Dropzone Commander

[Dungeon Lord]

The 20% discount is good but it generally 10-15% anyway. So it ain't that big a difference. There will be other chances.

[The Other Dave]

An actual play review.

A bit gushy, and a bit thin on actual nitty-gritty mechanics, but it sure does seem to hit all my massed combat game happy buttons. Not that I'll actually likely get into the game beyond picking up the rulebook, but still.

[Primarch]

An actual play review.

A bit gushy, and a bit thin on actual nitty-gritty mechanics, but it sure does seem to hit all my massed combat game happy buttons. Not that I'll actually likely get into the game beyond picking up the rulebook, but still.

What worries me about that review is that they mention suggesting new rules which may make it into the final version. If the game is due to ship in 1 month, surely the rules should have been finalised by now? Last minute changes dont inspire confidence as they wont be well tested and the question of why they are necessary is raised.
I am sure the models will be cool, but being able to throw them at walls is not high on my list of priorities.

[The Other Dave]

What worries me about that review is that they mention suggesting new rules which may make it into the final version. If the game is due to ship in 1 month, surely the rules should have been finalised by now? Last minute changes dont inspire confidence as they wont be well tested and the question of why they are necessary is raised.
I am sure the models will be cool, but being able to throw them at walls is not high on my list of priorities.

Yeah, that and the comments that they were still finalizing points costs as of a couple weeks ago do not fill me with confidence about how well-playtested the rules are.

[me_in_japan]

Points cost tweaking at the last minute is something I'd say is to be expected. Major rules changes would be a bit of a worry, but points costs are something that will wiggle back and forth right up to the printing deadline, most likely. It's the same with battle for alabaster - they've had play test rules around for over 2 years now, but there are still tweaks being made right now, 3 days before the kickstarter ends.

[AndrewGPaul]

Not that the end of the Kickstarter campaign is anywhere near the end of development - the game isn't out till November, after all - still time for a couple of months of rewrites and redesigns.

[me_in_japan]

True, true. I still reckon that last minute points tweaks are pukka though.

[Dungeon Lord]

I reckon it is a bit like anything. Most things are work in progress and can be improved. Bit like university assignments. I got 'em done but I worked on them up until the last minute

In saying that though, I don't think it is a good idea to announce that rules are not yet solid or implying it in any way. Mind u I haven't read that link yet. Just a general observation.

[Dungeon Lord]

Ok. So after reading the article, I am sure the rules are 98% set (at the time of writing the post) with just a few extra play tests from a fresh point of view. Still, u wouldn't expect someone allowed to play test the game to say it sucked.

[The Other Dave]

So my rulebook arrived (yay!). Very pretty, although apparently not too resistant to typhoons. I've had a quick readthrough and thought I might post my thoughts.

Things I like:
-The models, obviously. Lovely lovely stuff (even if, truth be told, some of the infantry sculpts are a bit oddly proportioned). I’ll probably eventually buy some models to paint up just because.
-Army building. The game uses alternating activation, and one of the big weaknesses of most alternating-activation games is that it is almost always strictly better to have more activations than your opponent, which has done some odd things to army building in the Epic tournament scene, for example. DzC deals with this with “battlegroups,” which may consist of a number of formations that support each other (depending on the army, you might be able to field artillery plus scouts as one battlegroup, or armor plus AA support, things like that) – and at a given points level everybody gets the same number of battlegroups. So that’s nice.
-Alternating activation itself. I’ve always liked it.

Things I’d need to see in play, but that look good:
-The core rules look solid. Shooting is pretty standard. Assaults look very involved, but really I’d need to see the rules in play.
-The focus on combined arms and using your dropships to rapidly redeploy. Most units move very slowly – 2” or so for infantry, 3” or 4” for tanks and walkers, 6” or 9” for skimmers – and have pretty limited shooting ranges in most situations. 12” or 18” is typical here. On the other hand, dropships move 20” or more – so you’ll need to use them to get your guys into or out of range or to take objectives. Could be interesting, could just lead to dumping your guys in the middle of the table and having a scrum until everyone's dead.
-The command card system. They have a thing like Uncharted Seas / Epic 40K and the like, where you get some number of “special effect” cards every turn – the rulebooks shows cards that repair damage, give a squad camouflage for a turn, that sort of thing. You have to buy the cards separately, though, so I don’t know what you get.

Things I worry about:
Mostly, as I remarked in another thread, the rules seem a bit thin to me, to wit:
-No rules for morale. Your units will keep fighting to the last man without fail. (There are morale rules to end an assault, but only infantry assault, and only in buildings, so it doesn’t look like it’d come into play that much.)
-No suppression fire / overwatch / what-have you. Especially in a sci-fi game with modern aesthetics, I’d like something like this.
-No “battlefield friction” / command and control / fog of war. Your dudes will always do exactly what you want them to do, without fail. I like some battlefield friction in my massed-battle games – Epic and Warmaster both do this quite well, and I’ll probably miss its absence. OTOH, of course, not having CnC is SOP for most games, so this is probably a pet peeve as much as anything.
-Some missed opportunities. There’s this thing called countermeasures that reduces the range enemy units can shoot at you. Which could be cool. But in the end (since all 4 armies have countermeasures on all their vehicles but not their infantry, and all countermeasures are equally effective), all it does is make it so there are different shooting ranges against vehicles and infantry. Having different armies get differently-effective countermeasures seems like it would have been an easy way to differentiate forces.
-Likewise, the two human factions don’t seem, on paper, to be that different at all. PHR is a bit slower and a bit tougher, but that’s about it. If you only have 4 factions, I’d like them all to play quite differently.

So, in the end, I'm kind of lukewarm about the rules. There's pretty much no way it'd replace Epic as my go-to massed battle game, although I'll probably pick some minis up, if only just to paint.