Dropzone Commander

Has anyone seen anything on Dropzone Commander (http://www.hawkwargames.com/pages/dropzone-commander)?

Everything I've seen seems to indicate that this is a great game. I have ordered the rulebook, but it is still en route.

I'll post a summary of the game here if there is any interest.

Rules are supposed to be super clean, yet thematic. I, personally, find the miniatures to be gorgeous. Pretty incredible that rules and minis are the work of a single guy...

I have the rulebook. It looks good, but apparently the minis are a bit behind schedule. For 10mm guys they are not cheap. Not cheap at all.

I wish I had some scale for reference on some of their larger minis. I think the prowler packs could make good conversion pieces.

Ya I have been interested in Drop Zone Commander for a little bit. Probably get some some Post Human stuff in the new year.
As far as I can see DZC marketing team is doing very well. All shipments are sold out for a bit.

I as well would be interested in dropzone commander. love the mechs, and dropships. havent seen the rules. any good tim?

They look very basic. Everything based on d10s. It looks like a game that would be easy to learn, but will have lots of depth because of the extreme amount of mobility the armies have. And the models are gorgeous, should supply ever keep up with demand.

The longest, most in depth review I have seen of the game compared it to chess.

So... that's a really good sign in my opinion.

On a totally annoying note, I saw today that the stupid shipping company tried to "deliver" my rulebook on November 2. Without leaving a note, calling me or doing anything else, they've already started shipping it back to the UK. Guess I'll have to wait a little longer...

Darren can order it for you. It's less than 30 bucks.

I already ordered it online.

Paid for and everything.

Do you play games at Dragon's Den?

Yeah, whenever I am in town.

Livin in Regina right now.

Play more fantasy than anything else.

Update on my rulebook:

Good on Hawk Wargames. As soon as I contacted them and told them what happened, they sent out a fresh copy immediately so I wouldn't have to wait longer than necessary.

Well, I've got two armies on order now. The rules look great.

Close ranged firefights with a huge combined arms component.

Summary of how the game works:
Models are called "Units";
Units go in Squads;
Squads go in Battlegroups; and
Battlegroups make up your army.

There are different types of Battlegroups (HQ, Armour, Infantry, Special, etc.) that determines what squads can go inside them. You can have a max of 7 Battlegroups - you can't take everything you want.

I-go-U-go activation of BATTLEGROUPS. So you get to move all Squads contained in each Battlegroup, then play goes to other person until all Battlegroups are activated.

All weapons have decently long range, but most also have a much shorter range for units with Active Countermeasures (AC). The exceptions are energy weapons like laser and plasma cannons (which are rare). Pretty much all vehicles have AC, which cuts down on the range fights, forcing close quarters skirmishes.

With the exception of very light scout units (and the Scourge), most ground forces can only move between 2 and 4 inches per turn. In order to threaten your enemy or redeploy you need Dropships (hence the name of the game). Scenarios are largely objective based (but with a few pound'em battles), and infantry are needed to capture objectives. Objectives are in buildings, and you can destroy buildings if you want.

Morale effects are very limited, only occurring during infantry close quarters battles. Everything fights until it dies. Command units give you an area of effect for playing minor effect cards from your hand. Radius of command is increased by scouts, who also provide a bonus for indirect fire weapons.

The balance between armour/firepower/mobility is very precise. Particularly since units can not shoot the turn they deploy from a dropship.

The Shaltari race doesn't use dropships, but can teleport units from off of the table through their "Gates" and can even teleport from one Gate to another. Some realllly mean strategies there.

VTOL aircraft (gunships and dropships) move fast, but stay on board. Strike fighters and bombers move from off table to off-table during their attack runs. You can designate your fighters to intercept enemy fighters/bombers, in a stacking order. Only AA can shoot at aircraft of either type. Infantry can give up attacks to make potshots at aircraft.

So I've proxied a couple games, and the rules are a treat.

Ordered two armies, my cousins, Brent and Joe, are going to get into the game, I think Don might join us if I twist his rubber arm, and I'm hoping to get some more players as well.

If anyone is interested at taking a look, check it out here:
4shared.com /office/jxZOFxMj/DZC.html

2 of the pages (the ones dealing with transports) didn't scan right, but I'll re-scan those.

Please don't share this too far.

Hawk just announced the first expansion for the game which will include two new units for every race. The full rules for the units will be released in PDF for free on the Hawk website in January.

The only two units which were out of whack with respect to points have been changed. Hawk puts out a new FAQ every couple of weeks as things pop up, they're officially supporting a free to download army builder program with full stats and rules for the units (http://www.dzc-ffor.com/) that is updated whenever there's a rules change.

Anyone else in on this?

I just thought I'd put down my first impressions on what I purchased.

I bought the PHR army deal. It was 170gbp's and after duty worked out to around $310 cdn to my doorstep. My army deal came with a nice shiny metal carrying case with pre-cut foam inserts for my stuff. This was very nice. Delivery was 4 working days, that was very nice.

First impression on the mini's - The look of the faction I bought I love. When I saw the litle ED-209 lookin' mother fuckers I knew this was the army for me. I was also able to pick out a colour scheme I'd like to try on the army quickly which is a bonus. I've bought a lot of stuff I really like the look of but can't imagine how I want it to look and hence I have some overflowing shelves full of beautiful sculpts sitting in boxes. I knew how I was going to paint these guys. The casting on the mini's I've gone through has been not real good. For the scale of the stuff having any rough spots in the cast is going to show up pretty menacingly once paint hits it. Also there was a really wierd decision on the Juno AFV transports for my army. The tanks have been split in half down the middle which means I was faced with either commiting around 30 to 60 min each to smooth out the surface or just sorta trim em up and leave 'em be. I left it be as I fully intend for this to be a gaming force and I am gonna try to relax a little with the painting standard on this stuff and try to get it table ready quickly. I would seriously only rate the casting quality at around a 5-6 / 10. That is unfortunate.

Price wise. Man, $310 calhouns is no joke. I sure wouldn't say I was impressed at the volume of resin I got for the cash, but I wouldn't say it was terrible either. value for money seems like I'd put it at around a 6/10 as well. Also since I did SFA for research before purchasing (sometimes you just gotta do shit, then ponder after!) I'd guess I need to invest another $100 or so to get to a 2K army. I don't know if this is ahead or behind the dollar to point value curve for armies in the game but there it is anyway.

So I was NOT blown away by the casting quality or volume of resin to my dollar value. Do I feel it was worth it? Sure do, and I will buy more for my existing army and likely a second army as well. I just wanted to put a post up with my initial thoughts out of fairness to anyone looking at buying some of this new game. I don't know if Eric feels the same way but I'd like to hear if his mini's came in a similar condition to mine or not.

So it seems that the game cost is below what an investment from scratch would be to play Warhammer (either flavour) but more than a Flames of War army. So it's in the middle, maybe a little closer to the GW cost of things. I wil get to painting and post up some of what it looks like painted and talk about the individual mini's a little more for those interested.

If the reviews are good for it I'd have no problem giving it a try.

Im just paranoid being a first adopter.. Which ive done many times in the past.

Let me know how the game pkays out once you have a few under your belt.

I'll have two painted armies and a bunch of N-scale buildings mid January.

Can choose sometime after everything arrives for some demo games if there is interest.

That reminds me, does anyone have a handle on what scale the minis for this game are?

Planes wrote:That reminds me, does anyone have a handle on what scale the minis for this game are?

10mm

Which is the same as N-Scale or "N-Gauge" for model railroads.