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 Consul Scipio wrote:
Salakahn is part of the Resistance faction.

If you take him you get to take tanks as standard. Not sure how viable that is but I'm doing it.

Completely viable! If an objective is in a building just blow it up so no one can have it

This stuff is impressive. Is it true you can bend some of these miniatures at a 45 degree angle without them breaking with the material they use?

Not sure on the exact degree to which you can bend it, but they are quite resilient. Natfka even had a video where he bounced one of the larger more delicate resin models off of a wall to demonstrate it a while back (a Shaltari Eden Gate I believe). I would be more worried about paint damage than model damage most of the time. I have only seen one model actually break in two years of play against a myriad of opponents.

That said I am not actively trying my luck. The idea of bending one of my models unduly makes me wince. >.<

Also, in regards to Salakhan. He also allows you to take the M3 Alexander as a heavy choice in addition to getting Hannibals as standard units.

 Nightwolf829 wrote:
Not sure on the exact degree to which you can bend it, but they are quite resilient. Natfka even had a video where he bounced one of the larger more delicate resin models off of a wall to demonstrate it a while back (a Shaltari Eden Gate I believe). I would be more worried about paint damage than model damage most of the time. I have only seen one model actually break in two years of play against a myriad of opponents.

That said I am not actively trying my luck. The idea of bending one of my models unduly makes me wince. >.<

Also, in regards to Salakhan. He also allows you to take the M3 Alexander as a heavy choice in addition to getting Hannibals as standard units.

I wonder if you can use the material he uses for other minis? Or is the stuff really only practical For the style he uses for vehicles? Could you use them for 28+mm figs?

The detail seems fan-fahkin-tastic!

How is the clean up on these miniatures? Are the mold lines anything like PVC miniatures?

I wonder if you can use the material he uses for other minis? Or is the stuff really only practical For the style he uses for vehicles? Could you use them for 28+mm figs?

Dropzone has a number of large models with no loss of detail, so I do not see why it would not transfer over well. Would be pretty sweet to be honest.

How is the clean up on these miniatures? Are the mold lines anything like PVC miniatures?

Mold lines are next to nonexistant. When they do appear they are easily cleaned off with a gentle knife scrape or a very light sweep or two of fine sandpaper. There is also little to no actual flash (it is very thin and easily brushed away on the rare occasion when it does exist). There is also no residue to clean off of the resin from the casting process. You can spray up and start painting. I have never had so much as a spot appear afterwards.

Not sure exactly what sort of resin it is, but the material is absolutely fantastic.

Thanks, I was googling around, I saw some Dropzone minis on a frame.

Are they going into hard plastic? Or is it just a box starter deal and went with hard plastic for price point/cost reasons (if that what it really is)

So you think they could use the material with Infinity/War Machine/40k type of miniatures?

How are their miniatures produce? Are they hand poured or... ???

Most DzC minis are resin, but the starter deals (except for Resistance) are in hard plastic (polystyrene) and so come on a sprue.

This image is so incredibly atmospheric.

Now that is some cool art. Space derelict?

We had actually a table accidentally being overturned during a tournament, really looked horrible. What happened to the minis? 2 soldiers had to be glued back to their base and one model had a slight paint chip (approx 1-2mm²). And the card-buildings were more than OK, not even the slightest sign of damage.

So that stuff takes a lot of abuse, even when painted.

Just spotted the new gear up for pre-order:

Lieutenant-General Luciana M. Cato

£26.50

Eden's Dinosaur

£19.00

Marcus Barros, Grand Vizier

£26.50

Warchief Isis, the Clairvoyant

£13.50

Karl Foley, Prince of New Troy

£15.00

Salakahn, Tyrant of Atlantia

£14.00

Underground Hangar Scenery Pack

£40.00

And a preview:




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and missed these:

Oooh, I had not seen those previews / sneak peaks! Very cool

Very cool. That Scourge crab walker is bigger than I expected.

Any more news of plastics? I've been buying the plastic box sets because they look great and are such a good value... and I haven't even played a game yet

Only the starters will be plastic.

Changing everything to plastic would be extremly expensive. And quite some detail would be lost due to plastic not being easy to get undercuts into. But the Dropfleet Starter will be plastic too.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Only the starters will be plastic.

Changing everything to plastic would be extremly expensive. And quite some detail would be lost due to plastic not being easy to get undercuts into. But the Dropfleet Starter will be plastic too.

Was hoping for the Resistance dudes to get a plastic Starter, or maybe a "Expand your army with Expansion Boxes" that have other units in plastic

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
But the Dropfleet Starter will be plastic too.

Interesting! Is there a source for this? Will they be revealing more about "Dropfleet" (maybe even the actual name ) at Salute?

 RiTides wrote:

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
But the Dropfleet Starter will be plastic too.

Interesting! Is there a source for this? Will they be revealing more about "Dropfleet" (maybe even the actual name ) at Salute?

Found this little quote:

Dave wants to have a demonstration of the "Dropfleet Commander" (Apparently the actual name it's been given now) game available at salute.

Source is Hawk Wargames, we are doing translations for them.

Dropfleet will be probably fully shown for the first time during GenCon and a maybe release at the end of the year. They are testing and designing the hell out of it right now. Dates are all possible to change if something unforseen happens. Salute will be an early demo as far as I know.

Andy Chambers writes the rules for Dropfleet so this might give you a hint in which direction the game goes.

It will be scenario-based as DZC, there will be no direct connection to DZC in the rules, i.e. what happens during a Dropfleet game does not influence a DZC-game played at the same time, but of course you can create your own campaign that does include this. And Andy is working quite hard on avoiding that "empty space and we meet all in the middle"-problem quite some space games had.

As of now it is planned that alle factions will get their plastic starter and that is it for DZC for the time being.

The thing is. I can see Hawk saying only the starters will be plastic and believing that, right now.

But... Once the range gets a bit larger, there are going to be things out there that people are going to want enough og to justify them being in plastic.

To give an easy example, it'd probably only take 1 extra standard like release for the PHR to have a plastic sprue of their light and heavy mechs and something else.

On the other hand, maybe it's a maths problem and they've done some calculations and any extra plastic sets, even if they could afford the tooling, would not give enough volume of sales for the business to be viable.

It costs what? Around £150 to make a good sized army up. If you make plastics so that can army costs say £70 to build. Even doubling the interested player numbers still leaves a £10 per sold army shortfall.

On the third hand, the plastic starter armies gamble worked ridiculously well and made the game massively take off at my club, roughly going from 3 interested players to near 15. Admittedly only another 4 or 5 have bought a set so far.

 zedmeister wrote:
Found this little quote:

Dave wants to have a demonstration of the "Dropfleet Commander" (Apparently the actual name it's been given now) game available at salute.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Source is Hawk Wargames, we are doing translations for them.

Dropfleet will be probably fully shown for the first time during GenCon and a maybe release at the end of the year. They are testing and designing the hell out of it right now. Dates are all possible to change if something unforseen happens. Salute will be an early demo as far as I know.

Andy Chambers writes the rules for Dropfleet so this might give you a hint in which direction the game goes.

It will be scenario-based as DZC, there will be no direct connection to DZC in the rules, i.e. what happens during a Dropfleet game does not influence a DZC-game played at the same time, but of course you can create your own campaign that does include this. And Andy is working quite hard on avoiding that "empty space and we meet all in the middle"-problem quite some space games had.

As of now it is planned that alle factions will get their plastic starter and that is it for DZC for the time being.

Excellent, thanks for the info guys!

 Compel wrote:
It costs what? Around £150 to make a good sized army up. If you make plastics so that can army costs say £70 to build. Even doubling the interested player numbers still leaves a £10 per sold army shortfall.

On the third hand, the plastic starter armies gamble worked ridiculously well and made the game massively take off at my club, roughly going from 3 interested players to near 15. Admittedly only another 4 or 5 have bought a set so far.

Well, from my own subjective point of view...
I had a ton of interest in DZC models, but zero interest in buying any DZC stuff due to the prices. Then they released the plastics. Within the last three months I have bought one Scourge starter, one UCM starter, one PHR starter, and now the DZC starter set (which I hope combined with the UCM and Scourge will give me two good sized armies). Now I'm probably gonna get a second PHR starter because the models are great. And I know I won't resist buying two Shiltari starters as well eventually. That's money for Hawk Wargames that normally would have gone to something else (like probably my credit card bill, ouch) but now has gone to them due to the value of the plastics.

That phoenix looks pretty sweet

But... Once the range gets a bit larger, there are going to be things out there that people are going to want enough og to justify them being in plastic.

The problem is that Hawk does not want to compromise on the details of the miniatures. And while the basic units are quite close to the resin ones with the other models there would be too many parts needed to keep the detail. Already the plastics are a compromise on detail and it shows especially in the plastic infantry. Because of the undercuts it was not possible to create them differently.

The forms are already quite expensive and were a gamble, that fortunately payed off. Also the plastic used is partially not your standard stuff, take the clear stands and compare them to other plastics, the weigh way more.

The miniatures are by the way not expensive for 10mm. There is actually no other company at the size that has that much detail. Also the material is very forgiving when it comes to accidents. At one instance we had a table crashing down with a whole army on it. Result? One unit had a slight paint chip-off that could be repaired in a few seconds. Compared to Spartan or Battlefront the prizes are at the same level.

I never said that DZC models were expensive.

The detail compromise point definitely works for the infantry.

But when you start talking about things like the light or heavy tanks/walkers, the argument doesn't really hold weight in my view. In theory a medium sized plastic sprue of say, 2 UCM heavy tanks, 3 UCM light tanks and some theoretical new 3 model support choice with all the weapon options would not be unreasonable a product to make. Call it a UCM Reinforcements set.

What I'm saying is, there could be doubt from Hawk that the payoff for making that set for Hawk, even if they could afford to do it, would be worth it in additional sales compared to the resins.

There's a fair amount of detail lost from resin to plastic though. Looking at my resin eagle vs the plastic condor; which are roughly the same sculpt just that the eagle has an extra bit, the detailing on the plastic condor is a lot shallower.

Don't forget the plastic infantry with their bendy-straw arms.

I think the plastic is fantastic for the starter sets, though! It really, Really helps to have an affordable starter set.

But the models needed to play this game (which is basically 1500 points everywhere and no higher) are quite low actually, so the cost isn't too bad. I just got my army back from Ramos Asura of Rollin' All Ones Studios and Dakka Dakka who did some amazing airbrush work on it!



This is only 30 models (not counting infantry), but it's enough to run any of the top 3 Shaltari lists from the recent Hawk Wargames Invasion tourney, with options for other list variants, too!

So, you're not looking at a huge model count investment, and the big army bundles on the Hawk Wargames site are a really good deal.

Here are some more pics if interested

Those are amazing!

Great paintjob.