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So first kickstarter pledges are beginning to arrive and we have had a couple of test games at the local club.

My initial thoughts - look forward to hearing other people's!

Rules / Mechanics:
Quite similar to Battlefleet and ACTA which is no bad thing, more than enough differences to make it its own game.

The Scan/Signature/ Spike mechanic for targeting is interesting and different - need to see how it play out more to see if prefer it to given effective range for different weapon systems. Looking forward to seeing dedicated Scouts.

Movement and turning is simple and easy – I am disappointed that all the ships so far just have the one 45 degree turn - was hoping for frigates and smaller to be a bit more agile than their bigger brothers and sisters.

The fleets seem to play differently - mainly tried Shalatri and PHR and hugely different which is good.

Terrain seems essential (which is normal for space ship games tbh) - especially when one fleet has such a larger range advantage.

I prefer having fighters, bombers and the like on the table doing stuff but many people will prefer the simplified version I think where they act pretty much like weapon systems.

Special orders seem pretty standard again no bad thing

As far as I can see ships operate pretty much normally until they lose the last damage point – I like degradation of ships myself – even if it’s just when “crippled”.

Good to see explosions and ramming in.

I think its a shame a lot of the special rules were not used on the first wave of ships – was expecting advanced vectoring frigates (or even Cruisers), regenerating Scourge, etc. Lots of cool rules – need to use them.

Models
The main reason I held off the KS was unsure of the models – I loved some images and hated others (bit like DZC really). The models are very nice in reality – lots of cool detail and modelling potential and conversions beyond the great base variety. Having seen the Shalatri cruisers will be buying them – and proxing others for the Frigates as can’t stand them.

They also scale nicely with my BFG and ACTA ships which is great.

Bases

Good – they have the fire arcs on them – awesome!
The damage pegs are horribly fiddly and resulted in ships being inadvertently shunted all over the place – we are likely to just use dice. Turning the dial seems no picnic either once you ships are in multi-ship close range melee.
All in all seems a good game – have ordered starter set and a few other bit and pieces, At least it will get some my older ships dusted down for some games.

How are other people finding the game?

 Mr Morden wrote:
Movement and turning is simple and easy – I am disappointed that all the ships so far just have the one 45 degree turn - was hoping for frigates and smaller to be a bit more agile than their bigger brothers and sisters.

Frigates and Light Cruisers are actually more manuverable than the other ships in a subtle way that doesn't appear immediately obvious to most. Since the only order that lets you shoot ALL weapon systems a ship has is Weapons Free, a lot of cruisers and above waste their full firepower potential if they spend orders executing Course Change or Maximum Thrust etc. Frigates and Light Cruisers, generally only have the 1 weapon system to begin with thus they can make use of the full array of orders, including Course Change and Maximum Thrust for manuverability without hindering their firepower potential.

I've never been much for space fleet games, but the PHR fleet is bloody gorgeous and I'm probably going to pick up the starter box. I really like the level of effort the Hawk guys have put in --- a lot of sound design decisions. Modular models are fantastic etc.

So when you say it really needs terrain, like Asteroids or?

Waiting to get mine still so curious. I know lots of maps are right above the planet and you get to the special terrain outposts by sending troops there

str00dles1 wrote:
So when you say it really needs terrain, like Asteroids or?

Waiting to get mine still so curious. I know lots of maps are right above the planet and you get to the special terrain outposts by sending troops there

You have debris fields rather than asteroids as such but pretty much the same thing - also very large objects - vast space stations, habitats or small moons - they block LOS and kill anything that moves into them

I missed the kick starter for this because it sounded far too ambitious and an awful lot of promises were made (I got burned on the Robotech KS from Paladium and didn't want to spend that kind of money again).

I played a demo at Gencon and really liked it, the models look very well done, and I'm going to get this game when it finally comes out. Glad to hear mostly positive things about it so far (and I wish I had gotten in on the KS for it).

Well I can't share initial thoughts yet as I'm waiting on it but seriously looking forward to checking it out! Would love to hear more reviews, too

Well, I have a pretty solid/firm grasp on just about all of the game except for the some elements of the drop/troop deployment side of it, so would be happy to answer any questions about how the game works. xP I made my praise for it already in the N&R thread.

I think it's pretty simple to pick up and learn the core rules and how shooting, movement etc works, but has a lot of tactical depth between the Order system, and the Scan/Signature system, along with the need to land and safe guard your ability to deploy and keep boots on the ground to contest objectives. That and the fleets look awesome and thus far, on paper, are pretty well balanced it looks whilst also being unique in their playstyles from each other. Time and development of the meta post-launch will truely tell balance, but it looks good to me.

Of the two factions you played with, how did they differ?

 ProtoClone wrote:
Of the two factions you played with, how did they differ?

They were very different:

Shaltari have long range - ie they have great sensors and low signiture so hard to hit back. They have lots of tricks - esp with regards to troop deployment which is the central feature of the game and looks to eb themain way to win scenarios. They can teleport their tropps via gates - this keeps the troop ship (mothership) safely away from the front line. Shalatri guns often do stuff like auto crit.
They also have crap armour, they can balance this with shields with can even block crits *armour is usually ignored) but then they loose point defense and they signiture jumps massively.

PHR are broadside focussed and well armoured, they want to get in close and have enemy ships on either side so they can tear them up. Did not see any tricks yet for them.

To add more note, PHR also have probably most decent Strikecraft. Their fighters are above average and they have probably nastiest bombers in the game. They tend to be "undergunned" however in that, they have more firepower than the average ship, but it's split between two broadsides, meaning if you utilise just 1 side, you'll often be outgunned, and even when utilising both broadsides, you can't quite focus nuke with the same strength like the other fleets can. This tends to mean they'll often output more damage than a regular cruiser, but it will be split between two targets. They do have the toughest and more durable ships though to compensate for this.

Some neat features they have is the only Frigate sized ship with Strikecraft launch capability, as well as only Frigate sized ships with the cool Burn Through Lasers..! Also have a nifty little ECM frigate that can disrupt enemy gunnery targetting a friendly ship. Oh.. and also a battleship with a very scarey big gun called a Dark Matter cannon, that is probably second scariest gun in the game next to the Shaltari Particle Lance Triad.

I thought I read somewhere that Hawk Wargames was going to make the rules for this game free online. Is that true?

Thanks for posting your thoughts. I had a hard time deciding two years ago between this and Halo Fleet Battles but ultimately chose HFB as it was coming out sooner and had more info available... I chose poorly. :(

 Tamwulf wrote:
I thought I read somewhere that Hawk Wargames was going to make the rules for this game free online. Is that true?

No, Hawk is generally against that sort of thing. I understand the reasons, but int his age it's not always the best call.

I still dislike the card based command system. Everything else in the game is interesting and fluid, that system is not.

 Vertrucio wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
I thought I read somewhere that Hawk Wargames was going to make the rules for this game free online. Is that true?

No, Hawk is generally against that sort of thing. I understand the reasons, but int his age it's not always the best call.

I still dislike the card based command system. Everything else in the game is interesting and fluid, that system is not.

I have heard this about DZC yea.. which has me abit concerned for when DFC command cards eventually show up, but at present they're mentioned in the rulebook but that's about it. Also got my rulebook today, woop!

I plan to just commit and write a command system replacement for DZC/DFC, community supported and edited. Unless they handle the DFC command cards vastly differently, I won't even bother touching them.

It's a great game and company, but they have a few areas where they just refuse to live up to their own standards.

It'll be handled similarly to how there's entirely different mission card systems written by fans for Infinity to replace ITS.

I'd be really interested in that, Vertrucio! You might even be able to get support on it for playtesting in different places through Dakka (they might be OK with it on the official forums, too). I wasn't a huge fan of the cards for DzC but didn't play it competitively enough for it to really throw us. In general, we just wished that it had a bit more variability in play... that has me a little nervous for Dropfleet with the talk of objectives and troops holding them, which always felt like it made things a bit tic-tac-toe in DzC to me. I'm hoping Dropfleet has more of the fluidity of BFG and the like... would love to hear more reviews as folks try it, as our group went all in!

Well, DZC got a bit stale because of the combination of more rigid army creation, combined with (until recently) few variations on units. DFC is launching with more variation and possible units than DZC currently has years after launch.

But yes, besides the command cards, I'm also not a fan of the old fashioned strict 6 turn limit, rush for the objective zones and hover over it style of missions that DZC has, and it seems DFC for some reason is keeping that despite it being space ships. So this might coincide with a different and variable mission system.

I don't want to spend too much of my time on this, and I don't want to make it alone. I have my own game to work on first and foremost, but I have always liked what Hawk Wargames put out and want an excuse to buy and play the game more.

I'm anxiously awaiting my pledge to arrive, I'm a high level backer with just about 3 armies worth of stuff coming to me.

My UCM will likely be build gun heavy, the Scourge will be light and fast, and my PHR heavy on launch assets.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Well, DZC got a bit stale because of the combination of more rigid army creation, combined with (until recently) few variations on units. DFC is launching with more variation and possible units than DZC currently has years after launch.

But yes, besides the command cards, I'm also not a fan of the old fashioned strict 6 turn limit, rush for the objective zones and hover over it style of missions that DZC has, and it seems DFC for some reason is keeping that despite it being space ships. So this might coincide with a different and variable mission system.

I don't want to spend too much of my time on this, and I don't want to make it alone. I have my own game to work on first and foremost, but I have always liked what Hawk Wargames put out and want an excuse to buy and play the game more.

I'm anxiously awaiting my pledge to arrive, I'm a high level backer with just about 3 armies worth of stuff coming to me.

My UCM will likely be build gun heavy, the Scourge will be light and fast, and my PHR heavy on launch assets.

No idea what the card system is like in dzc, for dfc its "your fleet consists of battlegroups, each battlegroup has a card assigned. each battlegroup consists of groups of ships (eg 1 cruiser (group of 1) and a group of 4 frigates) and has a command value equal to the total tonnage of the ships in it.
you stack your activation cards the way you want, and each player draws one - the one with the lower activation gets to choose who goes first, then that player may move and shoot all ships of the battlegroup, where groups have to shoot and move together. if you use special orders you get to choose on a group level between the battlegroup special order and running the standard order.

Those are Activation Cards Nekooni, they're a different thing. Command Cards are previewed and talked about on page 72 of the rulebook but do not exist yet for DFC. They seem more akin to Tac cards from Firestorm and Dystopian Wars etc. Or like those special one off ability trick cards you could play in 40k Armageddon stuff.

And well, as for the objective taking and deploying of troops. You basically deploy ground assets via your troopships and strike carriers to the Clusters on the map. Clusters within them have seperate Sectors which you need to hold majority of to control cluster and score VPs.
You get 3 types you can deploy, Infantry, Armour and Defense Batteries. It's abit rock paper scissors in that, Infantry are pretty medicore fighters, but they're very resistent to Orbital Bombardment attacks. Tanks are VERY good at fighting on the ground and attacking other ground assets, but very vulnerable to orbital bombardment. Defense Platforms are resilient to both ground and orbital attack, but cannot attack ground assets themselves. Instead they attack any Dropships/Bulk Landers that attempt to land assets into the cluster they're deployed in, and shoot them down before they land.

Ground assets can move between the Sectors in the Clusters they are deployed, once you've moved all ground assets, they then basically fight it out if you have any assets in same sector as enemy assets etc. That's the general jist of it, you can orbitally bombard sectors to do some purging of ground assets and also use bombardment to outright destroy sectors etc to deny them.

I'm not a fan of the activation cards as a thing.

What I plan on doing is just finding counters number 1 to 7 or so, then writing then on my army list by their battlegroups.

Hmmm.. not sure how that.. will work. The point of the Activation cards are that each turn, you have to choose your activation order in advanced and so with the cards you arrange them in the order you will be activating your battlegroups and then draw the top on to show your first, then next etc, and so that your opponent cannot see either you planned order of activation. How will you manage that with counters in a way that your opponent can't tell what your activation order is, and they can trust you've not potentially re-arranged the order too?

Put the counters on top of each other

Hmmm okay, yea, that works. I think the cards look cool so i'll use them. x) But that's fair then!

The way I see it, there's no real way to get round printing or writing our an army list before a game. But also having to write out a half dozen cards, each time even if all you decide is "you know what a Rio is better than a Berlin in this group"

Having something more reusable is more practical for me

A solution for the activations cards could be to use sleeves and dry erase marker, since most battlegroups should only have a couple ships in them

Are there any painting guides out there? I'm getting a serious case of inferiority complex looking at those Scourge studio models D: don't have an airbrush, so I'm wondering what's a good scheme that doesn't involve all those gradients and blending

GenRifDrake wrote:
Hmmm.. not sure how that.. will work. The point of the Activation cards are that each turn, you have to choose your activation order in advanced and so with the cards you arrange them in the order you will be activating your battlegroups and then draw the top on to show your first, then next etc, and so that your opponent cannot see either you planned order of activation. How will you manage that with counters in a way that your opponent can't tell what your activation order is, and they can trust you've not potentially re-arranged the order too?

Maybe use something akin to the Heroscape Turn markers?

Rabidaskal- I've only seen one painting guide that was a bit worthwhile.
I tried airbrushing my scourge ships, using transparent paints over a gold primer. and really did not like the results. I ended up just brushing on inks over the gold, then doing the detail work with a brush. I am satisfied with the result, though it's not up to the studio paint jobs.

I played two learning games with the fleets in the starter box this afternoon. I enjoyed it. We didn't use any of the ground combat rules today.
I only played Dropzone v.1, and I remember the Scourge were much better than the UCM- at least, it was a real challenge to beat them. In Dropfleet, the Scourge seem a bit better than the UCM, but not to the point that it felt unfair.
A few things we decided, from a simple gameplay point of view:
1. We need to play on a 4 x 4 foam mat, a la X-wing. The paper maps provided are just too slippery.
2. I know the idea behind the bases was to eliminate the need for counters cluttering up the map, but...
2a. The damage pins on the bases are too fiddly to bother with. Dice, or dials, will henceforth be used to track damage.
2b.We are probably going to use counters or dials to record spikes, too. Trying to twist the dial on the bases resulted in ships getting nudged all over the map. If we make each counter represent a minor spike, and just place 2 counters for a major spike, that should be easy to keep track of.
3. The line-laser is your friend. In fact, we used 2 together to trace the front/narrow arc several times, and it eliminated any need for argument.
4. Some people don't have the dexterity to manipulate the thin, flexible tape measure, or they are unscrupulous to a fault; at any rate, a straight-edge is useful for making sure ships move in a straight line and don't sort of... drift a little sideways.

The fleets:
UCM:
Battlegroup A: Moscow heavy cruiser, Berlin cruiser (rating 15)
Battlegroup B: Seattle fleet carrier, Jakarta aegis frigate (rating 6)
Battlegroup C: Toulon frigate, 2x Taipei frigate (rating 3)
I magnetized my basic cruiser and my heavy cruiser, so I can build any variant. I could not think of an easy way to magnetize the rear cowlings, so I am stuck with a Seattle fleet carrier and no light cruisers at this time. I built one of each frigate (except the Lima) and we just proxied them as needed.

Scourge:
Battlegroup A: Shenlong heavy cruiser (rating 10)
Battlegroup B: Ifrit cruiser, Wyvern cruiser (rating 10)
Battlegroup C: 2x Harpy frigate, 2x Djinn frigate (rating 4)
I could not think of a way to magnetize the Scourge ships that didn't involve a lot more work than I wanted to do, so wysiwyg all the way, there.
Definitely going to be buying another fleet box for both Scourge & UCM, and battleships when they are released. Painting up my PHR fleet now.

I plan on just lifting up the top half of the engine and hoping the paint doesn't scrape too easily