A Dropzone Thread

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The Other Dave
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A Dropzone Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Nov 01, 2014 2:36 am

I guess I'll jump on the bandwagon and make a "proper" introduction thread for Dropzone Commander, since I seem to have gotten into it and wouldn't mind more people giving it a go!

A good place to start is the Hawk Wargames site - it's pretty comprehensive, with plenty of fluff and lots of very pretty pictures of all the minis and what-not. A brief overview though:

The setting

Dropzone has a nice, solid, hard-SF setting, and the vehicle designs and rules really reflect this quite nicely. The basic conceit is that the year is 2670, and about 150 years ago Earth and its core colonies were attacked and completely annihilated by an advanced alien threat, the Scourge - a race of brain parasites who needed all those humans to put their next generation into. For the past 150 years, the scattered and previously peripheral human colonies have been rebuilding and militarizing with the single goal of retaking Earth. The core game begins on the eve of this Reconquest, and it looks like they're set to advance the timeline of this campaign with each supplement coming out.

The factions

The United Colonies of Mankind (UCM)
These are your basic human faction, and the game's baseline in a lot of ways, as human factions tend to be. They're the dudes who are bent on retaking Earth, and their whole military philosophy is built around this - lightweight, mass-producable military units, all of which are capable of direct orbital insertion. They've got the most "near future military tech" vibe, with tracked tanks, VTOL gunships, scout buggies and such. Weaponry is railguns and rockets mostly, and their stuff tends to be well-armored, with reasonably powerful weaponry, but often requiring their dropships for rapid redeployment on the battlefield - their main battle tanks have a move of 4" on a 4' x 4' suggested board.

The Scourge
These are the aforementioned brain parasites. High tech and very alien, with very fast, reasonably well-armored units with weaponry that's quite short-ranged but very powerful. Lots of plasma and flame weaponry, with hovertanks and gribbly little walkers. Their infantry are mostly dominated humans, with some elite non-human troops available, including but not limited to 20-foot-long terror centipedes, great for clearing buildings of pesky enemy infantry. They have many of the fastest units in the game, and a bit less reliance on redeploying via dropship than the human armies - their gravtanks move 9", but on the other hand have only 9" range on their weapons as compared to the 24" on the UCM's railguns.

The Post-Human Republic (PHR)
Sort of a mysterious human faction, the PHR are a human splinter group. Very shortly before the Scourge invaded 150 years ago, a mysterious alien AI crashed to Earth, where it promptly hacked the entire world's networked computer system and hired a mercenary group to break it out of the research station it was being studied at. Things happened, and it warned humanity about the coming invasion in annoyingly vague terms - a not-insignificant number of humans decided to heed the warning and break away, leaving days before the Scourge arrived and leaving the human military in something of a state of disarray, which didn't help much when the Scourge came. Now, on the eve of Reconquest, they're back, transformed massively by the (presumably benign) direction of the AI - lots of cyborg and nanotech augments and the like. They have a much smaller population and standing army than the UCM, which they make up for by making every single person count as much as possible. A tough, elite army built around extremely durable (but very slow at all of 3" of movement) battle walkers.

The Shaltari
The obligatory lightly-armored-but-mobile-and-shooty enigmatic alien faction. The Shaltari are 4 foot tall greys, sort of, who are not overcompensating at all when they go into battle in 8-foot-tall battle walkers. Their tanks are, like the Scourge, fast skimmers, with long-ranged punchy weaponry and quite light armor but ubiquitous energy fields (an actual armor save, in 40K-ish terms). These are supported by heavy tripod battle walkers. The Shaltari's biggest defining feature is the use of teleportation gates instead of dropships - in game terms, they're quite similar and deploy troops using similar rules, but they can do tricksy stuff like jump into one gate and out of another on the other side of the battlefield on the same turn. Definitely the most mobile army, but potentially quite fragile, as they rely on their energy shields to avoid damage.

The Resistance
This is the new faction, just released with the new expansion book. They're the humans left behind on Earth and the core worlds after the invasion, and have been scraping by for the past 150 years, living in caves and basically just barely surviving. They have basically two tech branches - either pre-invasion human military tech they've been keeping running somehow for a super-long time, or converted civilian vehicles: literal school buses with guns strapped to the back, technicals and the like. The pre-invasion human tech is actually quite good - not being built for orbital insertion like every other army's stuff, it tends to be very heavy and very well-armed and armored. The pickup trucks with rocket launchers in the back, somewhat less so. They also have actual attack helicopters, which I mention because how cool is that?


The Game
It's a solid game, with alternating activation and army creation rules that deal with one of the big issues with alternating activation (that having more activations is almost always strictly better than having fewer) nicely by giving all armies of the same points value the same number of activations, if not the same number of squads. Roll to hit, roll to damage, very straightforward in that sense. As I said, there are some wrinkles that emphasize the high-tech nature of the setting.

Countermeasures: All military vehicles are basically presumed to have some sort of "active countermeasures", whether weak energy fields, flak bursts, reactive armor plating or what have you, which can deflect or stop incoming shots given enough reaction time. This means that most weapons have two ranges - one against targets without countermeasures (infantry, buildings, Resistance school buses, etc.) and one against targets with countermeasures (everything else). The difference in ranges depends a lot on the kind of weapon. Slow projectiles like rockets are very easy to block with CM, so they tend to have a very short range - 6" or so. Railguns and the like fall somewhere in the middle, and directed energy weapons like lasers can't be stopped with CM at all. Ranges against targets without CM are usually much greater - often unlimited.

Infantry: Infantry plays very differently than in most games I'm aware of. Infantry are extremely slow-moving - usually 2" - and ridiculously easy to kill if they're not in cover. On the other hand, often the only way to get them out of defended positions in buildings is to bring down the building around them, or assault them with other infantry. You need them, though, because most scenarios are centered around grabbing objectives in buildings, and often escaping with them off the board. Also, the only close assaults in the game are when infantry storm a building occupied by other infantry - none of this "drive closer so I can hit them with my sword" nonsense. This isn't WWII, and if infantry want to attack tanks, they have to use their rocket launchers and such.

Dropships: They are, as I have probably insinuated, ubiquitous. Most troops and vehicles are slow enough that the only way to get across the board is to reload into their dropships and be flown there. There are robust rules for how, where, and when dropships can put troops down and pick them up, and while the very small games I've played didn't get into it much I imagine in larger games with multiple points of engagement it will become quite important. That said, some armies, notably the Scourge and Shaltari, can probably better get away with using fewer dropships, since their fast tanks can redeploy on their own pretty nicely, especially compared to a very slow army like the PHR.

Generally, I'm liking the game so far. I'd like it better if there were command and control rules of any sort, but that's my own baggage. The game works, and is fun, as far as it goes so I shouldn't really complain. :D The models are superb, the range is ever-expanding, and the new plastic faction starter boxes are eminently affordable - 28GBP from Wayland for about 500 points of units you'll be using in pretty much any game you'll ever play. 2 starter boxes and one or two blisters of resin units will get you a very comfortable 1000 points in a game where 1500 seems to be standard.
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The Other Dave
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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Nov 08, 2014 9:48 am

Here's something I forgot to put in the original post: army building software!

Since job and I had a long back and forth about army building in t'other thread (which I think I'd like to retire), and Auxryn seems to be planning to get in on the game, bringing this to folks' attention might be useful, I thought. It's pretty slick, and does a good job of showing visually the sometimes tricky way armies go together in this game. It checks for legality and has stats and such for all released models to boot - the only thing it really lacks in the printouts it gives you is complete special rules, but that's to be expected.

Speaking of army building, here's something I noticed recently: where possible, it's probably best to have fewer large squads rather than more small ones - lots of the command cards for all factions affect "a single squad," so having one squad of 6 tanks is going to give your command cards more punch than two squads of 3. So it seems like you want as many battlegroups as possible (for the activations) but as few squads per battlegroup as you can manage.
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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job
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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by job » Sat Nov 08, 2014 12:10 pm

I might add that there's a great community of players who post on the Hawk Games forum.http://www.hawkforum.co.uk It spans from the more causal gamers to the tournament goers.
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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Feb 10, 2015 6:29 am

Pictures of the new command units from Reconquest, plus some forthcoming units, at this fancy blog.

I'm most impressed with what is apparently a Hades-big command gunship for the UCM:
Image

Although the Scourge battle crab is also pretty spiffy-looking:
Image
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by me_in_japan » Tue Feb 10, 2015 2:42 pm

The scorpion tailed thingy is pretty nifty looking (UCM, I think?). The big crabby wotsit is also nice. It's a lovely looking game, no mistake.
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Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:00 pm

me_in_japan wrote:The scorpion tailed thingy is pretty nifty looking (UCM, I think?). The big crabby wotsit is also nice. It's a lovely looking game, no mistake.
This guy?
Image

That's the Hades, a PHR unit, and I am sore tempted to get one. So purdy...
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by me_in_japan » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:09 pm

that's the bunny. gomen - i am not yet au fait with the acronyms of DZC...
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things

Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by Lovejoy » Tue Feb 10, 2015 11:53 pm

The minis do look cool, for sure. Just waiting for the 28mm version.
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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by ashmie » Tue Feb 17, 2015 4:59 pm

If I ever get any spare cash I'd like to pick this and Infinity up someday.
Otherwise the fluff I like a lot, intelligent post apocalyptic with hope. Nice.
Looking forward to a demo game. Yoroshiku.
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Re: A Dropzone Thread

Post by The Other Dave » Sun Feb 22, 2015 1:46 pm

Auxryn and I got to play a couple 1000-point games today, and man was it fun - although I lost pretty handily in both cases. :D

I have to say, I'd been a bit lukewarm on the rules, what with their lack of my pet concepts of pinning and other sorts of battlefield friction, but what I missed in our very small demo games and just reading the rules was how what is in the game all works together to make for a tense, and extremely tactical, experience. You really have to think a few moves ahead, have a solid battle plan for each turn and the next, and stick with it all things that I, I'm afraid, am not very good at. :lol: The scenario makes an enormous difference as well - we played two different scenarios and the games played out very differently indeed just because of what each scenario asked us to do to succeed.

So, the proof is in the pudding, and this is a fun game in play.

Man, I shoulda taken notes on the games so I could write up for-reals battle reports...
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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