Hawk Wargames- Dropzone Commander 2.0

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**schoon**

Good luck fitting that on your table!

**Freytag93**

Love this news. I really like DZC. But it has been non-existent in my area and very hard to get more than a handful of games in. I hope this will bring in some new blood to the game and/or motivate people to try it out.

I've got all 5 starter armies painted and ready to blow each other to pieces

**Davor**

So the "Used Cars Salemsman/Politician" is at it again eh? LOL Yes I know he did good, but he also did a lot of bad. I am interested in this, but he will not get any pre-order from me. I will wait till it's on the stores shelves before I buy.

After all if you are going to charge GW prices, at least Games Workshop puts it's money where it's mouth is, this guy just takes your money and not gives you your product.

I wasn't burned, but after buying Dropfleet and reading that people who supported Dave and bought into the Kick Starter and didn't get their product and I was able to buy it, turned me right off Dave and his company.

Alas, just like with Games Workshop, time does heal all wounds. I can forgive, but will not forget, the last think I think of Dave is a Used Car Sales Man and or Politician. Says all the right things but seems shady as frack.

Time will tell if Dave really learned his lesson or just like the a lot of other small developers who promise the sun and never deliver and just disappears after having your money. Funny we compare GW to video games with DLC, Dave seems like the board game version of No Man's Sky when it came to Dropfleet Commander.

Here is hoping I am wrong, and he can redeem himself. Everyone deserves a second chance.

**Tamereth**

I haven't followed the Dropfleet kickstarter at all, so don't get what the fuss is about. I understand a bunch of stuff ended up getting released to retail before backers had been sent their stuff, was there more to it than that?

In better news for anyone that's interested in Dropzone, the current starter has been reduced to half price at a bunch of places. For £30 it's an absolute steal. The troll trader are even giving free shipping and a second copy of the current rulebook.

**RiTides**

Remember that rule #1 of Dakka is "be polite" - there are much better ways to discuss things than name calling, and your points will be much more effective, too.

Thanks all!

**Sining**

They would need to fix the random nature of objectives before I considered getting back into DZC. Never liked the fact that finding objectives that you need to win the game was based on dice rolls, so you could be really unlucky while your opponent is realy lucky and gets his on the first try

**RiTides**

Yeah, elements like that are what has me really hesitant too, Sining. Just love some of the aesthetics, but the game design wasn't totally for me.

That said, I went in heavy on Dropfleet and nerdfest is almost done with it for me, so I'll be looking for any excuse to like DzC really

. But I think having Andy Chambers really helped with the Dropfleet rules - and to be honest, they've actually still got some of the same issues as DzC (hopefully something that can be solved with missions, though, like they did at the recent Invasion tourney).

**nobody**

Davor wrote:
So the "Used Cars Salemsman/Politician" is at it again eh? LOL Yes I know he did good, but he also did a lot of bad. I am interested in this, but he will not get any pre-order from me. I will wait till it's on the stores shelves before I buy.

After all if you are going to charge GW prices, at least Games Workshop puts it's money where it's mouth is, this guy just takes your money and not gives you your product.

I wasn't burned, but after buying Dropfleet and reading that people who supported Dave and bought into the Kick Starter and didn't get their product and I was able to buy it, turned me right off Dave and his company.

Alas, just like with Games Workshop, time does heal all wounds. I can forgive, but will not forget, the last think I think of Dave is a Used Car Sales Man and or Politician. Says all the right things but seems shady as frack.

Time will tell if Dave really learned his lesson or just like the a lot of other small developers who promise the sun and never deliver and just disappears after having your money. Funny we compare GW to video games with DLC, Dave seems like the board game version of No Man's Sky when it came to Dropfleet Commander.

Here is hoping I am wrong, and he can redeem himself. Everyone deserves a second chance.

I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of people got their wave 1 deliveries, and as for wave 2, that's going out now (except for the maps, which there was an issue with the printers so they're giving store credit on).

**winnertakesall**

Davor wrote:
So the "Used Cars Salemsman/Politician" is at it again eh? LOL Yes I know he did good, but he also did a lot of bad. I am interested in this, but he will not get any pre-order from me. I will wait till it's on the stores shelves before I buy.

After all if you are going to charge GW prices, at least Games Workshop puts it's money where it's mouth is, this guy just takes your money and not gives you your product.

I wasn't burned, but after buying Dropfleet and reading that people who supported Dave and bought into the Kick Starter and didn't get their product and I was able to buy it, turned me right off Dave and his company.

Alas, just like with Games Workshop, time does heal all wounds. I can forgive, but will not forget, the last think I think of Dave is a Used Car Sales Man and or Politician. Says all the right things but seems shady as frack.

Time will tell if Dave really learned his lesson or just like the a lot of other small developers who promise the sun and never deliver and just disappears after having your money. Funny we compare GW to video games with DLC, Dave seems like the board game version of No Man's Sky when it came to Dropfleet Commander.

Here is hoping I am wrong, and he can redeem himself. Everyone deserves a second chance.

Obviously didn't follow it very closely, as all that happened was they got ridiculously overwhelmed by how successful it was as they'd never done a kickstarter, and would have received pretty heavy fines if they'd failed to fulfill the retail deadlines. He's apologised several times, and said Hawk don't intend to do a Kickstarter again. I think those comments are extremely unfair, (and at worst totally not true) and barely grounded at all, but not really sure this thread is the place for it. Tamereth, it went out late, fulfillment took a lot longer, and the only ones still being sorted atm are the awkward ones where people moved house/vanished in shipping/never completed their pledge manager afaik, but other than that went quite well in comparison to A LOT of miniature kickstarters and is the only kickstarter (out of 8!) where I've actually received the promised product that was at the promised quality

But yeah, as Tamereth said, if anyone is interested, Trolltrader on eBay is selling the 2 player starters for £30, which is cheaper than the individual starters at £35

**Vertrucio**

Eh, I know how retail works, so I agree with their decision overall.

The fines and broken distributor/retailer promises would have killed the game and company far more quickly than people justifiably angry on forums. It's a hard trade off, but eventually people did get their stuff, and good number of people, myself included did get their stuff on time.

Part of this is of course that I never expect kickstarter stuff to arrive on time, period.

DZC, on the other hand is what we're to be talking about in this topic, and DZC has needed a lot of love for a while now.

Some of the changes they're hinting at sound interesting, but once again Hawk is flubbing the marketing message by not outright stating what some of the major changes in a very defined way.

DZC players and the market in general have been wondering what's been going on with DZC for a while now. A few more vague announcements is not going to help.

**winnertakesall**

Vertrucio wrote:
Eh, I know how retail works, so I agree with their decision overall.

The fines and broken distributor/retailer promises would have killed the game and company far more quickly than people justifiably angry on forums. It's a hard trade off, but eventually people did get their stuff, and good number of people, myself included did get their stuff on time.

Part of this is of course that I never expect kickstarter stuff to arrive on time, period.

DZC, on the other hand is what we're to be talking about in this topic, and DZC has needed a lot of love for a while now.

Some of the changes they're hinting at sound interesting, but once again Hawk is flubbing the marketing message by not outright stating what some of the major changes in a very defined way.

DZC players and the market in general have been wondering what's been going on with DZC for a while now. A few more vague announcements is not going to help.

I know one of the guys in the test group, and although they've got a good idea of what they're changing, they're still playtesting everything, so not concrete yet I don't think.

**Vertrucio**

Doesn't matter what they're doing internally, a crappy announcement doesn't help grow, or regrow, their player base without more details.

Think about it this way, how much better would a hard concrete announcement would have been, coupled with shots of brand new miniatures and a battle report?

**nobody**

Hawk is doing a public beta of 2.0 at Gencon and posted up a teaser of what they're showing off.

https://www.hawkwargames.com/blogs/articles/gen-con-sneak-peek-dropzone-commander-2nd-edition

Open Transports
Previously squads were only able to be carried by transports bought for them whilst building your army. This led to squads unable to be redeployed if their transport was shot down. Transports now operate flexibly and are able to activate and carry squads in a different battlegroup from their previous activation, provided they have not already activated and have the capacity to carry that squad.

Disembarking and Shooting
Vehicles may now fire their weapons after disembarking from a transport with a +2 penalty to their accuracy. This encourages redeployment of squads during the game as they no longer lose out on a full turn of shooting. Certain weapons may not fire after disembarking such as AA weapons at aircraft.

Objectives
All squads in a building may search for an objective whether they are the occupier or not, although the occupier receives a bonus to their roll. Nearby APCs also provide a bonus to the squad's roll.

CQB
Certain factors now affect a squad's effectiveness in CQB, receiving more dice for being the occupier or losing dice for searching or shooting that turn. In addition, CQB dice may be distributed more freely to opposing squads of your choice.

Collateral Damage
The rolls to resolve Falling Masonry, now named Collateral Damage, have been simplified and reduced to Energy 5. In addition, buildings can no longer be dealt additional damage by weapons without the Demolisher keyword.

So a nerf to demo, buff to CQB and objective searches, and buff for dropships

**Sining**

Open transports would be good. It was one of the reasons why Shaltari were so good in DZC imo

**judgedoug**

All of the rules changes are excellent. Very excited for 2.0

**RiTides**

Those rules changes sound great, but almost seem like they could've been done as a patch!

**judgedoug**

RiTides wrote:
Those rules changes sound great, but almost seem like they could've been done as a patch!

Sure, if those were the only rules changes.

**RiTides**

Right, we don't know the scope yet of course - but I think it would take a larger reworking to get me back into DzC (which my gaming group and I got into really heavily for a while).

If it's changes that are on this level, I think it will be great for the quality of life for the game, but isn't the kind of overhaul we ended up feeling was needed.

I bought in heavily on Dropfleet, and so far am liking what they've done, but the basic problem of their rulesets still seems to exist in it, too - the straightforward objectives based missions just aren't that fun! In DzC, we loved blowing each other up, but the more we for into it, the less that seemed to matter...

This is just my opinion, of course, but I'd love their rules to be more geared to an Epic-style battlefield. Or even just a fan patch, but our whole group dropped out of it for largely this reason... game was just too predictable and not fun enough once we dug into it more.

Hopefully they get some good feedback in the public beta, and that's actually the only reason I'm posting this, too - I'd love to see them hit this out of the park and get my group playing again!

**Sining**

Games in DZC mostly consisted of sending troops into buildings and searching for objectives and less blowing each other up

**AndrewGPaul**

There was a fair amount of that - but then, there's nothing stopping you doing a scenario which didn't involve that.

**Bobug**

The lack of additional.damage without demo vs buildings is interesting. Will make killing buildings a lot harder. Like the sound of changes to searching and transports. Since I mainly play shaltari I always find it doubly annoying when my ucm or scourge cant get a transport because it got shot down, and keeping track of multiple dropships in large games is tedious

**RiTides**

Sining wrote:
Games in DZC mostly consisted of sending troops into buildings and searching for objectives and less blowing each other up

AndrewGPaul wrote:
There was a fair amount of that - but then, there's nothing stopping you doing a scenario which didn't involve that.

Sining, that's exactly what I meant

and Andrew does indeed have the solution!

For Dropfleet, Hawk Wargames even did this themselves for their recent Invasion tourney (added a rule to skip the ground, i.e. objectives, phase, and used unique scenarios not in the book to de-emphasize it).

The problem is, this is an obvious thing mentioned by everyone I've played against, as was the basic mechanic of not being able to use another squad's transport.

I'm glad they're cleaning up the latter, but it's been years since that should've been done, and the former seems to be a basic flaw in gameplay that is inherent to their system. I was really hoping they'd open things up with a new ruleset, not just streamline the current rules, which really are lacking a bit in the fun department.

Again, just my opinion as someone who would love to see the new edition kick arse!

**Mr Morden**

I wanted to like Drop Zone (and Dropfleet) and spent quite a bit of cash on it but neither grabbed me as much as I thought they would.

Maybe its just getting old - still look forward to seeing the rules - but will wait quite abit to buy as the errata is likely to be extensive.

**Brunius**

At risk of some threadnomancy, TT has teased the next Dropzone release: https://community.ttcombat.com/2019/03/13/wip-wednesday-gama-sneak-peek/

Pretty sure I don't like this, but I guess we'll have to wait and see how they turn out. Seems too easy to go in the same direction LoW did in 40k.

**Kid_Kyoto**

I'd recommend starting a new thread so people don't have to wade through 2 year old whining.

We want fresh whines.