my Perth "The UCMF Overcompensator". I'm afraid it will have to relinquish that crown. Also, I magnetized the prow of my BB, but I don't think I used enough magnets to hold that monstrous front end up.

Need a better view of the ventral side of the Beelzebub to pass judgement, but 'big hanging gun' looked dumb on the Remus (and the Slaughterer in zone, and the Eradicator's Bio-Mortar variant ... and the Obliterator's stupid hat gun. Man, I really hate big weapons hanging off models) and I'm not feeling it either. That said, I was also down on the initial 'Corsair with Arc Caster' (R.I.P. Brigand, you died for Lewis' stupid Great Renaming), and it got better, so fingers crossed Dave tweaks them til they're good.

I'm both surprised and also not surprised by the number of people excited for 32mm dropnoun. Do it, get that skirmish money, it's a bottomless well apparently. Just don't neglect the more interesting games in the process.

Still haven't heard if Dave is running it, or if its a separate team. The models all certainly look like they're from the Carnevale and Rumbleslam designers, not Dave.

Oh. I didn’t know skirmish level was finally/actually happening.

What’s is the “everything we know” for it so far?

Not much, actually. I gather from FB that TTCombat still deny rumors of DropSquad even while posting pictures of it. They may be stand alone miniatures allowing TTCombat to test the waters before committing.

There are some models I'd love to have in 32mm from the dropzone universe, but they are mostly vehicles to be honest.

Will be interesting for me, as I don’t really know what any of the troops look like. Having only gotten Dropfleet stuff, and not really looked at Zone models or any artwork of people/creatures if there are any in the books.

Like, no clue what Scourge are or look like.

Danny76 wrote:
Will be interesting for me, as I don’t really know what any of the troops look like. Having only gotten Dropfleet stuff, and not really looked at Zone models or any artwork of people/creatures if there are any in the books.

Like, no clue what Scourge are or look like.

Scourge are like the Goa'uld; they're alien parasites that puppet sentient creatures for their own ends.
What's interesting is that the infected basically become vampires; they become pale, sensitive to sunlight, overheat really quickly and as such develop a strong thirst for liquids. This includes blood, and I do recall it being mentioned that scourge soldiers were seen drinking blood from corpses on the battlefield.

Their vehicles are piloted by scourge parasites who failed to find a host in time. Scourge can't live long without a host and can only infect a host early in their life cycle iirc. If they fail to find a host before then they basically have to live in a vat of black liquid.

Earlier in the thread there's a 32mm model of a scourge warrior.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I gather from FB that TTCombat still deny rumors of DropSquad even while posting pictures of it.

A series of one-off miniatures does not a skirmish game make.

chaos0xomega wrote:
A series of one-off miniatures does not a skirmish game make.

Except when it does.



https://community.ttcombat.com/2022/12/16/advent-calendar-2022-day-16-drop-universe-news/

"there’s no active development on Striketeam Commander outside of these collectors’ pieces"

"Striketeam Commander isn’t the only thing we’re actively working on"

Good ol' TT, incapable of speaking coherent English.

Sounds like they want to see how well these minis sell before they commit.

Sounds like they want to use the IP to increase sales and are branching out in a few experimental directions. Being clear that this line is a one off release, but likely using the sales data from it.

If it sells well enough and fast enough and all then they might commit to a full game later; if it flounders or fails or everyone is all talk but no buy behind it then they might abandon the idea.

Of course gamers love long term stuff and hate short term so its very nature of being a specialist short term release could scupper its sales rate

Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 20 – Get Starstruck with Dropfleet Commander

PDF Link (15 Admirals in total)

The Red Baron is a broken combo, allowing a player to bypass saves on an otherwise lackluster weapon, which is already so point efficient players spamming it with Galileo support for the extra range and crit bonus is the main resistance meta.

That improves a cruiser from doing 4 damage a round to 8. Which is generally passing the crippling threshold (for an additional 2 average damage) which is enough to destroy most cruisers in a single round of firing. Only PHR cruisers would survive (on 1 hull point left).

This feels less like a well thought out expansion to the game and more like Flightwing Commander. Something to mostly ignore after January.

I'm pretty disappointed, there's basically nothing here that would change force orgs, and the abilities are per TTC's usual all over the place from extremely meh to "did you fethers even playtest this? Even once?" And many of them don't even really make much sense.

I want to especially call out Quetzalcoatl for an ability that has no mention in his blurb whatsoever, isn't limited to his ship's weapons, and you can see the entire thought process on display 'dur, uranium is radioactive'. That's it. That's all the further they thought this through. They based the ability off the name of the ship class, not the commander. It's like if there was a commander whose backstory is about superlative time-on-target munition use, but his ship is named the Fiesta, and thus his ability is some gak about piñatas.

Please for the love of god tell me this is from before Dave took over and TTC didn't infect him with their mediocrity!

I only really play the game casually and never with command cards so the finer balance issues of these new rules is beyond me but I do like the idea behind them, especially if it helps make some builds a bit more viable (like the poor old St Petersburg). I also appreciate that there are a few on the low tonnage end as I mostly play smaller games and don’t really feel the need to get anything larger than a battlecruiser (except for the Beijing).

The wording is kind of confusing on a couple of these though (don’t close action weapons already let you fire them with an additional weapon? how does adding link affect that?)

Could anyone who picked up the 32mm scourge warrior previously be able to post a scale pic with some 40k minis, please?

Thanks

Here you go. I could only find the one GW mini, as the rest are in storage.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Here you go. I could only find the one GW mini, as the rest are in storage.

Cheers dude

Was hoping normal human sized minis would match up with the rest of my collection.

They should Probably be calling this a 35mm game instead of 28-32mm.

Saves me some cash tho so always a silver lining

Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 23 – Famous Commanders Dropping into a Zone Near You!

PDF Link

I like the AWACS mini. Is that for DZC or DFC? I assume the former given the insectile walker below. If so, is it a "normal" albeit larger unit or one of their superheavy equivalents?

 warboss wrote:
I like the AWACS mini. Is that for DZC or DFC? I assume the former given the insectile walker below. If so, is it a "normal" albeit larger unit or one of their superheavy equivalents?

It's a normal DZC model - the UCM Phoenix Command Gunship.

It is a big chunk of model, though.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It is a big chunk of model, though.

Yes -

Contains one multi-part aircraft. 10mm in scale with a length of 101mm.

My brother got me some more DFC minis and seems interested in playing. (We used to play BFG.). So far I’ve never used command cards in a game, but these new characters look fun (for our type of casual gaming). How much do the command cards change the game? Do they take a lot of time or focus to resolve?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
How much do the command cards change the game? Do they take a lot of time or focus to resolve?

They drop in really easily, and there's some factional flavor that you only really see through the command cards. I would generally recommend them. Have you read the PHR cards yet? https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/PHR_Command_Cards.pdf?v=1629382702

I have not. I didn’t realize they were available as PDFs. I thought we had to buy them.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I have not. I didn’t realize they were available as PDFs. I thought we had to buy them.

Only PHR is officially in PDF because it's completely out of print. The UCM and Scourge cards are also effectively out of print, but TTC hasn't admitted it yet.

Also, all the cards are in the TTS module, but not as nicely laid out. (There's a compiled PDF of all of them I've seen, but apparently forgot to save)

There's good money on the lack of dropzone command cards being similarly attributable. TTC's printing supplier (and global printing still really) is backlogged, short staffed, low on materials, shipping is through the roof, and execs would sooner see the business tank than take a pay cut like a filthy wagey.

Well, that sucks.

I’m surprised they only moved one set to pdf instead of releasing them all digitally at the same time. They even have the rulebook and the lore book in pdf. Seems like a missed opportunity to make the game more accessible.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Well, that sucks.

I’m surprised they only moved one set to pdf instead of releasing them all digitally at the same time. They even have the rulebook and the lore book in pdf. Seems like a missed opportunity to make the game more accessible.

I strongly agree with you.

Could somebody explain how Hawk went under? I've only just started getting back into wargames after several years of losing interest. Also Hawks website is still up & running, were I to order the 1.1 Phase 2 rule book through the old Hawk website would that order be fulfilled?

Hawk didn't really go under so much as they sold themselves out. They bit off more than they could chew with the Dropfleet kickstarter and it brought basically everything else to a screeching halt as the entire studio/staff got tied up doing design, development, and production work on that and Dave Lewis (or whatever his name is, can't keep them straight anymore) was doing more project/business management work than he was sculpting, which he did not enjoy and really wanted to go back to making minis. By selling to TTC Dave was basically able to be a full-time sculptor/designer and have someone else handle all the business and logistic aspects of things, which he found preferable.

As for what happens if you order through their website, no idea. Give it a try, good luck, let us know how it turns out.

 DxM Scotty MxD wrote:
Could somebody explain how Hawk went under? I've only just started getting back into wargames after several years of losing interest. Also Hawks website is still up & running, were I to order the 1.1 Phase 2 rule book through the old Hawk website would that order be fulfilled?

The Dropfleet Kickstarter was too successful.

I don’t know what happens if you order from them, but I’m pretty sure that book is out of print. I believe most of the rules and scenarios, and a bit of the lore, ended up in free PDF format here.. I’ll check through the site in a moment to see if they sell the pdf versions of the complete books.

It might be worthwhile emailing customer service and asking if they have any spare copies they can sell you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Update: it looks like they have removed every rulebook except for the slim version of the latest edition.

chaos0xomega wrote:As for what happens if you order through their website, no idea. Give it a try, good luck, let us know how it turns out.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Update: it looks like they have removed every rulebook except for the slim version of the latest edition.

Following the link below takes you all the way through the checkout process without interruption. Do youse think it looks genuine?

https://hawkstaging.myshopify.com/products/dropzone-commander-reconquest-phase-2

I would ask TTCombat by email or through their site. Hawk Wargames doesn’t exist except through them.

UCM Ferrum Raven Dropship coming this week

The Ferrum Raven is a high speed light transport, able to conduct operation far ahead of your main forces body. Its primary role is to drop count units behind enemy lines near potential targets. Its small size and high manoeuvrability makes it extremely capable in urban Dropzones which would affect is lumbering cousins. More information about this weeks Dropzone Commander release will be available this Friday.

Isn't the raven the OG dropship? Is this a variant in game or just a resculpt? I thought this was the one in the notablely good starter set that came out with 1e.

 warboss wrote:
Isn't the raven the OG dropship? Is this a variant in game or just a resculpt? I thought this was the one in the notablely good starter set that came out with 1e.

It looks like a re-release of the original type A/B Ravens, rather than the current Titania Raven.

Thanks for the clarification. Did they change them in the starter as well? I haven't been paying much attention to the game in years.

 warboss wrote:
Thanks for the clarification. Did they change them in the starter as well? I haven't been paying much attention to the game in years.

The starter set plastics have the old Ferrum-style medium dropships and a resin Titania pattern small dropship for the resin HQ vehicle. The additional armor starter box is all resin and all Titania pattern air vehicles.

It looks like there's a few tweaks from the Hawk ravens. The lights in the middle of the wings, there's 4 now?

But also, this is easily the worst paintjob I've seen out of TTC yet. It's just sloppy as feth with not enough coverage from the metallics so you can see the green base beneath it, and bad depth on all the metal parts, and obvious mistakes all over the canopy with the red and blue.

Put the two side by side, and it's really sad how much worse they look.

The thick gloopy texture makes the new one look like it’s made from abobe.

With the Titania Condor Dropship, is it finally possible to represend the Dropship loaded with three Tanks on the Flying base/stand at the same time?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Thanks for the clarification. Did they change them in the starter as well? I haven't been paying much attention to the game in years.

The starter set plastics have the old Ferrum-style medium dropships and a resin Titania pattern small dropship for the resin HQ vehicle. The additional armor starter box is all resin and all Titania pattern air vehicles.

Thanks. That initial starter was really good when released and the typical groupthink is that metal molds for plastic injection are too expensive to not use over and over. I wonder if they switched to resin to produce locally at lower volumes as needed instead of (likely) running large runs in China.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

slyphic wrote:
It looks like there's a few tweaks from the Hawk ravens. The lights in the middle of the wings, there's 4 now?

Jean Luc will be happy to hear that. Thanks for the comparisons and I agree that the paint job (while admittedly better than anything I can accomplish) isn't as good as the original.

Glad to see the original ravens back, I assume the falcons will follow.

I'll pick up a couple of packs for sure.

The TT Combat paint jobs have never looked great on these models, way to bright green. Also on these it looks like the spray they used went bad, rough texture and colour splats in the base coat. Why they went with it rather than redo it to show the models off I don't know.

WIP Wednesday – Attila Trackwalker stamping into battle!

“Back in St Olaf, we saw the UCM tanks that could elevate their guns, and we said, ‘We can elevate more than that!’”

Resistance is going off in a weird direction aesthetically. Not a fan.

Also, this model has the same grungy texture. Is it a filter or something? Or just a super rushed paint job, and that's why it's listed as WIP.

The top coat looks like it was painted over a craft paint base. It could also be the effects of humidity while the paint was drying...

 Sacredroach wrote:
The top coat looks like it was painted over a craft paint base. It could also be the effects of humidity while the paint was drying...

Looks like a classic case of humidity interfering with a sprayed-on base coat. Which happens.

But you strip it and repaint it, you don't just carry on. That's some amateur hour shoddy workmanship that I'd expect out of someone new to the hobby just not understanding the impact of the mistake and just wanting to get some models on the board.

To use it in promotional material is unfathomably lazy. I've watched the old Hawk painting videos where Dave is knocking out units with simple paint jobs in like 5 minutes, and they look worlds better than this.

It's crazy to see how much TTCombat disrespect Dropzone.

Another aspect might be that they have shifted from using a telephoto camera at distance and are using a macro camera close up - and not an expensive one either based on the general quality of the photo.



I also agree, Hawk set a really high bar for painting quality. They were up there with Infinity in terms of the level of skill and quality in the paintwork on display. So this does feel far more like quick snaps taken during a game. Which is totally fine if that's what it is, its just not perhaps the best way to show off a brand new model when its clearly more in a posed situation not battle.

slyphic wrote:

 Sacredroach wrote:
The top coat looks like it was painted over a craft paint base. It could also be the effects of humidity while the paint was drying...

Looks like a classic case of humidity interfering with a sprayed-on base coat. Which happens.

But you strip it and repaint it, you don't just carry on. That's some amateur hour shoddy workmanship that I'd expect out of someone new to the hobby just not understanding the impact of the mistake and just wanting to get some models on the board.

To use it in promotional material is unfathomably lazy. I've watched the old Hawk painting videos where Dave is knocking out units with simple paint jobs in like 5 minutes, and they look worlds better than this.

It's crazy to see how much TTCombat disrespect Dropzone.

Annoyingly those old painting tutorials dave did are no longer on youtube.

I've had a spray do this on me a couple of times, as you say you strip the model and start again. carrying on and then using these poor quality models in promo material isn't doing the games image any favours.

Ferrum Raven Dropships & Ferrum Falcon Gunships out today - £10 for 2.

Hallelujah, I've been hunting high and low for a few more Ferrum Falcons for a while now.

New Space Stations are live!

YAY scourge get a station!!

No Yay they are still putting all those freaking little details on the mould line. Seriously I like scourge but couldn't they give them a smooth join or something over the edges!

New Light Armour Battlegroup for the UCM out this week!

This militaristic faction has expanded upon its initial Combined Armour Battlegroup and has refocused on rapid response. Three Katana Light Tanks are a nimbler version of the more common Sabre and are fitted with either twin cannons or a flamethrower. Also, you’ll find a pair of Longbow Howitzers which while lightly armoured are ideal for taking out enemy support units. A Titania Condor Dropship provides aerial support and is ideal for transporting your light tanks. Finally, we have a pair of the new Jackal/Dingo LAV’s.

More information about these LAV’s on Friday.

I love the armor groups. They’re a great way to get into Dropzone.

Multiple Armour Battlegroups are available today!

Whoever designed those sets love walkers!

Wow, I really dig the new Shaltari and Scourge walkers

Owen Roberts mate, you havin' a stroke or something? Because jesus tapdancing christ, this is a new low for a company already known for their terrible writing. You sound like an Ali-Express knockoff company.

From the Scourge box description:



Edit: Bonus, 2021 leaked versions of the Jackal and Dingo, for comparison's sake

Space magic repair cement! Love it

Those are some attractive sets. The heavy armor groups are more my jam, but for a decent savings, each of these will end up on my list.


Someday.

Yeah, these are, uh...
Not great.

The quality of the text is worth a rant in of itself. Let's just leave it as "the writer needs a second pair of eyes to read these over before publishing" and leave it there. Yikes.

Onto the actual rules:
UCM transitioning from the utilitarian straight-man of the setting into spraying ACME-branded miracle cement is certainly interesting. There are a lot of questions here: who thought that building repairs were a missing gameplay niche, who thought that paying 30pts per unit was a good price to do so, and who thought that UCM of all people should be the ones to do it?
The Jackal continues the trend of units designed to fight infantry in scenarios that don't exist and is thus never going to see play. 50pts is a silly price and I don't know why it fills a Heavy slot. These feel more like they are here to fill a release slot and continue the DZC arms race rather than being serious designs and can join the Flail on the pile of joke units.

Scourge get a 6" laser weapon and a device to summon bees. Rolling D6 hits per unit under the template to fish for 6s isn't particularly engaging. I also want to point out that any claim of the box being usable on its own are clearly wrong unless you plan to walk from your board edge to within 6" of the enemy.

PHR get the Luna which should never have been released at this price point and its incredibly obvious to anyone who's ever played the game. This unit is obnoxious. It is Erebus-levels of broken. Congratulations to PHR who are once again blessed with a unit so OP that it will ostracise anyone using it, even in good faith. God help you if you want to use multiple. We can enjoy some more months of requiring players to make a conscious decision not to ruin the game by spamming these in every competition.

Shaltari get some interesting ideas, executed badly. The new walkers are the only Shaltari armour not to have shields which I assume must be in error, but then I don't know if the Ev is a typo or deliberate. The Widow strikes me as totally inferior to the Tarantula despite existing in the same slot and at the same cost. The Recluse is genuinely interesting although I have concerns about stacking Ev and shield boosters into a brick playstyle that does not suit Shaltari at all. I do question if Shaltari really need 7 Standard options, especially since 2 of those feel far more appropriate as Supports.
On the other hand, the Zion is simply broken. As in, the rules don't work. What happens to the rest of the squad if I teleport one unit away? What happens if they are holding an objective? Why do Shaltari need a tool to hit and run without any return fire being possible? This needs a longer text to explain the edge cases, or standardisation.

Finally, Resistance get the Atilla. This thing feels very fragile for 30pts and the gun option feels useless. Unloading a hovercraft full of clamps has some meme value but it's very kamikaze and a similar niche to the Bomb Bus.

I feel like this release is continuing a downward spiral for a setting that I am very invested in and that a lot of these issues were avoidable with just a bit more care.
I also dislike the trend of FOC slots becoming meaningless, with weird niche units popping into Standard slots being a real bugbear. It's not unique to this release but it's certainly becoming more widespread.

FYI:

TTCombat wrote:Event miniatures are going live tomorrow! This includes the PHR Aristaeus Hellion and the other 32mm Commander Universe miniatures.

The 32mm miniatures vary quite a bit in size. The Hellion looks okay next to historical minis, for example, while the resistance dude is massive even next to GW minis.

Dave talks about Dropnoun - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLLfEPl1Zdk

But most importantly, v3 may finally happen and save this game.

Sky here. Effectively I have been asked to collect data and feedback on all versions of the rules, and fan addendums as well. As such, I am trying to facilitate as much as possible by putting the different versions of rulesets I was asked to focus on out there for the community. Hence the addendum to 2.0, and also the 1.5 Beta. Other folks addendums and homebrew stuff is good for testing too, I just need feedback and testing info to be clear and balanced so I can put it all together for review at an unspecified time later in the year. Part of this is awkward because there is no NDA, just a pre collection of feedback and testing before we (Dave himself) go to outlining the next step, and we then test that a little before we probably make an big change. That and I don't want any of this to seem like it in any way invalidates the current rules, but just helps determine what the DZC community loves and doesn't.

So to be safe and not take away TTC's ownership In deciding when to make official announcements, we stay unofficial, but with a very official purpose and reporting to the source of our dropverse. Probably enough careful and vague word salad lol"

"Effectively do a lot of pros and cons of the different elements of the systems. As per Dave, it is a lot harder to get info on what is good than it is to get info on what is bad. Also, specific breakdown would be good; as in show what happens when there aren't open transports, vs. when there is, and how that impacts the objective game and AA usage. Whatever feedback you out together just email it to gophermafia@gmail.com and I'll keep compiling it all. No amount is to little to be appreciated, but for the sake of completion we need some empirical examples not just lists of complaints. And again, we need the good things too! Now, there is an indeterminate amount of time for all this, but you'll know we are getting close to the end of me compiling when I start putting out polls for questions I want more data and feedback on. Hope that helps, we are all in this together!"

So, by request of Dave/TTC, but being done by Gopher.

NEW RELEASES!
The PHR, Shaltari, & Resistance all have new Space Stations available to pre-order today in the TTCombat website!
The PHR Small Space Station can be built as either the Orbital Picket or Orbital Outpost. Armed with Neutron Missiles, the Picket is best suited to close action combat whilst the Outpost's Triple Supernova Laser will Burnthrough enemies ships with ease.
Always leading the technological races, the Shaltaris new small Space Stations can be built as either the Gatestation or Grav Hook. Whilst the Gatestation has the benefit of Voidgates, the Grav Hook will prove difficult to tackle.
Finally, the Resistance has engineered a pair of new Medium Space Stations. The Grand Station is heavily armed with a Heavy Vent Cannon and a pair of Mass Driver Turrets. Whilst not as heavily armed, the Astrobotanical Outpost retains the Vent Cannon but offers a 'Signature Bloom' you'll want to exploit.
These products are available now:
https://ttcombat.com/collections/dropfleet-commander

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Those Resistance ones look far too much like ships...

Resistance is a whiff, but the Shaltari and PHR ones are fine. Like I get the concept of 'converted ship', but it doesn't look converted enough.

I'd have much rather seen a Resistance upgrade pack to add to the plastic station kit. They need to look like space Kowloon, and despite it trying, that model just doesn't go far enough.

Shame the station rules, like the general ones not specific stats, suck balls.

Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

All aboard the Monorail! A popular form of transport from the Human worlds and a common sight among city streets, in past times citizens used these vehicles as a part of their daily lives. Now they're being employed by the various factions found in the Commander Universe.
The Monorail will be shuttling onto the TTCombat website this Friday:
https://ttcombat.com/

Am I crazy, or did they break their scenery when setting up the monorail for that shot? Look at the snapped off fence, the unpainted breaks where the posts were in the ground, the broken posts around the base of the pylon.

And I can't tell what the hell is going on with the bottom of the pylon on the far left. It looks like bad photoshop, or AI correction gone bad?

slyphic wrote:
Am I crazy, or did they break their scenery when setting up the monorail for that shot? Look at the snapped off fence, the unpainted breaks where the posts were in the ground, the broken posts around the base of the pylon.

And I can't tell what the hell is going on with the bottom of the pylon on the far left. It looks like bad photoshop, or AI correction gone bad?

Of course the scenary broke, this is the first showing of DropRail, The new expansion where you drop your monorails on an unsuspecting city to relieve street congestion for those more populated warzones.

Isn’t that a rerelease of the old monorail kit they had put before the acquisition…?

Civilian one yes.

Military one is new.

From FB:

The Spider Drone is a tiny four-legged walker, the like of which is not seen in the employ of any other race. Operating far from Scourge lines, Spider Drones are a terrifying sight for any enemy and are now no longer restricted to 10mm wargames!

(There's a video on FB but it won't link...)

Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

slyphic wrote:
Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

With what they're putting online this year it might be a boon to their enterprise if the lowest possible number of people actually saw it... they seem to have blown out all engines and are in terminal descent, just like the creators had lost all interest in it and was just letting it all crash and burn.

slyphic wrote:
Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

Last time I saw a firm do that kind of thing it was PP shutting down most of their forum (they kept it alive but gutted most of the sections/content and mods). It - it did not help growth!

Now granted perhaps TT haven't got someone on staff who is 100% dedicated to social media management so perhaps some of their other channels were simply being used randomly or being forgotten all the time. So it could be a move to simply consolidate to make the workflow easier and then perhaps expand out again if they can get staff time to make sure things are managed properly.

Tsagualsa wrote:

slyphic wrote:
Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

With what they're putting online this year it might be a boon to their enterprise if the lowest possible number of people actually saw it... they seem to have blown out all engines and are in terminal descent, just like the creators had lost all interest in it and was just letting it all crash and burn.

Have not followed but what is going on?
TT is mostly a MDF company that Purchased some games, Carnevale and Dcommander and has the rumbleslam. Is all that underperforming?

I'd argue both Dropfleet and Commander are underperforming compared to where they should be considering that for quite a while now they've had zero active competition in their respective markets.

There isn't a single space fleet game on the market right now. Firestorm Armada is dead in the water and whilst it is coming back its slow; meanwhile Battlefleet Gothic is no where to be seen.
The only others are niche games that have been around for decades or that open fleet one that has rules but no real formal product line and is mostly supported by random fleets and 3D printing stuff and such.


DF Commander is likewise basically alone in its market right now.


Considering both had mature product lines and a firm behind them and all they really should have done a lot more.
I just feel that both games should have capitalised far more on the market situation than they have and seem to have stalled in some way/form even though they've kept getting additions and such.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Is all that underperforming?

Can't speak to Carnevale or Rumbleslam, but Dropzone and Dropfleet are doing terrible. And it mostly seems to be due to lack of effort.

As was stated, they have no functional competitors in their genre. None. They should be expanding like mad if the product managers had two brain cells to rub together.

But as we learned from the drama they started with that kickstarter base dude, the owners of TT are really, I mean reeeeeally, dumb and bad at business. And as the old adage goes, dumb people hire even dumber people to work for them so they don't feel as stupid.

Dave Lewis has to feel miserable having to kowtow to the two clowns that own TT. Seeing them squander opportunities left and right for 4+ freaking years now. They've come out the other side of the pandemic with lower engagement than when the game was literally dead and you couldn't buy models! That's insane.

They had 2, T W O, total people sign up for the Dropzone Tournament at Adepticon. And I guaran-godamned-tee you half the reason they've gone 100% FB is because it's really easy to silence criticism (and the mods are gleefully happy to do so) so they don't have to hear how thorough and terrible a job they've done with the game. Two People.

Just two.

Maybe the market after Xwing explosion is not demanding for more? That would explain the lack of competition and not too much investment on DC.

I think we are currently at a very strange point in the industry where the typical/old companies and way of selling products seems to be shifting.

 NAVARRO wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

slyphic wrote:
Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

With what they're putting online this year it might be a boon to their enterprise if the lowest possible number of people actually saw it... they seem to have blown out all engines and are in terminal descent, just like the creators had lost all interest in it and was just letting it all crash and burn.

Have not followed but what is going on?
TT is mostly a MDF company that Purchased some games, Carnevale and Dcommander and has the rumbleslam. Is all that underperforming?

People noticed an extreme drop in quality of promotional material they put out - photographs of new models suddenly looked sub-tabletop-standard, miniatures were apparently sprayed with decayed spraypaint to the point it looked like a bad 3d print or re-painting after an unsuccesful attempt to strip an old paintjob, there were rules/pdfs with glaring errors, runaway sentences, half-sentences missing etc., last week there was a promo shot with bad photoshop artifacts and what looked like they slammed the thing they were promoting so hard into terrain that you could see broken parts etc... not at all a good look.

IIRC the main creator has talked about having mental health issues in the past, i sincerely hope that they are well and it's not related to that!

I think the only major market shift is that smaller firms are more able to direct sell to customers than in the past because of the internet.

Otherwise if you've got setup with production workflows it doesn't really matter if you're making them with injection moulding, casting or 3D printing - your method of production doesn't matter so long as you can produce them at a rate the buying market wants and get them into shiny boxes and into peoples hands.

The fully 3D print market is strange and tricky nad hasn't found its feet yet. Pandemic era and the Patreon model created a bonkers race to the bottom for the value of an STL and the volume of output is honestly insane. It's a very niche market with an insane load of product after only 3 or so functional years and customers who have been in that market for that length of time can easily own very big collections and burn-out. Once you've got 5 armies and 50 dragons you hit a point where you really don't need more.

At which point its more about loyalty and supporting a creator and that fizzles quite easily for many people.



So I'd argue the way of selling products is still very much the same. Successful games want products mass produced and directly sold in hand because the vast market is still buying physical models. And most of that market doesn't really care how its made, just as long as its high quality.
Meanwhile GW spent so long and so much pushing "the hobby" as a market element that the "its all mostly if not fully built" 3D print angle isn't a huge issue over models you have to build yourself*


Honestly I can agree its more that TT have not managed what assets they've got in the right way to leverage the massive market potential they've got. They got handed a market with open hands - GW pulled out of Epic ages ago and BFG as well; Spartan Games imploded also.

The Drop series of games had high grade models; great paintwork; solid systems and should have had a field day with the whole market to themsleves and the only mature game with marketing, products, production and established name.




*if anything I'd argue 3D printing doesn't do enough parting and smart parting with models for better print quality

 NAVARRO wrote:
Maybe the market after Xwing explosion is not demanding for more? That would explain the lack of competition and not too much investment on DC.

Nope, the opposite! X-Wing/Armada players were literally clamoring for a replacement game by a better company after they got moved to Atomic Mass Games. And Dropfleet saw a few waves of mass player migration as whole groups tried the game. They just haven't kept many of them because of all the lack of effort I mentioned.

It's worth noting, those players mostly didn't go back to X-Wing, they dispersed and moved on to entirely different games.

It's not enough to just be the only player in the market, or to have stock or new models released. A successful game absolutely has to be well written, well published, and supported by the publisher.

And TT just isn't good enough to do that.

I see I see thank you guys for keeping me up to speed since I totally lost track of the game and minis. I remember when this game landed for the first time at Salute and it was a huge show stopper, probably the best new range reveal at the time but it was mostly a one man show. It got almost like a huge community support.
After a few years the game was sold to TT since creator felt overwhelmed but he assured that he would still be helping in the background etc.

This is where I lost track and covid happened.

I just find it really strange that all competition vanished and TT not doing a good job ( almost like its a range supported only with the bare minimums).
I will take a peek this Saturday at Salute to see what they are doing with it.

I just hope its one very specific case of poor handling rather than something else, like market interest actually shrinking for this type of game.

Yeah I recall when these models appeared and they really blew everyone away; then they also moved to a hard plastic pretty early on as well and retained high quality.

They did a lot of the right things early on. I know the kickstarter they ran for it hit trouble in that it overloaded the creator if I recall right and they branched out to getting help from TT. Which honestly made a lot of sense - small operations do sometimes need investment/outside help and TT had the bonus of established income from other sources. So in theory they'd get the support and investment and grow.


And then it just -- didn't.


I can't help but feel one aspect is that they never did rules or market heavily as a stright space fighting game; but even so it really should have grown.

 NAVARRO wrote:
I just find it really strange that all competition vanished and TT not doing a good job ...
I just hope its one very specific case of poor handling rather than something else

Realized I was vagueposting. I wrote up the drama TT got into, because it was amusing to me. I don't think anyone that reads those receipts can come to any conclusion other than TT is owned and operated by idiots.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540/789169.page#11402472

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/570/789169.page#11422720

There may or may not be market segment shrinkage, but I'm abso-posi-lutely sure TTCombat is to be blamed first and foremost.

Oooooh thats right! It was actually TT against Justin thing and also remember now they also got Warmill MDFs ( I wonder if they got them just to close competition?)

Yikes lots of weird vibes there. Justin was always great to work with, so I do have good memories of those times and a shame he had to close shop.

Seems like there are a lot of issues we dont know about here. The game had all that it needed to be quite successful, good design good quality and everyone was onboard since day one. Hopefully they will pick up the slack.

They better hurry - whilst WC are not fast they are very steady in what they do and Dystopian Wars is going from strength to strength. I fully expect once they turn their attention full to FA and start getting models out it will establish itself well.

The kickstarter really put DFC on the defensive. People are still angry over it, which negatively affects customer outreach.

Since then, TTCombat have let the forums die, done very little to foster a community, and do nothing to take advantage of one of the game’s strengths, it’s lore.

The background is very well realized for a game of this scale, and it has an unfolding storyline with characters and mysteries that develop in interesting ways…once every few years. TTCombat do nothing to showcase the various backgrounds or color schemes gamers could use to personalize their fleets—they seem to discourage making your “own dudes” in every faction except Resistance, and even there they only talk about two specific flavors.

The plastics are great, but for whatever reason TTCombat have given up on making new plastics since the Resistance fleet, and still have not released Resistance cruiser or frigate boxes despite demand. They also had stock issues with starter sets and starter fleets, the very sets new players need to get into the game. Add to that their lack of distribution in the US and very British pricing/conversion scheme, and the game becomes a lot less attractive.

If you go looking for reviews or videos on Youtube, you’ll find mostly stuff from before the pandemic. The game feels dead, and TTCombat are not making any noticeable attempt to fix that. Whether it’s a lack of fund or a lack of enthusiasm, it’s got to be a red flag to any new customer that most of the forums, can sites and video channels are derelict.

Finally, the rules. I’m not a huge rules guy. I can’t tell you why Dropzone players are so angry after every rules update. I can tell you that Dropfleet has some great combat mechanics buried in a game about putting tokens on a map. Rules updates and new ships seem to have arbitrary “balance” or effect on the game, and I think a big part of it is the confusion about whether this is a space combat game or a resource-moving game. A simpler, more direct shooty shooty game seems like an obvious way to gain new customers, who can then be upsold on the Drop. The full rules of Dropfleet feel like a modern upgrade of BFG, but every turn you have to eat a bowl of broccoli.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
it’s got to be a red flag to any new customer that most of the forums, can sites and video channels are derelict.

I think it's worth stating how much worse it's getting. I started a dropzone blog in 2021(https://yadzcb.friestman.net/pages/links.html). I scoured the internet for other blogs, podcasts, channels, forum threads, anything to link. It was mostly dead then, with a huge dropoff in 2019 almost exactly right after the new TTC edition of the rules came out.

And I periodically check my list of linked sites, while also having them on an RSS feed, and they just keep disappearing. There's literally one guy left with an active dropzone blog (and 2 dropfleet). TTC just turned their own blog off. Everyone else that posted anything in 2021-2022 has also moved on to other games, and most of those people have final posts specifically citing the current state of the game rules as being the biggest cause.

I've also pretty much moved on, I think it's been a full year now since my last dropzone game.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Finally, the rules. I’m not a huge rules guy. I can’t tell you why Dropzone players are so angry after every rules update.

I am, and I can. It's because they aren't tested. At all. We're seeing stale first draft ideas with glaringly obvious problems. The last 5 release cycles, there have been more than one unit that needed major errata on release to just function as intended. And each cycle also has one model wildly undercosted and broken, and one pathetically ineffective to the point no one has ever played a game with it. No one. Ever.

TTC does not play their own game. They maybe put some models on a table and roll some dice once in a while, but they sure as hell aren't playing full games. And they aren't operating a playtest group.

Why should anyone pay for a game that the publisher's don't even enjoy playing?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
A simpler, more direct shooty shooty game seems like an obvious way to gain new customers, who can then be upsold on the Drop. The full rules of Dropfleet feel like a modern upgrade of BFG, but every turn you have to eat a bowl of broccoli.

You know how hard it is to convert Dropfleet to a standard spaceship game?

It's already in the rulebook. There's a scenario without clusters or stations, just control points. You leave out the ground game and just tally up ships left on the board.

Why TTC doesn't make this more explicit as an option is bonkers. Dropships make up less than 10% of the roster of any faction, leave out another 5% for bombardment, and you have about 30 ships now that can do deep space shooty bang bangs happily.

They could expand this with more scenarios. Single page PDFs. That's all it takes.

Troll Trader Combat have no fething clue what they're doing and it shows in every element of everything they do.

slyphic wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
it’s got to be a red flag to any new customer that most of the forums, can sites and video channels are derelict.

I think it's worth stating how much worse it's getting. I started a dropzone blog in 2021(https://yadzcb.friestman.net/pages/links.html). I scoured the internet for other blogs, podcasts, channels, forum threads, anything to link. It was mostly dead then, with a huge dropoff in 2019 almost exactly right after the new TTC edition of the rules came out.

And I periodically check my list of linked sites, while also having them on an RSS feed, and they just keep disappearing. There's literally one guy left with an active dropzone blog (and 2 dropfleet). TTC just turned their own blog off. Everyone else that posted anything in 2021-2022 has also moved on to other games, and most of those people have final posts specifically citing the current state of the game rules as being the biggest cause.

I've also pretty much moved on, I think it's been a full year now since my last dropzone game.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Finally, the rules. I’m not a huge rules guy. I can’t tell you why Dropzone players are so angry after every rules update.

I am, and I can. It's because they aren't tested. At all. We're seeing stale first draft ideas with glaringly obvious problems. The last 5 release cycles, there have been more than one unit that needed major errata on release to just function as intended. And each cycle also has one model wildly undercosted and broken, and one pathetically ineffective to the point no one has ever played a game with it. No one. Ever.

TTC does not play their own game. They maybe put some models on a table and roll some dice once in a while, but they sure as hell aren't playing full games. And they aren't operating a playtest group.

Why should anyone pay for a game that the publisher's don't even enjoy playing?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
A simpler, more direct shooty shooty game seems like an obvious way to gain new customers, who can then be upsold on the Drop. The full rules of Dropfleet feel like a modern upgrade of BFG, but every turn you have to eat a bowl of broccoli.

You know how hard it is to convert Dropfleet to a standard spaceship game?

It's already in the rulebook. There's a scenario without clusters or stations, just control points. You leave out the ground game and just tally up ships left on the board.

Why TTC doesn't make this more explicit as an option is bonkers. Dropships make up less than 10% of the roster of any faction, leave out another 5% for bombardment, and you have about 30 ships now that can do deep space shooty bang bangs happily.

They could expand this with more scenarios. Single page PDFs. That's all it takes.

Troll Trader Combat have no fething clue what they're doing and it shows in every element of everything they do.

I must say a lot, and i mean really basically everything of this, is very reminiscent of GW in its baddest phase, when they were contracting back to base games, axed community building activities and communication whereever they could, and were generally opaque and unfun to deal with. Especially the points about not playing their own game, having no clue about balance, being completely unaware about what the community wants and actually enjoys about the game, and thus leaving very low-hanging fruit swinging in the breeze ring all sorts of bell for people that were interested in e.g. Specialist games in the mid-00s.

Unfortunately, without the sheer weight of numbers and inertia behind a behemoth like GW, this can easily lead to the death of a company.

Just to clarify, I know there are scenarios in the book for straight combat. And I know how easy it is to just houserule the game into a space combat game. That’s mostly how I play it (played it, really). The problem is, a) there are a lot of people who want to play the game as intended, b) the lack of tiered play styles, such as BFG having simpler rules and a more advanced section, front loads a ton of rules a new gamer has to read before even knowing what to house rule away, and c) a community full of Grognards who shut down any conversation about straight combat as tactically shallow or simplistic or a bad game for bad gamers. The game seems to be taylored for older tournament gamers rather than casuals, gatekeeping rather than welcoming new players.

slyphic wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
Is all that underperforming?

Can't speak to Carnevale or Rumbleslam, but Dropzone and Dropfleet are doing terrible. And it mostly seems to be due to lack of effort.

As was stated, they have no functional competitors in their genre. None. They should be expanding like mad if the product managers had two brain cells to rub together.

But as we learned from the drama they started with that kickstarter base dude, the owners of TT are really, I mean reeeeeally, dumb and bad at business. And as the old adage goes, dumb people hire even dumber people to work for them so they don't feel as stupid.

Dave Lewis has to feel miserable having to kowtow to the two clowns that own TT. Seeing them squander opportunities left and right for 4+ freaking years now. They've come out the other side of the pandemic with lower engagement than when the game was literally dead and you couldn't buy models! That's insane.

They had 2, T W O, total people sign up for the Dropzone Tournament at Adepticon. And I guaran-godamned-tee you half the reason they've gone 100% FB is because it's really easy to silence criticism (and the mods are gleefully happy to do so) so they don't have to hear how thorough and terrible a job they've done with the game. Two People.

Just two.

Two...people...for a...tournament?!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tsagualsa wrote:

slyphic wrote:
Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

With what they're putting online this year it might be a boon to their enterprise if the lowest possible number of people actually saw it... they seem to have blown out all engines and are in terminal descent, just like the creators had lost all interest in it and was just letting it all crash and burn.

Hasn´t the creator sold the game to TTCombat? He must feel right now like George Lucas. A bunch of turd-flinging monkeys have been left in charge and it´s going downhill fast.

 Strg Alt wrote:

slyphic wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
Is all that underperforming?

Can't speak to Carnevale or Rumbleslam, but Dropzone and Dropfleet are doing terrible. And it mostly seems to be due to lack of effort.

As was stated, they have no functional competitors in their genre. None. They should be expanding like mad if the product managers had two brain cells to rub together.

But as we learned from the drama they started with that kickstarter base dude, the owners of TT are really, I mean reeeeeally, dumb and bad at business. And as the old adage goes, dumb people hire even dumber people to work for them so they don't feel as stupid.

Dave Lewis has to feel miserable having to kowtow to the two clowns that own TT. Seeing them squander opportunities left and right for 4+ freaking years now. They've come out the other side of the pandemic with lower engagement than when the game was literally dead and you couldn't buy models! That's insane.

They had 2, T W O, total people sign up for the Dropzone Tournament at Adepticon. And I guaran-godamned-tee you half the reason they've gone 100% FB is because it's really easy to silence criticism (and the mods are gleefully happy to do so) so they don't have to hear how thorough and terrible a job they've done with the game. Two People.

Just two.

Two...people...for a...tournament?!

The real shame in all of this is that Dropfleet has legitimately great models, modular and well designed, leagues above what GW did for BFG, and could easily be the go-to spacefleet battle game if it was not managed into the ground by what appears to be a bunch of slavering idiots.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

slyphic wrote:
Apparently TT shutdown all non-FB interaction. Weird to go all only-advertise-to-the-existing-player-base-on-closed-platforms but it's probably not even the dumbest thing they've done this week.

With what they're putting online this year it might be a boon to their enterprise if the lowest possible number of people actually saw it... they seem to have blown out all engines and are in terminal descent, just like the creators had lost all interest in it and was just letting it all crash and burn.

Have not followed but what is going on?
TT is mostly a MDF company that Purchased some games, Carnevale and Dcommander and has the rumbleslam. Is all that underperforming?

People noticed an extreme drop in quality of promotional material they put out - photographs of new models suddenly looked sub-tabletop-standard, miniatures were apparently sprayed with decayed spraypaint to the point it looked like a bad 3d print or re-painting after an unsuccesful attempt to strip an old paintjob, there were rules/pdfs with glaring errors, runaway sentences, half-sentences missing etc., last week there was a promo shot with bad photoshop artifacts and what looked like they slammed the thing they were promoting so hard into terrain that you could see broken parts etc... not at all a good look.

IIRC the main creator has talked about having mental health issues in the past, i sincerely hope that they are well and it's not related to that!

Of course it is related to that!. He cobbled the game together in his garage for years living on crumbs. And now everything is going to hell.

slyphic wrote:
There's literally one guy left with an active dropzone blog

What a coincidence I decided to check things out here now, that's almost certainly mine you're referencing! I suppose I have some jumbled comments about my thoughts and feelings on Dropzone that are related to this discussion.

I started the blog late 2021 specifically because I found minimal content on the games, and I wanted to toss my middling paint jobs and terrain work out onto somewhere I could call my own, as I'm a whiny baby about the modern state of the internet. I got into the systems quite late, never having actually played 1.0 of Dropzone, coming in through Dropfleet a few years after release. I struggled somewhat, and still do, with the idea that putting effort into writing and publishing such content is essentially performing free labor for a company in the form of marketing. This is particularly more difficult when the company in question is not treating their property with the professionalism it deserves, and if they can't be bothered, why should I? Ultimately I still do it because it's largely a low key act of creativity, and it's fun to share things you make with like-minded people.

So why Dropzone specifically, then? I'd say firstly, it's aesthetics. No other system has such a broad range of model designs that appeal to me like those Dave puts out. I also like the background and setting, as it leans more towards the grounded side of sci-fi. As for the rules? ...Have I enjoyed playing Zone? Yeah. Is it largely just due to the fun of pushing the toys I spent time painting around? Yeah. I'm not a 'rules guy' either, and I'm quick to handwave away something posing a rule issue and moving on. So from that, I'm going to agree with the popular consensus that the rules need an overhaul if the game ever hopes to grow, as most people do (rightly) care about those things. There's no pretending that any system isn't improved by things such as precision of language! Or, just... spending a minute to review something you wrote to fix the typos.

I hope the rumblings of a 3.0 ruleset and better management now that Dave supposedly has greater control of the systems come to fruition, as I'd love to see more models and tables and whatnot from other people out in the wild.

asciolist wrote:

slyphic wrote:
There's literally one guy left with an active dropzone blog

What a coincidence I decided to check things out here now, that's almost certainly mine you're referencing!
I started the blog late 2021 specifically because I found minimal content on the games, and I wanted to toss my middling paint jobs and terrain work out onto somewhere I could call my own, as I'm a whiny baby about the modern state of the internet.

I was indeed referring to you. (Hi, I like your blog, keep posting!) I too started my blog for the exact same reasons about 'being the change you want to see' in the internet, and had the exact same later thoughts about the amount of effort I was willing to put in vs the effort TT was performing. The only other guy (http://pimpmyboardgame.com/) that posted anytime recent actually moved to about 90 minutes South of me but stopped playing Dropzone pretty much immediately despite us trying to make plans to meet and game for a while.

A 3rd edition is pretty much what it would take to get the game back into regular play around here. We're just having more fun and less frustration with other games at the moment (got really into Heavy Gear Blitz kinda by accident). Meanwhile, Dropfleet sees the table occasionally still, and I've even played a couple games with random new players I've met at my LGS the past month.

Asciolist, what is your blog? I’d enjoy a link to your Dropstuff terrain and paint schemes.

slyphic wrote:
We're just having more fun and less frustration with other games at the moment (got really into Heavy Gear Blitz kinda by accident).

For other games that looked interesting, I nabbed a PDF of Full Spectrum Dominance a little while ago, having come across it while looking for terrain and seeing that it's designed to be small scale but flexible and mini-agnostic. So it could be played with all my Dropzone stuff and not having to paint a single new miniature or terrain piece! But I haven't actually had a chance to play it yet.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Asciolist, what is your blog? I’d enjoy a link to your Dropstuff terrain and paint schemes.

https://asciolist.org/

asciolist wrote:
For other games that looked interesting, I nabbed a PDF of Full Spectrum Dominance a little while ago, having come across it while looking for terrain and seeing that it's designed to be small scale but flexible and mini-agnostic. So it could be played with all my Dropzone stuff and not having to paint a single new miniature or terrain piece! But I haven't actually had a chance to play it yet./

Funny you should mention FSD.



I've had the resin printer running full tilt all week making Lazy Forger shanty town terrain. 150% feels like the perfect scale to make them work with dropzone (I did mine at 175, to split the difference with a 12mm scale so they could pull double duty).

It's frustrating how few other games seems to hit the sweet spot DZC does for detail and number of units and mix of infantry and armor.

I've got a list of rulesets to try out as alternatives to Dropzone, but my friends and I only really got through two of them before we got tired of translating the units yet again.

Event Exclusives are up!

SCOURGE PROWLER 32MM *EXCLUSIVE*


RESISTANCE PALATINE COMMAND BARGE *EXCLUSIVE*


SYNDICATE YACHT *EXCLUSIVE*

The Hyperyacht Aurorum is a 'civilian' vessel of superb craftsmanship. It currently serves as the flagship of Karl Stieglitz and his band of mercenaries: The Decapitators. Known across the galaxy as its most infamous mercenaries, the Hyperyacht Aurorum and her fleet of guns for hire and aren't choosy where their funds come from.

The Resistance keeps getting such awesome ships!


Also don't forget to check the main listings for the games as that link only shows the newest; there's older exclusives as well up for grabs

Someone needs their magic wand privileges revoked.

Again awesome and inspiring skills for a game that leaves much to be desired 😪

Syndicate yacht looks cool. But those windows are the same shape as the windows on the UCM strike carrier, and I know how much of a huge pain in the ass they were to paint and I just shudder at doing what looks like 8 ships worth of them. Yeah, yeah, I know, Shaltari players doing 'worlds tiniest sad violin' while painting a billion dots.

One of these days their event exclusive will align with a month I haven't already allocated my hobby budget, but it ain't this month.

The old Hawk team were great, community enagement was really good, and the community/game popularity basically exploded. This is an absolute shambles, and TT mismanagement absolutely killed the game. It's gone downhill massively since they sacked all the original team bar Dave, seemed to completely misunderstand what made the game successful, and can't even keep existing ranges in stock let alone release new stuff. Hawk, a far far smaller company, managed to handle their logistics far better than TT, who, to my knowledge actually make the products themselves?

 winnertakesall wrote:
This is an absolute shambles, and TT mismanagement absolutely killed the game.

*sticks fingers in ears* La la la la, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! (TTC, having shutdown all but their no-criticism-allowed echo chamber of a facebook group)

 winnertakesall wrote:
TT, who, to my knowledge actually make the products themselves?

They do. But, they pay their production staff terribly, micromanage the gak out of them, have high turnover and chronic understaffing, and are in the ass end of nowhere Cornwall. They won't pay anyone competent enough to come work for them. Anyone they hire is a total noob that learns the trade then leaves for better pay in under a year.

TT is owned by two brothers that made their money in retail, and act like a pair of super market managers, relentlessly aiming for the lowest margin and damn the quality.

The game may be a shambles, but the new ships they keep putting out are still gorgeous.

The new yacht is great, tempted to pick one up just to paint. It would be the fourth or so dropfleet model I have brought just because it looks great, I don't play the game.

The dropzone Lore is fantastic but you can't even buy the books with it in anymore! I missed out on the battle for earth book, and now fear the only way I'll read that stuff is if I manage to pick up a second hand copy someday.
The should be paying dave just to write campaign books.

I recently played a game of DzC 1.1 with a friend who has never played a miniatures game but was looking to find a hobby with his limited spare time now that he's a father. He really enjoyed himself & started talking about how he was thinking of buying his own starterset when I had to warn him about the seeming state of the game at 2.0. We both agreed to play for a while with what I have left over from when I quit miniatures before looking at what TTC has to offer.

It's such a shame that I now have to treat DzC in the same manner I had to treat 40K back in 6th edition.

News from Salute. TT stand had stock on the stand but not much more except for a few modest ships on a shared display with their other ranges as new stuff.
If you attended older salutes, where this game stand would be the most freaking amazing thing at salute with loads of amazing displays and huge ship etc... you would feel that unfortunately those days are gone. There was probably demos but did not go for the gaming tables.

Agreed, the beautiful painted models and showy displays that drew me to the game in previous years were very much not in evidence! Exclusives were unmarked and unsignposted, and nothing in the way of discounts.

They did however have an unpainted version of the Military Monorail set up, and I'm seriously impressed at the value the for £30 price. The box feels like a brick when you pick it up! There was enough rail and pylons to cover a large board area, and the train design feels a bit more detailed and 3D than the civilian version, and could be more plausibly split into different smaller trains dotted around the track.

I remember seeing dropzone at salute the year it was previewed, despite it not being on sale those display cases had a crowd around all day. I decided to buy into the game on sight alone.
How hard would it be for TT to put something together to promote their game?

It took Dave a long time to build the ship (i remember seeing it attending events paritally finished) so it's not a trivial thing to do

and for all the good work Hawk did it didn't prevent them overextending and having to sell out to TTC

Yes the KS was a major reason, but even so it suggests the business behind the game was not in a brilliant place, better for the players probably, but perhaps not a level of support sales could pay for

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
It took Dave a long time to build the ship (i remember seeing it attending events paritally finished) so it's not a trivial thing to do

and for all the good work Hawk did it didn't prevent them overextending and having to sell out to TTC

Yes the KS was a major reason, but even so it suggests the business behind the game was not in a brilliant place, better for the players probably, but perhaps not a level of support sales could pay for

Such is often the fate of the hobbyist-creator: success can break your back as fast or faster than mediocrity, and it's rare that creativity, passion, technical knowledge and economical acumen all converge in a single person starting out from a garage. You can easily get yourself in a place that needs outside help to salvage by expanding too fast and making promises, or worse, binding offers that you can't fulfill because they go above what a single person can do by working full time.

To be fair its true of many companies. Having all the skills in one person is rare and even if you have all the skills to a required level of competency, you can simply hit the wall of running out of time to do everything.

Sometimes you can off-set to consultants and such; sometimes software automation and better methods can let you save time and such.

Other times you just need more people and that often comes hand in hand with needing money to expand.

Approaching a store in your own market which has financial backing which doesn't mean loading up on debt from banks/investors can mean that a small time company is able to get the cash it needs without slaving itself to debt that cripples it in the long term.

Heck many a brand has sunk because the debt over them was greater than their income once the economy takes a slowdown or they stop being the "number 1" item for whatever market they are in.

 Tamereth wrote:
How hard would it be for TT to put something together to promote their game?

"We don't really care about the game, we just want to sell models"

Verbatim quote from TTCombat (I believe the old designer, Lewis Clarke) about Dropzone Commander, as confirmed by a half dozen people I've talked to that were part of the playtesting group from Battle For Earth.

So pretty damned hard, because it would require a complete sea change in the culture of the company.

The owners of TT are a lost cause, so all hope is on Dave having achieved a level of autonomy sufficient to save the game in spite of the brothers Simpson's timid and impotent business acumen.

I remember the changeover, never ever hearing about TTC before, looking them up, seeing they had games, but ones me and some friends and their friends have never heard of.
It didn't bode well to me tgat a terrain company took the game

TTCombat wrote:Type-6 Grand Walkers or more commonly known as the PHR Light Behemoths have been spotted on the Battlefield! More precisely, a limited number have been deployed in Birmingham, England, and will be available at UKGE for early access.

General release/deployment to follow at a later date on the TTCombat website

Excited for UKGE? Available early for Admirals attending the event in person, we have two need Dropfleet Commander Battleships! The UCM have brought forward the new Hanoi whilst the Scourge has fabricated the Beelzebub.
These ships are available at our stand now but will get a website release eventually

Those guns always get bigger ...

I like big guns on ships! Though the scourge ones seem a bit over-large for ball join wing placement on a battleship.

Mark McKenzie wrote:A sneak peak for UCM players sitting on the painting desk at UK Games Expo…

PHR Behemoth Jr. - Now that's an appropriate size for the game. It's got some out-of-character sharp edges going on, or is that just the paint job? There's some really sloppy wash going on the closer I look at that model, around the crevices and holes of the ivory/cream portions of the armor, so maybe it is the paint. Also, what putz put plastic Immortals in a display photo? Mixed feelings, I'd probably be happy to see one on a table, unless they make the rules bad (if they're still working through Clarke's rules, that'll probably be the case).

UCM BB - Looks fine, the BB equivalent of the Perth, a narrow arc big gun. I can't quite tell what pieces it's in, and whether or not it's magnetized prow compatible with the existing BB. I could see picking up this pack, depending on what the other option looks like.

Edit: Pics from UKGE showing up around the net. The alt-build is a super sized bulk lander

And the hull/prow connection is totally different than the other BB kit

Scourge BB - No. Just no. It's a BC front slapped on a dragon with big gangly guns and weird blocky middle guns and rear launch fins(? the back half is hard to see clearly from this angle). Dangle guns looked bad on the PHR DD, they look just as dumb here.

UCM Behemoth Jr. - Uh, is that a typo in the description? Because aesthetically that's a Resistance model. Nothing on it says UCM. Not feeling the overall boxyness of it. And just like the bigger Resistance behemoth , it's too well preserved and clean looking. Would be way cooler scrapped.

Updates from TT Combat...

The v2.5 FAQ and errata doc has just been published, along with updated stats sheets for UCM and Scourge.

The online Fleet builder will be updated during the course of the week.

All files can be found in the usual place on the Resources section of the TT website, but direct links below for your convenience:

FAQ & Errata v2.5
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropfleet_Commander_FAQ_v2.5.pdf

UCM Ship Stats (including Hanoi & Dehli)
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Combined_UCM_230609.pdf

Scourge Ship Stats (including Beelzebub, Devil and Lucifer)
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Combined_Scourge_230609.pdf

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Updates from TT Combat...

The new v2.4.0 FAQ & Errata is now live, along with updated stats for ALL races that include any errata changes.

Note that the sheets for the PHR now include the light Behemoth stats, and those for the Shaltari include the new Bobcat (that was on limited released at Expo).
The army builder will be updated during the course of the week.

All files can be found in the usual place on the Resources section of the TT website, but direct links below for your convenience.


FAQ & Errata v2.4.0
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropzone_BFE_FAQ_v2.4.pdf

PHR Stat Sheets
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropzone_PHR_Stat_Cards_20230609.pdf

Shaltari Stat Sheets
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropzone_Shaltari_Stat_Cards_20230609.pdf

UCM Stat Sheets:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropzone_UCM_Stat_Cards_20230609.pdf

Scourge Stat Sheets:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropzone_Scourge_Stat_Cards_20230609.pdf

Resistance Stat Sheets:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0965/1274/files/Dropzone_Resistance_Stat_Cards_20230609.pdf

Lots of small sensible changes to Zone. I like they're dialing back the Fortitude scores, those inflated over the editions to the point they all felt the same; 2+ elites and 3+ regulars. Some small acknowledgement in the PHR that dedicated demo weapons can't compare spamming medium energy shots, but that's not a unit specific problem, it's throughout the game. Not sure this really makes any difference, unless they're just testing it in one faction first.

Hoo-boy, that's a lot of stuff for Fleet. I get removing ramming (it was always a little silly in a hard-sf game) and nuking (which was functionally impossible to pull off because of all the restrictions on it), but I'll miss their inclusion in the rules. Bombard collateral is an outright improvement. Hooray for eliminating rolling for number of attacks, it didn't contribute anything worthwhile to the game.

I only feel like I know UCM, Scourge, and PHR well enough to comment on the unit changes.

UCM BBs - Two point bump to Hull feels good, BBs in general are a little too quick to die. And the laser is now finally really worth firing instead outside of for-the-hell-of-it on WF.

UCM Perth - I still don't understand the admittedly many people saying the Perth underperformed. I always had good results fielding it. I think we'll be seeing a points increase next pass if it keeps BT-10.

UCM St. Pete - Again, a little bit more hull is nice, and the handling of the dual lasers is better than the Siphon rule.

UCM Nuuk - Much cleaner rule, good change.

Scourge Furnace Weapons - Furnace Cannons have kinda sucked for a while, so I'm excited to see them change. But I'm not sure this is the right choice. Corruptor causes ongoing damage tokens on crits, which on a BT weapon can lead to a whole bunch of extra damage. But I also don't really understand WHY it leaves corruptor tokens. I hate it when game devs apply rules that mean things in the narrative as generic mechhanical stuff. What the hell is it doing that the UCM lasers aren't?

Scourge Umbra & Parasite - I've still never used these, too space magicy. But glad to see them getting some kind of attention at least, a prelude to subsequent better fixes.

PHR Broadsides - Mixed feelings. I welcome reducing the absurd dice pools that you got with Fusillade sometimes, but I also really miss the ships getting a bonus for going WF. My friend that plays PHR is extremely upset by this change, I'm only ever on the receiving end.

We've been trying to organize a DFC game for a couple weeks now, hopefully get to test a few of these changes soon.

Does Dropfleet really count a as "hard Sf game?"

Did they ever sort out having fighters not ebing able to CAP against enemy bombers etc?

 Mr Morden wrote:
Does Dropfleet really count a as "hard Sf game?"

Did they ever sort out having fighters not ebing able to CAP against enemy bombers etc?

I used to count. It's drifted, and quite a lot recently. In the first edition from Hawk, no small arms could CAP against strike craft, because the rules didn't allow it. They could only coordinate and attack low altitude loitering aircraft, not the high flying fast stuff.

Edit: Doh, read zone, you said fleet. I'd say it was still advertised and largely plays like a hard SF game. I thought you meant Close Air Protection, when small arms being used to harass aircraft, but you meant Combat Air Patrol. And fighters have always been able to 'CAP' against bombers. Lots of people get the steps wrong, and its confusingly presented, but Bomber wings have to declare targets first, then Fighters can respond and move to counter their attacks, which is represented with the point defense increase. Narratively the fighters are intercepting the bombers on their way to the target, it's just that for table state and not smeaing tokens all over the place, they get placed on the target.

slyphic wrote:


Scourge Furnace Weapons - Furnace Cannons have kinda sucked for a while, so I'm excited to see them change. But I'm not sure this is the right choice. Corruptor causes ongoing damage tokens on crits, which on a BT weapon can lead to a whole bunch of extra damage. But I also don't really understand WHY it leaves corruptor tokens. I hate it when game devs apply rules that mean things in the narrative as generic mechhanical stuff. What the hell is it doing that the UCM lasers aren't?

Corrupted weapons mechanically inflict a fire token which does not seem to be a particularly strange effect for a weapon called a Furnace Weapon. Perhaps the Scourge burnthrough technology is less about slicing through heavy armour for a clean kill like the UCM and more about dealing widespread destruction and terror to leave the enemy vulnerable for close attacks or boarding?

Edit: oh whoah they really turned up the dial on the Scourge burnthroughs now that I take a closer look. Lock 3+, 4 attacks, corrupter and they top out at 8 damage? They outclass the UCM variants in every regard at the moment - even the buffed St Petersburg pales in comparison to the basic Scourge laser. I like a lot of the other tweaks but this one seems pretty scary.

*NEW RELEASES*

PHR Sarpedon Battleship
The Sarpedon class has been observed on multiple occasions at the head of so-called 'Javelin' strikes - lightning assaults on certain, enigmatic surface positions before rapid and unexplained retreats. Some suggest that limited ammunition payload may explain this, but senior operatives of the Office of Naval Intelligence suspect that's just wishful thinking.

Shaltari Gold Battleship
Unlike the familiar Platinum class, the Gold is a far more aggressive vessel. As one of the Shaltari's premier assets the Gold is a worthy chariot for the mightiest of attack-oriented Starchiefs.

Find these new Battleships here:
https://ttcombat.com/collections/dropfleet-commander

The Shaltari battleship looks decent, although it doesn’t stand out from their other battleships at first glance.

The new PHR battleships just look off somehow. The prow doesn’t jive with the rest of the bill or something. And TTC really need to rein it in a bit on the funk-huge cannon.

Dave's getting into his 40s. The donguses may be some stuff percolating up.

I can't say any of these new designs make me want to buy them, and the shoddy state of the rules is a mental drag on getting this game to the table.

Gettin' real fed up with TT. To the point I'd rather just use the models I have in an entirely different game than play theirs or put the effort into fixing it.

A Light Behemoth is on the way! The new UCM Behemoth is stomping its way onto that battlefield this Friday.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Is that a gaming table or someone's garden?)

That is my favorite behemoth design so far, and the one that most fits the feel of the setting (as it started). I’d be tempted to add some fat treads under the main body to reduce the “lol mecha legs are dumb” factor, but I’d have to see it in person first.

beast_gts wrote:

A Light Behemoth is on the way! The new UCM Behemoth is stomping its way onto that battlefield this Friday.

Strangely, my eyes were drawn to the smaller models as I really loved some of those initial designs when the game came out as well as their ability to be airlifted literally as models into combat. Those smaller UCM designs still hold up pretty well IMO.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’d be tempted to add some fat treads under the main body to reduce the “lol mecha legs are dumb” factor, but I’d have to see it in person first.

Mech legs in UCM was a mistake. It's a faction built around utilitarian efficiency, and no amount of hanging a hat on it in one universally panned book excuses the decision. That model would look more coherent with the rest of the force with treads, but even that feels a mistake. Sometimes, the faction identity is that you don't have model class parity, you don't do the crazy thing the aliens are doing. I could almost see one of the heavy tracked sections like on Broadsword/Ferrum on each corner, so it looks like the NASA shuttle crawler. But it should just be stationary. Dropfleet has stations already.

 warboss wrote:
Strangely, my eyes were drawn to the smaller models as I really loved some of those initial designs when the game came out as well as their ability to be airlifted literally as models into combat. Those smaller UCM designs still hold up pretty well IMO.

Those new small units were baffling to me for the longest time with their weird high fire rate low calibre weapons, like what the hell is this thing designed to shoot at on the battlefield, there's no infantry in the open, it's not a threat to bread'n'butter MBT equivalents, it just seems totally purposeless. And then, I listened to a podcast from some of the old playtesters, and they straight up said that's because the weapons were originally designed when Barrage was still a rule and that's how they operated. Rapid saturation fire in an area. It's just that post-Hawk designers were so terrible at designing this game they literally never figured out how to make that system work and just pulled the first stupid idea out of their asses and went off for a pint.

I mourn for the state this game could have been in had it been bought by literally anyone else other than TTCombat.

I suppose you could still play the first edition (or whenever the point was when he sold it off). You'll obviously lose out on newer units and the big macguffins they've come out with since unless you convert them yourself.

Which book was universally panned? Battle for Earth? Hardly universally. I, and the gamers I interact with, all enjoyed the flavor and background. The Resistance fleet is fun. The Dropzone rules didn’t seem to land with the Dropzone crowd, but they’re mostly gone now.

BFE, from a Dropzone perspective. It added very little that wasn't already in the original or either Reconquest books, and what it did add had as many contradictory problems as interesting ideas. There's a bunch of nifty art.

I can totally see for a primarily Dropfleet player BFE being a much better book though.

The Dropzone crowd is indeed 'mostly gone now', and we can lay that garland squarely on the corners of BFE. The BFE/v2 rules have been improved since then, but they're still substantially worse than the beta from 2018. And of the few people still playing Dropzone, most of them aren't playing the v2 rules, but rather older editions or homebrew rules.

Okay, yeah, universally panned by Dropzone players I’ll agree with. The whole Dropzone rules crammed into a Dropfleet book thing was odd. I hope they let Dave write a third edition that works for Dropzone players soon, even if they have to leave the behemoths and other weird units in some kind of appendix for casual play.



I’ve been using my Dropzone minis with the Horizon Wars rules. It’s definitely not a game to test one’s skill or strategy, but it does see tanks and vehicles on the tabletop.

Horizon Wars I want to like more than I actually do. I've been following Precinct Omega's blog about the upcoming 2nd edition (named Midnight Dark) later this year. The posts keep talking about the specific complaints I had with the game, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how he addresses them all.

My criticism: Aircraft rules feel tacked on and incongruous - his blog: "In fact, the Horizon Wars aircraft rules were literally taken from a separate game (that I also wrote) called AirFrame. But in practice, this mostly led to even the most enthusiastic players just ignoring aircraft entirely as an option for their Battle Groups and a lot of people complained that the rules were too complex."

My criticism: Force Org feels awkward and arbitrary and there's not enough command friction - his blog: "One minor gripe I occasionally heard about the original Horizon Wars was the absence of a real role for leaders after the process of mustering was complete. ... it was mostly just a bit of a pain for players wanting to assemble forces that fit their own ideas of what "thematic" meant."

I don’t remember the Force Org part of the rules. We just grabbed a bunch of tanks and walkers and house ruled anything that slowed the game down. I think we just treated aircraft like hover tanks with a few rules changes, but it’s been a while since we used them. Reading your posts, I feel that we approach these games from entirely different directions.

The couple games I played we ignored the Force Org as well, but I distinctly recall it as being awkward to use in practice. For reference:


I suspect we indeed approach games from different directions. I liberally use houserules, but I consider that a failure for a rules system; if I have to modify it, it wasn't a good enough design. Good rules work out of the box, are easily understood, are consistent, are fast to resolve, and none of them are ignored or modified.

And in the whole GNS ternary plot of players, I'm Sim > Narrative > Game pretty consistently.

We mostly want rules that are easy to learn and fast to play. We house rule a lot to reduce clunkiness, or just because we had a fun idea that either isn’t clearly covered in the rules or because the rules are too onerous. A good example for onerous rules are the Dropfleet ground based game. I’ve seen a number of good houserules for that phase on Facebook, which might be a better method than simply dropping the core gimmick of the game.

Dropfleet ground combat is absolutely the weakest part of the game mechanics. We houseruled that gak almost immediately, and drastically. I even made a blog post about it for easy reference during games.

https://yadzcb.friestman.net/dfc-houserules.html

From the way you talk about playing games, you sound like a Narrative > Game > Sim kind of player.

Give me easy to learn rules as well, but not because they're simplistic, but because they're intuitive and well taught and easily referenced. I've come to dislike 'fast to play' or at least games that sell themselves as that. I want to put a good chunk of time into a game. If it finishes in under 2 hours, I feel dissatisfied. I want a good meaty 3-4 hour game with lots of hard decisions.

I really do not get what he was thinking seling his massive game to TTC. I think this game could jave taken the coveted second to warhakmer spot
So many at the time could have done better. But it went to, what is arguably a terrain company?
That's like selling a gaming franchise to people who make controllers

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I really do not get what he was thinking seling his massive game to TTC. I think this game could jave taken the coveted second to warhakmer spot
So many at the time could have done better. But it went to, what is arguably a terrain company?
That's like selling a gaming franchise to people who make controllers

If I recall right he was thinking that he wanted the firm to survive and thrive. He needed additional staff and investment and TTC offered him that. Also pairing with a wargame store provides an income base for the company that isn't linked to model sales from one range alone. This can give a firm resources to ride out tricky times - for example a Kickstarter - which can burn through operating money and hinder production and cause all kinds of cash and product flow issues.


The downside is that TTC have not proven have been the best partner in the long-term. They've really not managed to capitalise on the market that got handed to them on a plate. GW pulled out; Spartan Games imploded and Warcradle took 5 years to get back on market with just 1 of their games. As noted before Dropzone/fleet wound up sitting in a market slot all themselves with the only competition being Starwars, which as a prepainted game system is related too but slightly adjacent in market terms.

So yeah they should have had no reason to not grow. They should have managed to grow and grow and right now should be in a really strong positoin even with GW bringing back Epic and Warcradle gaining steam with Dystopian and Firestorm "on the horizon"

 slyphic wrote:

My criticism: Aircraft rules feel tacked on and incongruous - his blog: "In fact, the Horizon Wars aircraft rules were literally taken from a separate game (that I also wrote) called AirFrame. But in practice, this mostly led to even the most enthusiastic players just ignoring aircraft entirely as an option for their Battle Groups and a lot of people complained that the rules were too complex."

I wouldn't hold your breath on this front to be honest. Author specifically said he's going to remove all the aircraft that isn't helicopters, to my understanding that severely limits DZC air capabilities?

Overall I personally really like Horizon Wars as a base frame of a great game. Beyond basic mechanics that me and my opponent enjoy there are a lot of design decisions we deemed to be outright bad, so we heavily house rule it.

 Overread wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I really do not get what he was thinking seling his massive game to TTC. I think this game could jave taken the coveted second to warhakmer spot
So many at the time could have done better. But it went to, what is arguably a terrain company?
That's like selling a gaming franchise to people who make controllers

If I recall right he was thinking that he wanted the firm to survive and thrive. He needed additional staff and investment and TTC offered him that. Also pairing with a wargame store provides an income base for the company that isn't linked to model sales from one range alone. This can give a firm resources to ride out tricky times - for example a Kickstarter - which can burn through operating money and hinder production and cause all kinds of cash and product flow issues.


The downside is that TTC have not proven have been the best partner in the long-term. They've really not managed to capitalise on the market that got handed to them on a plate. GW pulled out; Spartan Games imploded and Warcradle took 5 years to get back on market with just 1 of their games. As noted before Dropzone/fleet wound up sitting in a market slot all themselves with the only competition being Starwars, which as a prepainted game system is related too but slightly adjacent in market terms.

So yeah they should have had no reason to not grow. They should have managed to grow and grow and right now should be in a really strong positoin even with GW bringing back Epic and Warcradle gaining steam with Dystopian and Firestorm "on the horizon"

Not quite, and I have to be careful what I say as I have some insider knowledge. TTCombat took over the manufacturing but ended up taking over Hawk in it's entirety. They then made everyone redundant after saying they wouldn't, so the only bit of hawk that's the same is Dave, and all of the rest of the company was gone. I personally suspect there was some slight underhandedness but hey, it's business.

Based on the Secret Weapon x TTC drama, I can see underhandedness being involved. Otherwise I agree with Overreads take, though I think hotsauceman is smoking/drinking something strong thinking DZC/DFC would have taken a "second to warhammer" spot. I think good management could have had the game in a much better position that it is now, but I dont know that it had all the qualities needed to hit "mainstream" levels of success like others that have come and gone through the #2 spot.

To chime in with further speculation, there seemed to be quite the kerfuffle around kickstarter fulfillment for Dropfleet; a large number of backers did not receive their orders and reportedly when contacting Hawk had to basically provide their entire invoice and reported that it felt like Hawk had no information on their pledge. That would seem to be corroborated by this snippet from a KS update from after TTCombat took over:

Here at TTC we fulfil our Kickstarters using Backerkit, which is a super easy system to use. Hawk used... a less easy system. I won't go into too much backstage detail (no one wants to see the sausages being made), but it's taken a little while to find out which orders were sent, which weren't, and who was missing what bits. Unfortunately a lot of this still isn't entirely clear for various reasons I won't be going into!

Possibly coincidentally, Mantic, who used the same third-party pledge manager for one of their campaigns at the time, had an issue where a subset of KS pledges had been "lost" and they were having to try and determine what they needed to fufill the orders and having to order additional quantities of some items because they didn't have any more to send. Wish I could recall off-hand which campaign it was, but sadly "Mantic Kickstarter" isn't exactly a short list....

The two things could be entirely coincidence, but a situation where a chunk of orders went MIA, production numbers consequently being too low and Hawk struggling to get things out the door would create a scenario where acquiring any sort of partner with logistics experience likely seemed quite appealing, if not urgently required. I don't believe Dave was ever particularly enarmored with the leadership aspects of business ownership either so it could have appeared to hit multiple birds with the same stone.

Shame how it's gone overall since then; really like the models but they're not exactly super-fun to acquire outside of direct ordering from the UK.

Regarding the potential for mainstream success, 2nd tier status is baked into both games at a core level.

Dropzone is basically, “you’re tired of straight up fighting games where victory is determined by kills, right? Here’s a game with complicated movement dynamics and victory conditions specifically designed for hardcore gamers.”

Dropfleet is “You’re tired of straight forward starship battle games, right? Here’s a game where destroying the enemy fleet and dominating orbital space has very little to do with winning. These are the complicated additions you’ve always wanted in a space battle rule set.”

Neither game could ever dominate their markets while being written as “next level” games for everyone bored with the games dominating their markets. Dropzone is a difficult and counterintuitive first wargame, and Dropfleet needs to drop (or heavily houserule) away its central premise for quick and easy gaming.

We know it's technically not edible but damn this thing looks tasty! Boil for 12 minutes and then smother with garlic butter and you could feed a whole army of Legionnaires. We'll let you fight over who get the tail.
The Scourge Light Behemoth is arriving on the TTCombat website tomorrow:
https://ttcombat.com/

The Scourge Light Behemoth

I thought from the teaser last week it would be a cool sculpt dragged down by a terrible paint job, but somehow the chintzy toy rainbow metallic paintjob isn't the worst part of this model. What on earth is supposed to be going on with the front feet things? They look like cheese graters. And the model has a bunch of flat featureless sections on it like they rushed the model, or upscaled elements where it was less noticeable at a smaller scale, or just got bored with it and called it a day. The top of the body looks kinda cool, but everything below the waterline is all kinds of sub-par.

Some parts look blown up in scale to me. I don’t hate it, but I wouldn’t buy it either.

Hm I'm not a fan of the troop compartments on the front legs, but other than that it looks like a solid model.

*NEW RELEASE*

Multiple new Miniatures and Terrain pieces have been added to the TTCombat website. Below are this week's latest Resin products!

UCM Brazil Light Behemoth
The Brazil and India are the UCM's Light Battle Mechs. These massive quadrupeds sit low to the ground, granting a modicum of cover for their large frame as well as ensuring that even if all legs are destroyed, they are merely immobilised.

Scourge Punisher Light Behemoth
The Punisher is unleashed by the Scourge when they care little for collateral damage. Its forelegs are a pair of hive-like structures that can carry a range of munitions, from explosive pods, to Razorworms. Its tail houses a Quake Bombard, a weapon capable of shaking buildings right down to their foundations.

Resistance K9 Technicals
During the Scourge occupation, many resistance bands continued to keep man's best friend. These K9 Attack Units are the mongrel descendants of the purebred pets from days before the occupation. Kept in kennels affixed to K9 Technicals, they're unleashed upon the enemy in support of friendly troops.

Vulture Gunship
Vultures Gunships come armed with two Twin Cannons, identical to the variants mounted on the Katana light tank, this gives the gunship respectable anti-tank firepower. The optional AA Battery gives the Vulture further versatility, allowing it to take on other aircraft. Alternatively, this kit can be assembled to make the Buzzard Aerial Target Craft, it loses out on one twin cannon, however is now a scouting vehicle. This gives it great versatility, allowing it to spot for units firing indirectly, as well as extend your commander's sphere of influence.

Find all of today's releases here:
https://ttcombat.com/

WTF? It has a literal lobster tail. "Its tail houses a Quake Bombard, a weapon capable of shaking buildings right down to their foundations." I can't tell if all the little squares are weapons or something else, but please please tell me it doesn't just flap its tail.

The dogs are still weird to me, no handlers, just a technical. Like it's a dog swarm it just dumps out? Stats are up and yeah, it's just a pack of dogs (that it might fail to spawn? double WTF, whoever wrote it copied the notes for the scourge razorworm torpedos)

The repair technical is the exact same arm, just an arm, identical. Nothing says resistance like identical components, right guys? And nothing else, no welding rigs, no rivet gun, no supply of scrap panels. Just a big dumb copypasted arm.

I really hate the direction this game has gone, goofy and lazy. The vulture is the only decent new model in ages.

NEW BASES!
Wanting to bring manufacturing in-house, from the 1st of August we will begin packaging Dropfleet Commander products with our new acrylic bases.

"Wanting to bring manufacturing in-house"

... I should buy some more plastic sprues while they still exist.

Also, I guess they're moving to SSDs for DFC then? The dials never worked as well as Dave hoped, but I actually like the black bases with the dial popped out and the sticker absent because you can put dice and cubes in them to track ship state which works really well actually.

What do you mean by SSDs? Super Star Destroyers?


This move to cheaper in-house bases boxes really badly for the future of plastics in the game, and of the game in general.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
What do you mean by SSDs? Super Star Destroyers?

Ship Status Display, comes from the OG Star Fleet Battles, but in spaceship wargaming refers to anytime you have a sheet of paper to track ship state instead of using tokens or chits or dice.
I actually made some when we started playing DFC and were frustrated with the dials, before I hit upon the dice'n'cube tray apparoach

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
This move to cheaper in-house bases boxes really badly for the future of plastics in the game, and of the game in general.

I never bought any of the excuses for the new resin ships. This has been coming for a long time, as they run out of stock and TTC is too cheap/broke to afford another run of injected plastics.

TTCombat wrote:Cityscape or Ruinscape? Hmm, it's hard to pick just one so I guess we should just re-release both of them this Friday.
You'll soon find these updated sets on our website:
https://ttcombat.com/

beast_gts wrote:

TTCombat wrote:Cityscape or Ruinscape? ... re-release both of them this Friday.

Sounds like they finally found a solution to their printing woes. Good. DFC command card restock happens, and we may yet see DZC faction cards this edition. Maybe even a full sized v3 rulebook next year.

New DZC models previewed on FB:

PHR Atlas


Resistance Gunbus

I wish they'd given that artillery truck some side braces that could be lowered down when firing or put the gun in in the middle of the bed. I just have this mental image of it firing and the whole thing flipping over

I really like the concept of the gun bus, but yeah it needs modified to look less precarious. Why a bus and not a flat bed? The wagons are all chopped flat beds, and they have the full size model from the pre-conquest vehicle pack. Put it on something with more axles at least.

All the new resistance stuff has looked rushed lately. Like the copypaste kennel and repair arm trucks, and the dog models. Anyone seen pics of the dogs painted by a customer yet?

Putting the gun that far back, and almost over the axle, seems inadvisable from a design standpoint. Its putting all that weight and recoil force directly into the back of the trailer right at what is basically a critical point of failure. It should have been centered on the bed more to spread the load across both axels more equally.

Outrigger braces would have been a good call (and would help with the axel load issue by transferring the force elsewhere), especially since the gun seems to be on a turntable - they wouldn't necessarily do much when its firing straight ahead, but if youre firing off to the side you'd be at risk of flipping over.

PHR Atlas Walkers
While not fast, the Atlas can take twice as much punishment as a heavy walker, making it best employed in take and hold style operations, or as close protection for its cargo while they conduct urban operations. Indeed one Atlas provides superior firepower and survivability compared to the pair of Junos normally employed in such roles, albeit at a higher cost.

Resistance Gunbus
Like other improvised Resistance technicals, the Gun Bus repurposes a common, civilian unit. Buses are usually employed as transports, requiring basic modification, but sometimes they are stripped to their chassis, providing space enough to mount heavy weapons.

"G88 Flak Cannon" - really?

Wehraboos gonna wehraboo?

DZC asses keep getting worse.

Look at that big smeary flat featureless panel. Disgusting, given then level of detail everywhere else and on earlier models. TT can't design molds for gak.

And holy gak the alt-bus is bad.

There's nothing at all about that weapon that reads 'sonic', and the chopped school but puts the turret BEHIND THE REAR AXLE. This model was designed by someone totally ignorant of basic physics, let alone how vehicles work.

Even their old models had mould issues - who the heck designs the scourge with all their ridges and spines and dots on the mould line spot

That Nerf cannon is hilarious.

The all-new UCM Grizzly Mortar! For all your Scourge bombarding needs...

The revolver mortar actually looks kinda cool

Mortar Revolver!!
Looks cool and won't fall over after firing!

The treads are the part I have a problem with.

Mortar tank is nice. Tracks are a bit odd but not totally out of place for the range.

The tracks are the same as those on the Titania / Event Exclusive variants:

Designed for hazardous environments and first deployed en masse in Antarctica during the Battle for Earth, the tracked variant of the Bear APC - commonly nicknamed the Polar Bear by infantry - has become a reliable chassis, even dragging a trailer for use by commanders.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The treads are the part I have a problem with.

Those are the same treads as on the recent limited edition alt-Kodiak, and they have the same problem. The big flat empty space between the cogs. It looked like they ran out of time on the other version and just didn't finish, so to see them reuse it with no improvement is pretty disappointing. Rest of the model looks good, which is a shame.

I guess they're on an artillery kick. Scourge mortar-y looking grav tank

Again though, put the good metal/resin warriors next to it, not those plastic disappointments.

I'm getting War of the Worlds vibes from that tank...

beast_gts wrote:
I'm getting War of the Worlds vibes from that tank...

Yeah, the barrel is oddly reminiscent of the 1953 film adaptation. I'm pretty sure the ships (not tripods in that film, it wasn't a good adaptation) had triangular barrels like that.

Has a Epic 40k Eldar titan vibe with the curves and ribs.

Scourge Executioner/Decapitator



UCM Grizzly

The alt-scourge thing doesn't make a lot of sense. It flips its engine over to become a gun, instead of just rotating to face backwards?

 slyphic wrote:
The alt-scourge thing doesn't make a lot of sense. It flips its engine over to become a gun, instead of just rotating to face backwards?

Heh, reminds me of ass-blasters or whatever they were called. The Pan Fo will be reviled!