Lauby: Today we're going to talk about flavor that makes our beloved table top games more than just overly complicated chess: the factions.
Dethtron- So we've got four races here. As I am always wont to do, I went with the bog standard army of human federation space marine troopers generic dudes force, "The United Colonies of Mankind." It's a standard sci-fi trope that I'm not ashamed to always gravitate towards. Their tech might not be the best, but it's not the worst. They've got a mix of airpower and landpower. They have the ability to field a relatively average number of models. They are the kind of many, mostly proud, the generic (a term I use in the most endearing way possible.)
Lauby: I immediately gravitated towards the Shaltari Tribes since I like things that go fast, have big guns and frustrate the living hell out of my opponents. The Shaltari even have freaking 5+ forcefields and bizarre-o teleporting mechanics!. More importantly, they also have some pretty high movement values on their basic units. Something that goes a long way towards mitigating one of the initial frustrations we had with Dropzone Commander. On the other hand, the units are pretty fragile once you get past all the fancy-schmancy horse shit. Overall, the Shaltari play a lot like the Eldar did in their 5th edition heyday and since I played Eldar in their 5th edition heyday, it's a perfect fit. I'm coming close to writing a love letter here, so let me just sum with saying that the Shaltari have a definite glass cannon vibe.
You kno what... I love them. There. I said it.
Dethtron- Yeah, those fuckers and their warpginas still confuse the shit out of me. Their resemblance however, to the models of John Carter is uncanny.
Lauby: I hadn't noticed that until you mentioned it. Though, I don't think many other people would have either on account of people being more familiar with Dropzone Commander than they are with Disney's flop.
Dethtron- Next up we've got the Scourge. And much like you'd expect, they are an army bent on colonizing the galaxy and are rapidly encroaching on mankind.
Lauby: Rules wise, they seem to be, mostly, a hybrid between what's going on with the UCM and Shalari with the added bonus of having a access to some of the only cheap, horde kind of stuff in the game so far on top of the main battle tanks that everyone else has. My favorite part of the Scourge is the fact that one of their regular tanks has the ability to carry these deadly space worms around in addition to being a solid weapons platform.
Dethtron- They also do some stuff with host bodies and assimilation, so totally aren't anything like Aliens or the Borg. Aesthetically I am, however, quite tickled by the almost goofy War of the Worldsishness of their models.
Lauby: Lastly, we have the Post Human Republic. As much fun as the Shaltari are, I think these guys have the coolest and most unique aesthetic of the four factions. They've got this cool, super slick iPhone technology vibe and it is just great. On the table, it appears that they fill the elite army paradigm. The units are on the whole more expensive, but very tough and loaded with guns. These were the guys I almost picked for our bat rep, but applying Lauby's Rule of Faction Picking (my first choice is always the wrong one), I went with the Shaltari. The big contributing factor was that the PHR units are sloooow and Dropzone Commander is clearly a game about maneuvering (holy shit! I just spelled that word right on the first try!).
Like we said earlier, the units in the individual factions were presented in a very intuitive and easy to use format. Actually using those profiles to build an force with the army creation rules was another matter entirely.
Dethtron- I was upset by the army creation rules too. Then I realized that we both have advanced degrees and should be able to cope.
Lauby: Almost immediately it became apparent that either we both went to institutions with vastly overstated academic reputations or the army creation rules were an impenetrable mess of charts and poorly explained dependencies.
Dethtron- True, it was only after realizing that we, in fact, couldn't cope that I found out that there was an app for that. In an apparent nod to the weirdness of their force org charts, Hawk provide a link to a third party, officially endorsed army list creator program.
Lauby: Having found the app and muddled through some practice lists after the fact, the army composition system is actually quite cool. If we hadn't been using the various starter armies for our lists, I have no idea what we would have done initially however. For a game that relies so heavily on army organization for it's turn structure, we were thoroughly baffled by how little time had been spent explaining a concept that had clearly had so much time spent on it's creation. I think the army builder app is less weird for it's third party-ness (an increasingly common thing these days) than it is for being a near necessity for playing the game. Which again, speaks to the reliance this game has on information that exists outside of the rulebook proper.
Overall though, the factions are fun, well thought out and offer the basic tropes people look for in a table top game without hammering you skull in with them. The army creation rules, once we managed to wrap our tiny minds around them, really gave us some insight into the game design itself and are actually quite neat. Again, they need to be better explained as they are an extremely important component of what actually makes the game work as a game.
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