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I've always enjoyed DzC's models, the scale, and concept of the game, and was wondering if now might be a decent time to jump in? How has 2nd edition been? Is the game still growing /alive?

Its only as alive as you and your communities willingness to play it. TTC is continuing to pump out new products and releases for the game, they just released Behemoths (think the equivalent of a titan in 40k) for each faction within the past month or so (though the Resistance Behemoth might not have been released yet, but if not its coming soon) and have been slowly releasing new units for each faction probably once every 3-6 months or so. No indicator that the game or company is struggling, but its certainly not being widely played - outside of your immediate local group you may have to travel a few hours to get to events, etc. if you want to play against others.

Is there a consensus among players as to the state of the game? Is the current iteration of the rules generally considered a good set?

I don't know that there is a consensus, the community seems to be fairly split between people who think the game is just fine, and others who are angry at changes that have been made since TTC took over from Hawk.

I played a lot of version 1 (it was my first tabletop game) and also the new V2 rules. While the first edition was a bit easier to understand, I believe 2 is far better from a basic rules perspective. The rules are written very precise and I have always been able to clear up misunderstandings. I haven't tried the behemoths yet, I want to paint them in subassemblies.

TTC does pump out quite some new stuff and regular updates the balance, which I find great. The new rules also support battles in other areas then in a bit city, which I really like as it changes things up quite a bit. I'm not 100% sold on some changes (like all railguns having an accuracy of 1+, a roll of 1 still fails but the effectively ignore the first to-hit modifier), but it works out fine. I do think that balance is better then 40k, and most importantly scew lists heavily fall apart because of the variety of missions. You really have to build your list to match the missions a well as dealing with your opponent. But some balancing issues currently remain, but I believe these can be cleared up easily. I also prefer DzC over 40k because I don't have to keep track of dozens of little modifiers from all over the place.

I can't comment on the community, I only have one friend as my only opponent and don't know anybody else who plays it anymore in my region. It helps to but some effort into having multiple small armies for demo games, which isn't very expensive for this game.

Dropzone will always have a special place in my gaming experience as the first tabletop game and also still the most fun tabletop game I ever played.

I really like what I am reading in the 2.2 rulebook, and love the over-all look of this game on a table, so I am biting the bullet and throwing $500 at two 1750pt for the wife and I.

Its a small community, but there are four players at a major game shop about 45 minutes away... really looking forward to a nice break from competitive 40k for a while.

Brickfix wrote:
I played a lot of version 1 (it was my first tabletop game) and also the new V2 rules. While the first edition was a bit easier to understand, I believe 2 is far better from a basic rules perspective. The rules are written very precise and I have always been able to clear up misunderstandings. I

TTC does pump out quite some new stuff and regular updates the balance, which I find great.

But some balancing issues currently remain, but I believe these can be cleared up easily.

I've had a wildly different experience. I started playing during the quarantine with v2, and our group kept finding problems with the core rules, specifically the poor writing quality, sloppy clauses, obtuse wording, etc. They've fix a lot of the problems, but there's still a great many left. Like Indirect rules, those are a dogs dinner mess. Or Collateral, a bunch of faffing about for little effect. Or how conventional weapons out perform dedicated Demo weapons, or the problems with Fast aircraft having to enter from only one edge of the board, or coherency shenanigans.

And that's to say nothing of how CQ is handled. Yeah, original DZC (we went back and played it after getting frustrated with v2 for a while) had some unnecessarily convoluted rules for it, but they dumbed it down way too far.

We've finally come to the point we're running a homebrew hybrid of the original rules, the beta edition which fixed almost all the major complaints of the original game, and v2 which has a few good ideas (and a great many borrowed from the beta) without all the negatives.

I've become disillusioned with TTC's updates. They break as much as they fix, and their primary game designer has said in interview he deliberately changes rules and stats for no reason other than to keep the game constantly in a state of churn to maintain player attention and engagement. Also, they can't keep the unit stats consistent between the builder, the pdfs linked on their storefront, and the pdfs linked on the builder. And they refuse to say which ones are correct, nor publish a changelog.

The new units span the whole spectrum of completely naff like the Flail to OP broken like the Arrowhead.

They've had years to do basic consistency fixes, dumb typo fixes, and they just don't appear to give a gak about the game beyond cranking out new models. One thing I find rather telling is Troll Trader, the company that owns TTCombat, doesn't run any DZC events or promotions at their physical stores. They run regular Carnevale, Rumbleslam, and a few Dropfleet things, but literally absolutely nothing Dropzone.

Yeah, they released Behemoths, but the rules for them are completely unchanged from the Battle for Earth book from 2019, and they are sloppy as feth. We tried a game with an proxy PHR behemoth, running the rules carefully as written, and had so many problems with how they work on the table. I did a whole write up of that game on my blog. https://yadzcb.friestman.net/behemoths-released.html


All that said, my group is still actively playing Dropzone, just with a few houserules https://yadzcb.friestman.net/dzc-houserules-v220.html

I haven't seen much in the local Facebook group. At best, I've used my Shaltari tanks and Infantry in my Battletech games to proxy in the units I was playing.

In the last week or two, we have started two new systems, Dropzone Commander, and Dystopian Wars, and I must say that while I love Dropzone as a concept, it definitely hasn't felt as good of a ruleset as Dystopian Wars seems to be.

Don't get me wrong, we've been enjoying both very much, but yes, even in five or six games, some of the above issues have become apparent. Collateral does indeed feel clumsy, and there are huge imbalances. Still a pretty satisfying combined arms game, but not one i'd ever try competitively.

I have virtually no interest in naval stuff, but Dystopian Wars just feels more fun. Super clear and straight-forward, and just about chucking buckets of dice.

Dystopian Wars also suffers a lot of the same core rules and balance issues, though Warcradle is more active/responsive in updating and revising stuff - sometime too much IMO, as it seems every other week they post a fairly significant rules update.

Played the first game with behemoths, they have some issues but nothing that can't be fixed.
The drop-harness landing is crap. Why would anybody waste a turn off shooting.
So both behemoths walked in over the table edge. We played PHR vs Scourge at 2000 points.
Behemoths seem to be split into to two categories, each fraction gets a dedicated behemoth killer and a more multipurpose variant.
I took the dictator, which is the multipurpose behemoth. My opponent chose the Chronus, the more dedicated behemoth killer.
Scourge won the game but it was extremely close. We had some confusion about the spread rule and how walking over enemy models and buildings worked but figured it out more or less. I'm with slyphic that the rules aren't written and formatted in the best way.
When fitting with two behemoths and it is a dedicated vs all purpose fight, the all purpose behemoth will die quickly. The dictator was dead beginning of round 4, while the Chronus had some damage in the armor and that was it. My dictator completely annihilated some sirens with the tentacles which basically won the game, but didn't stand a chance in a shoot out against the enemy behemoth. In my opinion, opponents should talk about bringing titans beforehand, because if one player brings a dedicated behemoth killer and the other just brings more infantry and support, the first player will one shot some vehicles but most likely struggle to achieve the objectives. On the other hand, if one brings the dedicated behemoth and the other brings the all purpose behemoth, the second player will loose is behemoth rather quickly and then he will have a problem. Definitely some pregame talk advised.

It was still a more fun experience then my last game of 40k haha

Brickfix wrote:
The drop-harness landing is crap. Why would anybody waste a turn off shooting.

Precisely our take as well. There's a very narrow set of circumstances where you'd be better off dropping, but it's extremely rare, and fraught with random rolls. Walk-on 99% of the time.

Brickfix wrote:
We had some confusion about the spread rule and how walking over enemy models and buildings worked but figured it out more or less. I'm with slyphic that the rules aren't written and formatted in the best way.

Our problem with Spread was with how you measured the dying explosion. The rules don't say to use spread, but if you don't use spread, basically nothing happens 90% of the time which feels wrong. I was extremely disappointed when I figured out they released the behemoth models and stats but hadn't updated even a single word of the gakky Battle for Earth rules. There's so much a single playtesting game should have turned up, and you can REALLY tell they just never did that. 2 years. They had 2 years to fix the easy dumb stuff in the rules.

The original behemoth playtesters from 2019 have shared stories about all these exact same problems from back then.

They should have made Behemoths a scenario unit. The idea of integrating them into general tournament rules is pants on head stupid.

Yeah a glance at most of the new vehicles tells me nobody ever tested them, they are either stupid or redundant :/
Not necessarily overpowered, but the PHR skimmers have really weird rules that sound cool but just don't work in practice. Same with the new scimitar alternative, I don't understand see a purpose for it. Shame we aren't in the same area, would have loved to play a game with you slyphic

Brickfix wrote:
Yeah a glance at most of the new vehicles tells me nobody ever tested them, they are either stupid or redundant :/
Not necessarily overpowered, but the PHR skimmers have really weird rules that sound cool but just don't work in practice. Same with the new scimitar alternative, I don't understand see a purpose for it. Shame we aren't in the same area, would have loved to play a game with you slyphic

The Flail should have never made it past the vague design phase, let alone all the way to release. There's some valid arguments about most other units, but that one is indefensible. The only possible explanation is that they never actually tried to use it in a game. I'm still waiting to see if they ever release the Dingo they accidentally leaked like a year ago. A polecat vehicle, but the turret is an expanding concrete foam cannon that repairs buildings.

If I ever find myself in your part of the world, I'd love to play a game. There's a slim chance I'll be in Warsaw next May for a business trip, but otherwise I'm firmly in the Americas.

Lately we've been playing Dropzone and Dystopian Wars, as our less-mainstream picks, and while we like both, the studios behind the games are shockingly different. Dropzone feels like it left the hands of a strong, but overwhelmed game designer, but ended up owned by a completely amateur game company.

Meanwhile, Spartan was a cluster**** of design chaos, and Dystopian Wars feels much better tended to now.

Both are game's deserving of bigger platforms, but currently one publisher seems amateur hour, compared to the other.

It really is so wild to me that TTCOmbat is so aggressively hands-off with improving this AWESOME game they own. Even the typos, etc... in the rulebook are just embarrassing.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
It really is so wild to me that TTCOmbat is so aggressively hands-off with improving this AWESOME game they own. Even the typos

There's at least three things going on I'm aware of.

1) TTC has one person as lead designer on all their games, who really really wants to be a professional game designer. He hates criticism of his work, whether it's from playtesters, general public feedback, or editors. Doesn't matter how glaring the mistake or great the tested improvement, if he didn't come up with it, he'll block it.

2) This person's favorite game is Carnevale, it's his pride and joy and he lavishes it with attention. Rumbleslam he has the most creative ownership of, so while it plays second fiddle, it still gets time and care. Dropfleet and Dropzone are literal afterthoughts.

3) Zone and Fleet are more complex and difficult to balance, with more interlocking mechanics. Style, scale, genre, all different to the other above games. What we see is a series of failures to apply beer'n'pretzel skirmish design philosophy to what is a semi-serious combined arms company scale game.

Basically, TTC needs to either hand the game back to David Lewis and away from their current dude, or hire someone entirely new to take over the game. Like a director, or showrunner, or product manager level person instead of this slapdash many-hats thing TTC loves to do in their offices.

Perfectly said, Slyphic. In our home we enjoy a LOT of different game systems, so being "good" isn't enough to keep a game in rotation. I suspect after a few more imbalanced Dropzone games, it might just lose its spot, as even though we like it a lot, other companies games seem easier for us to build communities around, as we can in good conscious tell new players that the game is properly curated or maintained.

Hell, we still have a Warmaster community, in large part because the internet community has really come together to keep it healthy and balanced.

IIRC the "one guy who really really wants to be a game designer" is Dave Simpson? Hes literally the owner of the company, which I think is also why Carnevale and Rumbleslam get so much more attention - because they are things that he created internally rather than an outside property that was purchased.

chaos0xomega wrote:
IIRC the "one guy who really really wants to be a game designer" is Dave Simpson? Hes literally the owner of the company, which I think is also why Carnevale and Rumbleslam get so much more attention - because they are things that he created internally rather than an outside property that was purchased.

I'm not sure how much influence Dave & Louis Simpson (the brothers that own Troll Trader) exert over the TTCombat subsidiary's games. I was refering to Lewis Clarke, the person that's identified themselves as the lead designer on all those games in a number of recent podcast interviews.

Also, Louis Simpson's design credits on BGG include this masterpiece https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/195508/echoside The Insane Clown Posse deck building game.

chaos0xomega wrote:
IIRC the "one guy who really really wants to be a game designer" is Dave Simpson? Hes literally the owner of the company, which I think is also why Carnevale and Rumbleslam get so much more attention - because they are things that he created internally rather than an outside property that was purchased.

To my understanding, Carnevale was designed by David Esbri of Vesper-on Games, who went out of business in 2016 and sold Carnevale off to TT/TTC.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/114504/carnevale-vicious-fighting-along-canals-venice/forums/0

 kilcin wrote:
To my understanding, Carnevale was designed by David Esbri of Vesper-on Games, who went out of business in 2016 and sold Carnevale off to TT/TTC.

Yes, and TTC redesigned the rules and released it as a new version of the game.