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I dont know that its valid to compare them to the resins, word is these are "super battleships" and whole new classes of vessel rather than necessarily being plastic resculpts? Sounds like they may do a counts as type thing where they build new classes of ahip that are visually dufferent from the old but have the same stats.

If you go by the video, when he shows the back of the scourge box there are 4 classes shown, but there are 5 classes of scourge battleship currently

It might be that 2.0 ends up being a mix period where there's old and new classes of ship and then as more plastics come out the 3.0 region or 2.5 starts to become dominated with plastics with resins being replaced with "new but similar" or just dropped.

At some point I'd expect them to drop resins since in theory moving to plastics would be about lowering operational costs and such so why keep the old resin ships around if you've replaced them.

I suspect the “super” battleship idea comes from the way the kits are assembled, showing off multiple options at once. Perhaps there will be super battleships, but the artwork we’ve seen indicates the kits can make old classes (or their equivalents) without supersizing.

For example, the UCM battleship has the New York launch bays glues on and the Hanoi mass drivers, as well as some new wing-mounted weapons. The Shaltari ship also appears “super” while the PHR ship does not appear “super”.


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As for keeping resins around, they still have two big lines of resin minis, which means they operate in house and with economy of scale. They don’t have to ship their resins across an ocean, so they might not be too much more expensive than plastic.


If they drop resin ships from regular sales, they might still offer them as event exclusives. Those seem to do well for them.

Allegedly the only (non-exclusive) ships staying in resin long term will be dreadnoughts. This is per statements on the Discord from people who went to Weapons Free and talked to Dave.

Dave is planning to redo the battlecruisers in plastic once they're able (read: once they can afford to). We may see those once the plastic battleships are out the door.

I wonder why they didn't do the Bioficer battle cruisers in plastics as the battleships were surely done before the launch of the new edition (I'm assuming run-up times are longer than the month or so since launch for them to fully tool, test and go into production of the battleships to have them on show now).

That said most other factions did have a second wave of battlecruiser additions so perhaps it was just factored in that when Bioficers got theirs they'd shift to plastics in one go for all factions for the battlecruisers. Which wouldn't be a daft policy to shift fleets over for all of X kind of ship in one go.


I can well see Dreadnoughts and a few other exotics remaining in resin for sure in the long term.



One thing that I think is interesting to note is that with the new plastic smalls set the range is going to shrink quite radically in terms of sku. To me that isn't just an investment in plastics but also potentially an investment in either expanding most fleets to become much larger or adding more factions to grow the game.

Reduced SKUs is a big driver. Warcradle has been singing the praises of multi-unit sprues for a while in the industry, it's worked out fantastically for their Dystopian Wars line. 120 total boxes for 8 factions with more than 400 different models. Takes up about a third of the shelf space that Spartan did, and by forcing people to buy combined unit sets you have less dead stock.

Really, the only people it sucks for are customers that want a specific model, mitigated with about a 20-30% savings if you figure the cost of individual resin models from their packs vs the new plastic sprue composition.

UCM will go from 12 SKUs to 4 (core, light, BB, BC) plus the direct only DN.

The real question on my mind is after the BC and BB plastics... what next? Will we see new individual ships in resin every 4-6 months like we used to? Or is it going to be months of teasing a new sprue we get every 12-18 months? No actual preference here, just curious how they'll play it. Moving to plastic-first would be a drastic change in direction both in production and marketing.

The thing I'm most excited for is actually the 'staff tournament' TTC has alluded to. "Designers must play their own games, extensively, and post battle reports" is a hill I will gallantly die on. Also there were some fantastic looking ships in the teaser shots.

Yeah I'm curious where they will go as well. Especially since they don't really have any marketing outlet besides releasing new models.* So the only action they really get is new models going out to the market.

Which is great right now, but as you say very few plastic kits means very quickly getting armies out there and then what?
My mind they'll start doing special ships and unique versions in resin to drum up interest, but I can also see htem flat out doing new factors or in-faction sub-factions or such to try and keep new kits appearing

This might even be something we are seeing with the new Battleships. Scourge one in particular is a big departure from their classic designs so perhaps its the start of a whole new subfaction of Scourge ships with a very different style.



* they don't even seem to really sponsor anything either. I was kind of surprised how few youtubers appear to have been approached/hired or such. Even those who aren't big names didn't seem to get free kits or demo kits very much for the 2.0 launch to drum up some hype

A hill i will die on is that games should go wide rather than deep. Id rather see new factions with the occasional new unit for existing factions than continued focus on developing existing factions. Lots of small factions is better than a handful of big factions.

Each has their up and downsides. I think the big thing is that however the designers go the army size should scale to the intended game size.

Plus be willing to change the intended game size if you keep pushing in a new direction. Or basically if you've just made your factions have a huge roster; be bold and move from skirmish to wargame; don't keep trying to be a skirmisher (yes looking at you Warmachine 2.0).


But in general larger army games often breed players very loyalty their single army. Of course as GW has shown many times over (and Infinity too); you can make healthy sales just updating existing models even if you don't increase utility of the models in the game.


Lots of new factions can be a problem for developers in terms of spreading out customers. If you've very few armies you can easily focus on them marketing wise and each faction should bring in healthy sales. Going wide has the risk of creating dud factions that don't pull their weight well but you don't quite want to "squat them" from the game. Plus it means more marketing legwork to keep all the factions in focus. Look how people in 40K and Old World dropped off when their factions got "ignored" for long spans.





Also I don't know if this is sales or supply but Wayland seem to be running down Dropgames. Their stocks are really low and they've even some models (including the Scorn Titan) at 50% off right now for Black Friday. Not sure if this is just Warcradle not having production to catch up and supply more or if Wayland are just seeing a trend in really slow/low sales.

It could also be that wayland doesnt want to carry a direct competitor to its own games (wayland owns warcradle).

Perhaps but they sock loads of GW's similar scale game and loads of other model lines too. Plus at least for Dropfleet; I don't expect to see Firestorm Armada appear on sale for at least several more years. (one year at absolute best and that assumes that they go straight from their latest game into FA and not into another game)


So its a perhaps, but honestly I don't see it as some tactical move to clear the board for their own game.

GW is on a different scale though, not stocking GW is more directly harmful to wayland than stocking it, as most warcradle games players will probabky start out as gw game players.

TTC games on the other hand are already barely stocked and poorly distributed imternationally, losing another retailer and distributor is actively harmful to the dropverse, and while GW and Waecradke arent really competitors, Warcradle and TTC very directly are.

If they are, I'd bet Wayland is winding down dropgames for the same reason every other major online retailer did. TTC is consistently miserable to work with at the distribution level. They changed shipping dates around DFC 2e launch with no notice, then missed those new shipping dates, shipped incomplete orders, and just shrug when you ask them about any of it. This killed DZC distro in the US previously. They're blacklisted at two of my local stores for their gak. I know for sure that's why both GameKastle and GameNerdz dropped them as well.

Yeah as I recall Wayland were a week later on orders for Dropfleet.

And we all know that messing around with orders (yourself or at distributor level) can kill you; that was one of the issues Privateer Press had for ages.

The plastics I hope to see after BCs are faction-specific launch assets and space stations/features/defenses.

For resin, I enjoy the character ships and the alternate designs for different shipyards, subfactions or theaters. But what I would really like to see them make are logistics ships for each faction, for convoys, and maybe even some shipyard bits for each faction’s stations to add a feeling that more is at stake in a particular battle.

Bioficer Half Panel Sprues are available to order now on the TTCombat website:

https://ttcombat.com/collections/new-tabletop-games/products/bioficer-panel-sprue

Nice - wasn't expecting to see any movement on that until they did the Battleships considering that they appear primed to be out the door before Christmas (at least based on them already teasing us with them)

Awesome. I think I’m going to need a few of those for properly blinging out my cruisers.

T-TYPE TUGBOAT

The T-Type was once a common sight across many shipyards. Due to the size of many pre-war ships, a way of moving these gargantuan vessels out of drydock was needed. T-Types were devised to be the answer to this sizable problem. You'll be able to find this adorable ship on our website in time for Black Friday.

Does it use a grapple or some kind of tractor beam?

I wonder what the UCM equivalent looks like…

All aboard the party bus! Okay, its real name is the Hyperyacht Somniferum but it's basically filled with all the illegal substances and crime you'd hope to find in the Commander Universe. This new exclusive ship will be available for Black Friday!
P.S. It has its own stats and scenarios.

I like the design, but it looks like a bit of BFG got into theDFC.

You have seen the PHR Broadsides right?

Okay, a little bit more BFG.

That is somehow the least DFC ship they've made. Looks way more at home over at Brigade. The engines are really the only element I recognize.

Did you spot the M-Type Barge being attacked by the Resistance yesterday? This barge is the larger cousin of the L-Type. Produced at the same Tharsis Manufacturing shipyards over Mars, the M-Type was designed for corporate bulk shipping. Now these relics from a simple time have been deployed by all factions seeking a reliable Hauler.
Coming Black Friday!

That's quite a nicely-executed cargo vessel, assuming the octagonal sections in the lower middle section are cargo doors or big cargo pods.

In the first picture they look like containers.

That ship looks significantly more robust than any UCM ship of the line. While I quite enjoy the design, I can only imagine it being part of the EAA “Chonk Era” of ships, like the Aldrin and the dreads. Personally I’d have preferred for it to be more container and less armor plating.