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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.