TTCombat Release Dropzone Commander Beta Rules
April 27, 2018 by brennon
While they are still going to be getting updated in the coming weeks and months this is the first look at the Dropzone Commander Beta Rules as they have been made available for download by TTCombat.
The Core Rules are there as well as all manner of additional statistics for the various factions in the world and more.
We'd love to hear what you folks who play this game like about the new rules so give them a download and let us know what you think?
Drop your thoughts below...
"The Core Rules are there as well as all manner of additional statistics for the various factions in the world and more..."
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I really hope that there will be a proper re-launch of DZC. It has lost all momentum over the last 12 months. The 2nd Edition will be a great chance to persuade old hands to dig out their models and to inspire new players to jump on board!
Hint, hint – it’s a great game!
I hope Dropfleet commander gets a similar boost.
OTOH … TTCombat is in the midst of Carnivale as well.
Well, TTCombat have invested a lot of money in the IP and and a range of supporting scenery so it’s in their interests to make it work
Downloaded, this is one game and scale I would like to try out…
I am looking forward to getting to know these rules understanding how they have changed them.
@limburger any updates to Dropfleet will be a way off, DzC needs some love now 🙂
everything needs some love 😉
I’ll be very interested in what veterans have to say about the changes. i wanted to like the original game so much but it always seemed like no matter what I brought to the fight, it always came down to which player’s infantry found an objective in a building.
@erion – out of interest, how many games did you play?
The typical intro game – using the starter sets in the box – doesn’t feature very much of the fancy stuff and infantry grabbing objectives from buildings really is key to the game.
When you do play bigger games and with a greater variety of more exotic units, objectives are still important, but you can appreciate the rest of your army more (and the different qualities of different kinds of infantry).
Not all games have objectives in buildings, so if you wanted to change things up, you could play some of the more narrative missions or even just those with intel, focal points, etc.
Infantry in buildings is an important part of most games of DZC and like most modern wargames, if you forget the mission objectives and just go for the kill, you’ll more likely than not lose, but when you do play these bigger games, you will find that infantry are just one component of your army. While you (typically) need to get your infantry to certain places to do their thing, the rest of your army has very important roles to play too.
Perhaps, thinking about it… the roles and purposes of many units in the game are more clear and more specialised than in your typical SF or fantasy wargame. So although your infantry do stand out frequently as being the guys that win you games by grabbing objectives, they can’t do it without your AA providing air cover, your own aircraft taking out your opponents, etc.
I’ve only played this game sporadically, but I absolutely love it. I’ll have to download these and see if I can work out what’s changed. Although I was supportive of Hawk doing a 2nd edition of the game, it wasn’t urgent, so although it’s now been dragging out for a long time, and the game has lost a lot of momentum, I hope they now don’t rush it. And when they’re ready, do a really impressive re-release which kickstarts the game again.
I bought the TTCombat DZC scenery bundle at Salute – the buildings looked so good, and a good table really, really makes this game amazing. That’s true of most wargames, but I think scenery plays an even more important role in this game – mechanically and in making the game look right.
Looking forward to trying them out!
The army lists do not seem to be including units from Reconquest books. Does anyone know if the intention is to play the beta with just these lists or use units from expansions as they are?
I so much hope at one point we will see Dave again at BoW explaining and promoting the two Commander games. I am still not sure what his role is or will be, but it was him and his enthusiasm that got me into them. Without him it won’t be the same and I am not sure how their future would look like.
But it is good to see something is happening.
@frahar – Dave’s been busy with the move to TTCombat and getting things moving for both games again, but at Salute he was indicating that he’d be more public again. You should watch the BoW interview with him for a bit more info and hints of what’s to come.
I agree though, he’s been of such importance to the game but also to its promotion and making us players feel like we’re a part of a community around it.
I haven’t finished reading the whole thing in detail yet but I have a couple of take away points so far.
First up, the new rules reference forests frequently. This is significant because it is approaching the typical table setup that first edition heavily favoured – All Downtown Urban City, All Of The Time. I think TTCombat are trying to evolve the rules a bit to support more varied environments and to give players reasons to use more varied terrain. As it stands (and without playing it) I think forests are going to act as destructible terrain that can be put down to block LOS/movement in parts of the board but provide tactical options for removing it and creating your own routes around the board. Flamers and some weapons are getting special ‘defoliator’ rules to deal additional damage to forests.
It may also become more vital in the scenario writing, the rules imply that forests will feature as some form of objectives but we have no new scenarios yet to demonstrate that. Overall I think TTCombat are pushing the backstory of long abandoned and decaying cities to the fore here which could be really cool.
Next thing they are changing is to decouple transports from squads and to encourage (but not force) armies to begin fully inside transports, again reflecting the fluff of DzC being about highly mobile combined arms forces dropping in from space etc to respond to time sensitive missions. These aren’t plodding massed armies slowly marching across the countryside and there were a few slightly cheesy tactics in 1st ed of driving building demolition vehicles on at the back and blowing up objective building turn 1/2 cheaply as they didn’t need dropships to do it.
Decoupling transports from squads means that a Dropship can set a squad of tanks down early game then pick up and reposition a different squad later in the game that may have lost its own transport. In 1st ed a transport that lost its assigned squad would sit empty for the rest of the game even if an identical squad that lost an identical transport was sat RIGHT THERE needing extraction.
Close Quarters Combat (CQB) looks cleaned up a bit, there is less focus on tracking damage to individual bases of infantry and players are allowed to choose where they assign dice rather than being forced to divide dice between everything present. As damage is dealt to a squad rather than a base there should be less need to worry about randomising which bases take hits from falling masonry if a building is damaged etc.
Some new tactical choices have been added, if you occupy a building and are searching for objectives when an opponent enters the building, you gain some bonus dice on the first turn of defence and can choose to either not search and fight at full strength or to continue searching but sacrifice a few dice as part of your squad is busy poking around.
Briefly scanning over some units there is buffing and re-balancing of some neglected 1st wave units. The PHR Taranis (which I have seen on a table) has been given alt-fire modes to make it more flexible and able to tackle specific types of target while the Scourge Tormentor flame tank now gets free Razor Worms to hurl at the enemy which sounds terrifying. Again, there will be more but I haven’t had time to absorb it all yet!
The rules for environments and different landscapes appeared in the last expansion book, so I think the beta rules which as I understand it were mostly written before Hawk was bought out by TT. So personally I would not give much credit to TT for this. However it is good to see that the different environments are being developed because the last expansion did not get much of an opportunity to develop under Hawk.
As Dave sold Hawk and is continuing to work on the same project under the TTCombat banner I don’t see much point in drawing the distinction to be honest. It’s the same game with the same main designer as far as I can tell.
Phase 2 did include rules for low gravity and the like, but it was more about applying modifiers to stuff (your units move +/- 2″) than encouraging specifically different terrain (large terrain piece of dense foliage vs another box building) I feel. Sure you could see Phase 2 as the beginning of the process but that doesn’t detract from anything in the new document I think.
i hope they move to a d10 system, it would allow for far more nuances