Something Big Is Getting Ready to Drop – WIP Wednesday


It’s WIP Wednesday, that time of the week where I tour the office to see what I can sneak away and show you! So, I think it is about time I showed you something new from Dropzone Commander.

Found on Fin’s painting desk we’ve got guns… big guns. So big they make Doom’s BFG look like the Cricket from MIB.

Only one thing can make use of these: Behemoths! Hopefully the paint bottles give you a sense of scale because did I mention they’re big?! Now imagine the rest of the model.





I’m not really sure what these guns do at the moment, but they’re certainly impressive.

They are going to make a huge impact to Dropzone both visually and in gameplay. How they work though is something you are going to have to wait a little longer to find out. How about the full models I hear you ask? Well they’re nothing short of impressive. You’ll see those soon!

For now though, the wait is almost over and more will be shown in due course. Be sure to keep an eye on TTCommunity for those updates.

It’s been YEARS in the making to get to this stage but BEHEMOTHS are coming. Welcome to this week’s Teaser Tuesday where we’ll be covering some Dropzone and Fantasy Realms releases.

Honestly, it’s been a while hasn’t it? But after many many many delays we can finally see the light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel. It’s an exciting time for PHR and Scourge players as this Friday you’ll be able to pre-order these monstrosities.

The Behemoths are the largest models ever made for Dropzone Commander. In fact, they’re the largest models we’ve ever made! They’re almost certainly going to be the largest models Dropzone will ever see. And they’re rather scary as well!

These huge new additions to Dropzone Commander have been circling the battlefield for some time, but the first two are finally coming to the TTCombat webstore! We’re starting with the PHR and Scourge Behemoths. In the coming months we’ll be releasing the rest, so you won’t have to wait long. The UCM will receive their Behemoth next, with the Shaltari and Resistance arriving shortly afterwards. It’s going to be a BIG summer for Dropzone!


PHR

The PHR Behemoths are of course tough, advanced, and packing lots of firepower. Whilst not bolstering a huge crew, the advanced onboard AI system practically does the work for you. Type -7s have five identical legs and a fully rotatable torso. Furthermore, thanks to their RX-30 Miniguns, the massive R7X-5 Rotary Cannon, or the R7X-66 Incinerator, players will have plenty of offensive options.

The PHR Behemoth (like all the Behemoths) comes with parts to make one of two classes. The parts are also very easy to pin or magnetize, so you can swap weapons out between games if you so wish. The PHR Behemoth can be made as either the Chronus or the Tethys. We’ve shown some of the options already, but we’ll be talking more about them later this week.


SCOURGE

Optimised for frontline combat and providing both physical and psychological impact, the Scourge Behemoth has been spotted. Similar to all Scourge constructs, these Behemoths are outlandish in appearance and feature numerous tendrils, tentacles, and legs. Although they are bigger than skyscrapers, these heavy-classed monstrosities are capable of targeting individual infantrymen to snatch for the Scourge cause.

As with the PHR, the Scourge Behemoth can be built in two ways: either as the anti-Behemoth Tyrant, or the Dictator which is best suited to engaging numerous smaller targets with arcing electric-based weaponry.

More information will be available later this week!

The CHRONUS Walks Forth
The PHR Behemoth is almost here!


Finally, after years of teasing and waiting, the Behemoths are arriving to Dropzone Commander!

These units are the biggest ones ever in Dropzone, and are the biggest models we’ve ever made! Of course, with Dave designing them, you know that they’re no less detailed than the smallest Type-1 walker.

In fact, why not take a look at the entire thing in 360 degrees?

The PHR Behemoth is truly a thing of wonder. Clad in pristine PHR armour panels, it has loads of techy gubbinz underneath to keep you busy painting.

The legs come in four pieces each, which gives a crazy amount of customisation. Fancy modelling yours stepping on a downed Phoenix Gunship? You can totally do that. It definitely won’t be getting up again after being stepped on!



THE RULES
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RULES?!

That’s right, there’s rules! Not only are these massive kits some of the most beautiful scale models around, they’re fully useable in Dropzone Commander!

The PHR Behemoth comes fully equipped with five legs, some huge missiles, and possibly the most guns of any of the Behemoths! Fitting for PHR’s high technology. It’s also clad in the signature thick PHR armour plates, so you know it’s going to be tough!



The PHR Behemoth (like all of the forthcoming Behemoths) comes in two types: the Chronus and the Tethys. Both of them share the same base stats and Damage Thresholds, it’s just the weapons and special rules that vary.

As you can see here, the Chronus is a mighty beast! Armour 15 makes it extremely difficult to damage, with only the highest Energy weapons even being able to pierce its hull. If you’re fighting against a PHR Behemoth, be sure to load up on Penetrative or Destroyer weapons!

We really need to talk about the Damage Thresholds though. This is where the different Behemoths really start to act differently. If you remember, you target individual Zones on a Behemoth, and need to destroy 2 of the 3 Zones completely in order to blow it up. Of course, blowing up a Behemoth isn’t actually always the best use of firepower. If you can stop it from actively participating in the game in any meaningful way, that’s often enough.

I’ll tell you now: the Chronus and Tethys have the highest total Damage Points of all the Behemoths – as is fitting for the PHR! With 15 Damage Points on the Hull, you’re going to have to deal out a huge chunk of damage to have any effect. However, the result of Crippling the Hull is that the Behemoth is reduced to Armour 12, which means that even AA weapons and some sidearms can damage it. If you manage to Cripple the Hull early on, it really opens up options for fighting it, and makes it harder for the PHR player to nullify your firepower. So PHR players: watch out!

The legs are probably the least attractive target for most of the Behemoths, but there’s always a draw. Not only are the legs the easiest things to Cripple, but every time you do, it reduces its Move value and has an extra Damage spill over to a different Zone. Cripple all of the legs and the PHR Behemoth cannot move, which means it cannot stomp! With D3 Energy 10 hits per squad stomped on, don’t discount how powerful that attack is. And with a massive Move of 10″ (it’s a skyscraper sized robot with 5 legs), it’s going to be able to saunter through an enemy’s battle line.

Finally the weapons. While there are only 3 Damage Thresholds here, each one will stop multiple weapons from firing. It’s basically like aiming at each arm, or the giant rockets. But for this one to be a worry, we really need to look at the weapons.

THE WEAPONS
Here we go, time for the good stuff! If 2D3 Energy 10 Drop-Harness hits and D3 Energy 10 stomp attacks wasn’t enough (seriously, this thing will squash enemies flat), the PHR Behemoths come with loads of weapons. We’re not going to show you everything today, but how about some big guns?



The Chronus comes with a pair of R7X-1 Railguns. These are the biggest Railguns ever seen (on a Dropzone model anyway – there are certainly bigger ones in Dropfleet)! They even dwarf a Tiamat’s guns, which is saying something.

While not longer ranged than the Tiamat, the R7X-1s are more accurate, have a ridiculous Energy 14 (seriously, that’s 3s to Crit an Alexander), and are Devastator-3 against Behemoths! The Chronus variant is an extremely good Behemoth hunter. While the Railguns might be a little overkill on smaller targets, with Dev-2 on any other Vehicle, you can easily take out a Warstrider in a single shot (with no Passive saves thanks to E14).



The Chronus is also fitted with a pair of massive R7X-5 Rotary Cannons. These jumbo sized machine-guns are even more powerful than the Heavy Miniguns on the Hades. With double the number of shots and Focus-2, you can rack up some serious firepower. They also ignore Soft and Body cover, which makes them great for ripping through entire squads of infantry who think they’re safe in a Garrison.

Unfortunately for the Chronus, the Rotary Cannons cannot go above Energy 12 from Focus, but even that is enough to turn a mainline battle tank into a heap of slag.

Oh and of course the Chronus is also armed with Stealth-X Missile Clusters, Dual Miniguns, and the crazy Nova Missiles, but it’s time to move onto its brother the Tethys.



While the Chronus is very much an anti-big vehicle Behemoth, the Tethys takes a more mixed role. The Chronus is a point and click destroyer, but the Tethys rewards careful play more. You’ll have to be canny to get the best use out of it, but skilled (or lucky) players will be able to make a real mess of their opposing armies!



The Tethys trades the Railguns for a pair of R7X-2 Sunglaives. These are new weapons to Dropzone, previously only seen (in a scaled up version) on the PHR Dreadnought.

The Sunglaives have an infinite range, which makes the Tethys a good candidate for walking on the board rather than Drop-Harnessing in. That means it gets an extra round of shooting! With 2 shots each at Energy 11, the Sunglaives put out more hits overall than the Railguns, but are much less likely to damage their foes. Luckily though, the Tethys has a trick up its sleeve:



If you Overcharge the Sunglaives, they gain both Devastator-2 (All) and Destroyer (4+) for the round. It takes both actions, which means you’ll have to set up your firing lines in advance. But if you have the action free, it’s not a bad idea at all to overcharge. Destroyer (4+) is insanely good, as on a 4+ to hit, you automatically Crit your target without needing to roll to damage. With Dev-2 (All), that means you can take on Behemoths as well. Or if you have some particularly heavy armour to take out reliably, it might be worth it. It means you don’t get your stomp attacks for the round, but with infinite range, you can keep out of harm’s way too.

Unfortunately, the Tethys does have another use for an extra action.



The White Nanomachine Colony replenishes Damage Points from a single Zone, potentially taking it above a Damage Threshold. That means that if a Sunglaive is destroyed, you can send you White Nanomachines in to bring it back online again, doubling your damage output and thoroughly frustrating your opponent. If you’re doing this every round though, you’re not getting your full damage out, and the Tethys will end up a little more immobile as a result. Still, it’s a very useful skill just in case you need it.



As with all of our Dropzone Commander models, the full rules will be available on Friday, both as a free download on the Resources page, and in the Dropzone Army Builder.

And as with all Dropzone Commander models, these rules join into the living, evolving ruleset. They might not last like this forever, and almost certainly will need some tweaks later on down the line. We take all feedback on our unit balance seriously, although particularly with Behemoths, we will be waiting to take feedback on games played, since these massive units need some serious table time to get an idea of what they bring to your games.

Oh and to make playing with them easier, we’ve also made some alternate sheets to keep track of damage:



These full page sheets are super easy for damage tracking. You can use counters or dice, or – our favourite – laminate the sheets and then use a dry-wipe pen to mark off damage as you go. There’s nothing more satisfying than erasing some of that damage with White Nanomachines!

That’s all for today! Are you excited or scared by the PHR Behemoths? How are you going to model yours? The legs, arms, and even hull are all completely poseable, offering loads of options for making this epic kit to your exact specifications.

We’ll be back on Friday with all the release information, but until then, you can check out the rest of the PHR range on the TTCombat webstore!

Scourge Behemoth Sighted!
What’s that coming over the hill? It is a monster!


Not just any monster, it’s the Scourge Behemoth!

This incredible new kit is on its way to the pre-order section of the TTCombat webstore later today (3pm!). The single biggest Scourge model ever (including the Scourge Dreadnought), it’s covered in guns and tentacles! You want a nice spin around look?

That’s one gorgeous evil tentacle monster!

In fact, there are eleven tentacles included with the kit. Eight big ones, and three little ones. And if you thought that the PHR Behemoth was poseable, that’s nothing! The Scourge Behemoth’s tentacles actually come completely straight:



Each of them connects to the main hull with a square locator, and to a “foot” with another square locator. All you need to do is take a hairdryer to them, heat them up a little, and bend them into whatever shape you want.

When Fin was assembling and painting the studio Behemoth, he found it easiest to bend the legs into the approximate shape he wanted first, then to pin them into the body and attach the feet, before making final adjustments with the whole thing assembled. This way you can get the pose you want, but a little last-minute hairdrying means the Behemoth will sit flat on the table as well. The resin is very flexible when heated up, so you can make whatever weird pose you want!



The Weapons
But enough about the modelling side, what does the Scourge Behemoth bring to the table? Well, why don’t we start with those tentacles?

They’re not just a way of getting around the board at speed, they’re actually composed of thousands of tiny filaments, all wrapped around each other to provide strength. However, the Scourge host(s) can splay them out, sending each sailing into and around cover. What looks like a single large vehicle stomper can split out so much that a single thread can pierce the heart of an infantry soldier hiding inside a Garrison!



The Seeker Lashes are the weapon profile for these monstrous tentacles. You get 6 Shots at Energy 4 with Focus (2). That means each shot damages most Infantry on a 3+ which is already scary. But if you want to, you can stack your hits together to go after vehicles too. On average that turns into a single Energy 10 hit, but if you’re lucky it could go all that way to a huge Energy 14, which is enough to even punch a hole in a Behemoth!

Add in that it has the Flame special rule, and you’ll be able to reach into the centre of Garrisons to pull Infantry apart. Behemoths cost a lot of points, which means you’ll often be fighting an uphill battle when it comes to claiming Objectives. The Seeker Lashes really make up for that!

Oh and did I mention that you get three of these weapons on each Behemoth? :O

The Seeker Lashes are actually a secondary weapon though. The Scourge Behemoths primary weapons vary depending on which variant you take. While we saw that the PHR’s Chronus and Tethys have quite defined roles, the Dictator and Tyrant are more generalist. The Tyrant is equipped with a Bio-Cannon and Heavy Plasma Cannons, while the Dictator has an Arc Maw and Static Accelerators.



The Dictator has some of the most esoteric weaponry that the Scourge have to offer. Two pairs of Static Accelerators (those are the long spiny things) give the Dictator some awesome range (a rarity for Scourge), and while they’re not the highest Energy that Behemoths have to offer, they do have Destroyer (5+), which means they can fairly easily hurt any target.

The Arc Maw is a little different though. A super-sized Arc weapon, the Maw fires such a massively concentrated arc beam that it grounds itself in multiple targets, leaping from one to the next.



Although it only has a 12″ range, it can bounce from target to target to get much further away. At Energy 14, you have a great chance of damaging a fair few foes in a row, even ripping into multiple Zones of enemy Behemoths. After a few hits it’s advisable to go after Aircraft, as not only do they typically have lower Armour, but they’re also automatically hit, ignoring any pesky Evasion Countermeasures!



The Tyrant’s weapons do a little bit of everything!

Two pairs of Heavy Plasma Cannons are the most dangerous versions of this weapon we’ve seen to date. With higher range and Energy than their smaller brothers and sisters, these also upgrade to Devastator-2 (All), meaning vehicles and even Behemoths will feel the sting.

The Bio-Cannon is a cousin of the Eradicator’s Bio-Mortar, although much higher powered, and favouring a direct approach. An Area weapon that ignores all Cover is already rather deadly, and it’s a massive Energy 11 as well! That’s deadly to light vehicles, and a risk to even the heaviest enemies. Not only that, but the Bio-Cannon fires a payload of living cells that gradually eat away at enemies:



So anyone unfortunate enough to be touching the template at the end of the round is hit again! This sounds like a great advantage, but in practice it’s a little harder to use. If you activate your Behemoth early on to cause the most carnage, then your opponent can easily just step out of the Area template. But activating it after most enemy units will almost guarantee a second hit, although you have to hope that your opponent doesn’t destroy the Bio-Cannon first!



The Stats
Speaking of destroying weapons, we should have a look at the Scourge Behemtohs’ main stats, and see just how to take one of these big boys down.



The Scourge Behemoth has the highest Move of all the Behemoths, allowing it to slither its way across the battlefield quickly. Although we’ve seen the weapons already, and moving too fast will stop a fair few of them from firing, so Scourge players should be careful where they deploy. A Drop-Harness will get it stuck in quickly, but walking on the board is still an option, as you can close the gap fairly quickly.

Armour 13 and Resilient should be a familiar sight for Scourge players at this point, as it matches all of their other walkers. In practice this makes the Scourge Behemoth a very strange prospect to face. Armour 13 is not the highest around – it can even be damaged by the Patton’s Autocannon! However, Resilient means that the heaviest weapons are a lot less useful against it. The Crocodile for example is an incredible high Armour destroyer, but is a bit wasted on the Scourge Behemoth, since 1 Energy 14 shot is still just 1 shot.

For anyone fighting a Scourge Behemoth, it means your options for destroying it are a lot more varied than if you were fighting say a PHR Behemoth. However, for Scourge players, it also opens up the “valuable target” list dramatically. Thanks to its abundance of weapons and stomping on things, the Scourge Behemoth can happily go after lighter armour and still be stopping its opponents from hurting it.

If that Resilient is turning into a bit of a problem, then targeting the Hull first is a good idea. It doesn’t lower its Armour like the PHR Behemoth, but removes that special rule, allowing your high Energy weapons to score criticals normal. Having frequently been on the Scourge’s side during playtesting, I can tell you that it takes a long time to cripple the Hull, but once it’s gone, it can go sideways for Scourge players very quickly!

Both the Legs and Weapons are great targets as well. With 5 Damage Points each, you can pass those Damage Thresholds relatively easily, and unlike the PHR Behemoth, taking out the legs also takes out some weapons! If the Seeker Lashes are proving to be too much to take, then destroying the legs is a good idea. Unfortunately for its does, the Scourge Behemoth has enough tentacles to keep moving even when you’ve blasted the legs to pieces. Indeed, destroying them all only halves its Move distance.

As for weapons, I’m not sure which are the best to destroy! The Scourge Behemoth is quite unique because every one of its three weapons is deadly in its own right. Between the three, there aren’t really any “best” choices to destroy. The Arc Maw and Bio-Cannon are great at dealing with groups of enemies, while the Heavy Plasma Cannons and Static Accelerators excel at taking out heavy armour. It all depends on how the game plays out!

Stat Sheets
As with the PHR Behemoth (and all other Dropzone units), the stats for the Tyrant and Dictator will be available both on the Dropzone Army Builder and as stat sheets in the Resources section. And as with the PHR one, there are also some optional extra sheets for keeping track of damage.



In fact, we’ve made two styles for each Behemoth, so you can choose which one you like using best! This version has a gorgeous picture of the miniature, which should help to give some ideas for posing. The arms come in three pieces as well, so it’s not just the tentacles you can pose!



Both Behemoths will be available to pre-order later today! It’s an exciting day for Dropzone, that’s for sure!

Have you got ideas how you’re going to model your tentacled monster? Are you looking forward to waging some kind of war of the worlds? Let us know, and make sure to check back at 3pm to pre-order your own Behemoth on the TTCombat webstore!