Lauby: Hey Folks, we're cruising along with our Review of Hawk Wargames' Dropzone Commander. For this installment, we have our first attempt at using the rules to actually play a game. Now how often do you see reviewers try that?
Dethtron: This is likely to be the worst and most awesome batrep ever. While Hawk Wargames was kind enough to send us several copies of the rulebook, we did not receive any minis from them. So it was time to proxy the shit out of everything. Luckily, using Lauby's tech wizardry, we got our hands on some scale charts for Dropzone (more on this in a bit) and were able to piece together things that were at least sized right, pilfering flames of war minis, some old battletech stuff, a few 1:144 model planes, and even some Eldar.
Sadly, we're also short on the copious amount of crotch shots in the pics below. I know we promised them and most batreps deliver this in huge amounts, but we just didn't capture any. It's not like any of us are endowed like John Hamm or anything, but ... actually, here's something that bugs me about the John Hamm thing- how is it possible that none of the John Hamm crotch memes have revolved around his wang being named Dick Whitman? Surely there's a joke in that.
Oh, right battlereport....
Lauby: Armed with our handy-dandy smart phone cameras, a whole mess of beer and a dangerous amount of proxies, we began.
Arm lists were the first step and also the first challenge. This is where we came face to face with the reality of writing an army list in Dropzone Commander. Luckily we had decided to play with the forces suggested by Hawk Wargames' starter armies and so all we really had to do was figure out what the various battle groups of are respective armies actually contained.
Dethtron: If you close your eyes and dream real hard or just drop a bunch of acid, you could imagine that my army looks like this instead of the pic below. The hodgepodge of random ass stuff below represents the starter set of the United Colonies of Mankind (UCM) force. The P-38s are drop ships, the larger battletech tanks are rail gun toting MBTs, the smaller ones are AA tanks, the Panzergrenadiers are infantry, and the Kubelwagens are APCs.
Lauby: And this is my Shaltari force. Bravely represented by yet more Germans and ancient Battle Tech tanks. Also featured are some of my Eldar Vypers pretending to be warp gates. Pretend it all looks like this.
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| The "Shaltari." Yeah, that's the ticket... |
Interestingly enough, out proxies are actually fairly close to the sizes of the actual miniatures. This was possible because the fine folks over at Hawk Wargames took the time to take photos of their models with coins in the shot for scale. Using an iPad for some actual size screen pinching we were able to get pretty close on everything but the infantry.
Dethtron: Oh tech wizardry.
Lauby: Once we had our armies ready to go - so to speak - we set up the recommended 4x4 table. Again, using a massive amount of proxies. This time from my Infinity and Malifuax terrain collection and some of Dethron's 40k/Flames of War stuff. Each of the structure-y type things represents a building in the scenario we decided to use.
Dethtron: In answer to the question you may be about to ask, dear reader, yes that is a battlemaster tower. One thing to note about this game is that a lot of terrain is required to play. In part 6 of this review, we'll touch on that, but just keep that in your minds for now.
Lauby: Incidentally, the above photo is also a shot of our deployments as well since the Recon scenario dictates that all of our battle groups started 'in readiness'. Or "off the table and ready to move on during the first turn." Sadly, this has made it impossible for me to figure out who actually went first. Though this isn't too much of a problem due to the alternating activation sequence and the fact that the first turn was, basically, just a lot of maneuvering.
Dethtron: So, without further ado, let's jump into turn 1.
FIGHT!!!!
Turn 1: The generals boldly deploy their forces from reserve and begin searching buildings. Each of them scoring a point.
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| End turn 1 |
Lauby: Keeping in my mind that there is a hard turn limit on this fight and the fact that some of the objectives may explode, both of us are spending a great deal of time trying to score objectives. Since Dethtron has the more advantageous side of the table in terms of building placement, I'm also planning on attempting to disrupt his efforts by shooting guns at him.
Dethtron: Honestly, that turn limit made me think differently about things. I got a lot more tactical and less worried about shooting the shit out of Lauby. It was a race to recon as many buildings as possible. It was refreshing to feel the need to move and move quickly rather than digging in and shooting for 27 turns. Later on I try and fail at preventing Lauby from taking some of his own, but we'll get to that in a bit.
Turn 2: Now that they've both deployed their forces, the shooting begins. Both of their respective infantry units continue the main mission of looking for objectives. Lot's of embarking and disembarking ensue. Note to future gamers: the transportation rules are SUPER important for this game.
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| End turn 2 |
Lauby: Turn 2 is where I started experimenting with the ranged combat rules in this game. And by 'experimenting' I mean shooting at anything I could see. I managed to down one of Dethtron's transports with my AA tanks and, as a side effect, shut down a lot of his mobility while making him very cautious with his remaining transports (a combination of slow movement speeds and not being allowed to use another battle group's transport). I also shot up a building some of his infantry were in. I had visions of obliterating a building, but they're made of tougher stuff than that. Though the resulting falling debris but some hits on the infantry unit inside and was very educational.
Dethtron: So I tried shooting the buildings too, but with heavy machine guns. Apparently heavy machine guns cannot damage buildings. So, my goal was to shoot buildings on Lauby's side of the table to destroy the delicious objectives inside. This would have worked much better if I'd upgraded my dropships to carry missiles pods because- and I cannot stress this enough- machine guns DO NOT hurt fucking buildings. Also take note that fucking machine guns can't hurt most fucking tanks. So my dropship was good for transporting and shooting infantry. Sadly, most infantry spent the game inside buildings or out of sight.
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| Another (blurry) shot of the end of turn 2 |
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| End turn 3 (or 4) |
Lauby: A sustained fire fight erupted at the center of the table there. I managed to put a few points of damage on another of Dethtron's transports, but lost an AA tank to some fire from Dethron's AA. This actually raised three important issues
1) AA tanks are really good at shooting down aircraft (duh) but pretty solid at shooting up lighter ground vehicles as well.
2) Be sure to look up the online errata and FAQs for the game. At one point we thought my AA tanks had three hits rather than one. Dethtron almost rage quit and I was ready to help flip the table.
3) The models in this game tend to be pretty resilient. So destroying a unit requires a pretty concentrated effort.
Dethtron: Yes coordinated fire is essential. And I concur with the AA assessment. AA is also vitally important since only AA units can shoot at aircraft- unless your aircraft is currently landed.
Turn 5+6: Again, more buildings have been searched and the fire fight at the center of the table has continued on. Lauby's main battle tanks are actually behind a building in this shot as they are chasing down Dethtron's AA and an APC. Dethtron in return has managed to kill another of Lauby's AA tanks but lost a crucial second dropship.
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| End turn 5 (or 6 )and end of game |
Lauby: Turns 5 and 6 were all over the place for me in terms of succeeding at my goals. My plans to disrupt Dethtron's objective grabbing were nearly derailed by my over attention to a fire fight with his tanks and the fact that one of my objectives ended up being a bomb (the far yellow building). On the other hand, Dethtron's main battle tanks never did get stuck in (I blew up their transport as well). A different objective ended up being worth double points for me assuming I held onto it until the end of the game (the near yellow building that Dethtron tried to shoot up), which I did.
Dethtron: Soooooo, massed firepower is needed to destroy buildings. Massed firepower that was not available at the 500 points level we were playing at.
This is the point in the game where I very quickly got excited that I may out-objective Lauby despite his overwhelmingly better maneuverability. This is also the point where I quickly became saddened as Lauby also scored a double objective and we were tied again.
In hindsight I regret running my MBTs around the flank of the table only to have them stranded and without targets as Lauby's troops teleported away. I should have kept with the plan of holding the table center with them as I would have had a huge firepower advantage and much better choices in targets.
Results and thoughts: Tied as they were on objective points, the game went to the secondary win condition: kill points. After the destroyed models are tallied, Lauby is declared the winner by the points values of the models he destroyed!
Lauby: Now that was a nail biter! Dethtron and I were neck and neck on objective points the entire game. Towards the end, however, the destruction of Dethtron's transports really put the squeeze on him in terms of mobility and drastically slowed down him down. Meanwhile I was only down a couple of tanks and was taking advantage of my superior movement values as hard as I knew how to do to stay in the game.
The exploding objective and the double point score ended up being a wash; if i had only gotten one of those results, the game would have had a clear victor. On the other hand, the back third of the game for me was spent frantically trying to catch with Dethtron's score after the unpleasantness of the booby trap. For about one and a half turns, it looked like I was going to lose.
Dethtron: Yeah, like I said before I went from super pumped to sad panda in the space of about a half a turn. A curse went out to the dice gods on this one. My careful attention to ABIB (always be in buildings) with my infantry almost helped me search enough buildings to beat Lauby. Unfortunately he had some last minute bursts of teleportation that I couldn't do anything about in the last few turns and was able to catch up with me on number of buildings searched.
Lauby: None of this isn't to say that the game was won or lost on a 'lol-random' chart result. Dropzone Commander is still very much a game of skill. You have to focus on the mission goals to win and we were both doing that. In the end, if we had ignored the random chart, we still would have defaulted to kill points.
Dethtron: I didn't feel cheated by the random chance either, though. I think a mild touch of randomness adds a bit of needed excitement- as long as its not random movement. I really mean this. Knowing the result of every single action does nothing for me and makes every game a complete foregone conclusion.
Lauby: The photos we took for the bat rep didn't completely cover the action. However, I think we covered the most important aspect of the game. Looking back at the photos, you'll notice that the drop ships frequently show up massive distances from where the were. Take a look at that if you missed it and then try to conceptualize how important transports are for the game knowing that infantry move 2". Probably a good thing, given that the game is called Dropzone Commander and all. It'd be silly if the drop ships were worthless.
Dethtron: Yes, Hawk certainly puts them at the center of the action. I'd still like to see a gradual increase in overall movement values for land based units, but I still get where the game designers are coming from. As I said before, I think I should have upped the firepower on my own dropships via upgrades. This would have not only made them useful as a transport, but also added a significant firebase for my force to use.
Lauby: Overall, we had a great deal of fun with the playtest with our only frustration being trying to look up rules without an index (thoroughly covered elsewhere in this review) . I will also say to any future DZC players that wrapping your head around winning this game may take some unlearning of habits.
Dethtron: Hope you enjoyed the report. In the event that we ever collect some minis and more appropriate terrain, we'll try and put together a new battle and get a more coherent result.
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