Dropzone Commander Review - The Rule Book, Part 3

Lauby:  So we've talked about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Dropzone Commander as a thing that has words one might read.  Now it's time to move past the standard review cop out and talk about the words themselves.  That's right folks, it's time for a rules review.

Dethtron- Here's where the book comes back into its own again.  It's certainly not perfect, but for a 1.0 ruleset, I think it shows a lot of promise (I almost said "heart" here, but decided that might connote some other shit).  Though it is hard remove the book's layout issues from this discussion.

Lauby:  And that's the big piece of our frustration with the book's layout.  The rules themselves are actually refreshingly simple, well, written, straightforward and easy to use in-game while at the same time being almost impossible to find if you have specific questions.

Dethtron- But let's move on past that.  I think we beat that horse to death and turned it into Whoppers already in the last post. 

At its core I was left with the impression that this rulebook is very clearly and concisely written and supports a fast paced, mostly intuitive system while also bringing a certain level of complexity to the table.

Lauby:  I absolutely agree with that assessment.  I was really struck by the fact that the rules didn't spend a lot of time breaking themselves.  You see that kind of stuff a lot in virtually every other miniature game out there. When I was reading the rules, I spent most of my time figuring out how I could work within the rules to win a game rather than trying to figure the rules themselves out so I could actually play the game.

so the rules aren't stupid or arbitrary or irritating, but did you see the helicopter in this pic?

This is one of my big gripes with HoMachine, Malifaux and Infinity.  Those are all top notch games, but you spend more time on the exceptions to the rules than the actual rules.  It can be a bit mentally exhausting.  Don't get me wrong, that kind of design philosophy can create some truly interesting tactical and problem solving challenges  but it also means that new players spend a lot more time learning to play and that you introduce a staggering amount of possibility for user error.  To this day, I'm pretty sure I still haven't played a game of Infinity 'correctly' and I never did learn enough about the various Malifaux factions to even come close to being good at that game.

What it comes down to is that almost everything in and about the rules is there to make this game be engrossing, fast paced and easy to get into.  A minimum of rules for a game to get the maximum amount of fun out of game.

Dethtron-  So we've got all the greatest hits of every game ever here- clear, well-defined unit profiles/stats, a clear delineation of turn sequence via turn phases, and the like.

I enjoyed the pacing of the game whereby each player takes turns activating a battlegroup (usually a smallish collection of minis).  During that activation all movement, shooting, etc takes place.  This leads to a more engaged game for MTV generation types like myself who are sick of waiting 20+ minutes for our slow playing opponent to move their whole fucking horde army.

Lauby:  The alternating activation was one of the things that really hit my happy spot when I was doing my initial read through.  I've played a lot of table top games over the years - which means that I have spent innumerable hours being bored out of my goddamn skull.

Lauby and dethtron enjoy the turn order- artists rendering

Any time a game designer goes out of the way to make my opponent's turn something other than the perfect time to take a mid-game dump is a hero to me.  In this case, it also means that Dropzone Commander works at larger point levels since the players wont be waiting to take turns standing around for 2 hours.  It allows the huge games to still be games (though they will, obviously, still be longer), rather than devolving into just being a spectacle.  I'm looking at you, Warhammer 40k: Apocalypse.

Though I will say, that as good as the turn pacing is, it can take a while to set up plans and actually achieve in-game objectives.  The unit movement in the game, as you might expect, is centered on your speedy dropships.  All the cool ground stuff that actually does the fighting is actually quite slow.  I don't want to say it's a disconnect per se, but the fast pacing of the turn sequence didn't quite jive in my mind with the much slower movement of the majority of the units.

we're fast and full of other transports

Dethtron- That's where the pacing did fall off for me a little bit too.  I get that drop ships and vehicles are fast and your troops shouldn't get out of them too early, but a 2" move for basically all infantry seems a little light.  Couple that with (dis)embarkation further hampering your movement and you've got a bit of a wrench in the works.  Certain unit types seemed not to have enough time to get around the board even with transports.  I think a little streamlining and movement range increase might be in order to make claiming objectives in some missions possible.  For the record in most of the many excellent scenarios provided in the rules, infantry play a key part- if not the only part- in claiming objectives.  This makes total sense since driving an AA tank into the middle of an office building to hack their Gibson and steal all their precious files doesn't seem too realistic.

and we are slow, but necessary to winning games

One thing I'd have to say gave me a super boner is the Russian Nesting Doll effect of transports.  This helps to mitigate the limited range of units a bit as your drop ship may be carrying APCs which are carrying infantry.  I seem to recall that there's a limited number of disembarktion moves a unit can make, but I believe it was possible to move and land a drop ship, shoot out your APC, move it, then disembark your infantry.  Since units leave within a 2 or 3" radius of their transport, you get to add a little bit of distance to your moves in this fashion.

Lauby:  Now we're getting into our, admittedly, limited play experience here, but the direction Hawk wargames went with movement in Dropzone Commander will take some getting used to for new players.  Especially when compared to the move distances you're all likely used to in other games.  We're not saying that this is a bad thing.  It's just it's a clear, intentional design choice that really dictates how the game works and you (as a potential customer) need to be aware of it.

The whole idea being that you'll be relying on those drop ships to move around and that you'll be spending a great deal of time protecting them.  It's where some of the real risk elements of the game are introduced. The dropships tend to be pretty fragile and you have to have them to have a shot at winning.

 Dethtron-This is probably as good a time as any to talk about scenarios a bit.  Here's the refreshing bit of 'Hawk Wargames you is so awesome' that I love- there is no "fair fight" scenario.  There's this really nice blurb in the book that can be summarized as: 'fuck you modern warfare isn't about two sides lining up on opposite sides of the field and meeting in the center to fight and neither is future warfare gawd dammit!'

Instead most of the 12 highly developed scenarios provided center around some real world concepts like taking/holding objectives, recon, and gathering intelligence.  The intelligence gathering is one of the more fun things as you essentially have to hop your infantry from building to building to search for data while trying not to die.

here be objectives

Lauby: And we do mean trying not to do.  Not only is your opponent likely trying to shoot up your 'scoring' models, but the intelligence has a one in six chance of being a booby trap.  In other scenarios you'll conceivably be fighting over 'possible objectives' where there are a bunch of markers on the table but only a few of them are real.   About half the missions deal with some kind of random objective stuff.

Now, I have to be clear here - most of us are familiar with GW's LOL-random method of mission objectives.  However, the Hawk Wargames guys aren't hitting us with wave after wave of random bullshit.  So while Dropzone Commander is very British, I mean that in a positive way that has more to do with reality than what, say, the impression everyone seems to have due to the G-Dubs Chapter Approved party line.

Foreign perceptions of national stereotypes aside, when there is a significant element of chance in the mission goals, then there is also a significant pool of things to take that chance on.  So if you roll that first die and hit the dreaded one, you aren't screwed right away.    It's a good balance between the extremes of gaming a rigid objective system and having your chances of success being reduced to crossing your fingers and hoping you win.

Dethtron- Shooting was pretty straightforward.  Hitting and damaging units was a snap once we found the download chart.  The process made sense and followed a long tradition of similar games in its execution.  In range? Check.  Got LOS? Check.  Guns to hit rating?  Got it.  Cross reference weapons power vs opponents armor?  Donezo.

My only gripe, and this is slight, was that the "infinity" range designation on certain weapons seems myopic.  I like big games and regardless of the fact that I'm sure a railgun can shoot far as shit, can it really shoot 20' across my whole basement?  Yes this is niggling and neurotic to the point of insanity (as is my refusal to admit that 1/infinity is zero), but I said it- so there.

Lauby:  I was also a big fan of the shooting rules, but I also had a bit of a gripe (again,slight) with the ranges as well.  Most of the weapons have two ranges on their profile.  One for shooting at targets with active countermeasures and one for those without (where most of the 'infinity' ranges live).  It turns out that pretty much all of the units in the game have the countermeasures.  Except for infantry and buildings   Obviously the idea is to make the other super important unit in your army (infantry) also prone to a fair amount of risk, but it just seems like the way this was accomplished was a bit ham fisted in an otherwise elegant rule set.

Those stylistic complaints aside, I think the shooting rules are very well done and extremely easy to implement.

Dethtron- Totally, I think there was just the right mix and amount of special weapons rules.  It really added a lot of character and complexity, without throwing off the speed of game play.

Lauby:  Speaking of character, I think it's also worth mentioning that one of the really cool things about this game is how the designers managed to make all the races and units unique while constraining themselves to a few very simple and easy to parse stat lines. There are some special rules and so forth as you would expect, but you aren't going to be trying to explain 6 paragraphs of complication when they come up.  Similarly, there aren't 17 pages of racial rules to wade through and keep track of either.

seriously, how rad is this flyer?

Dethtron-  Closing out the rules are some more special rules for units like flyers.  These are pretty boilerplate and don't really fuck anything up.  Due to the speed of fighter aircraft (designated "interceptor" and "fast mover", they can pretty much show up anywhere at any time and that's just the way I like it.  The fact that they're hard to take out and are an effective way killing slower moving vehicles like drop ships and their smaller escort craft give the game a nice tactical edge in unit creation- how much AA do I need and how many flying units?  Answer- no fucking clue- haven't played this enough.

Drop ships have to land to drop troops (usually).  There's a special landing zone template that helps make sure there's enough space to do it.  This, again, adds some flavor without bogging things down.

Lauby:  Again, the game doesn't break itself to create variety.  Actually, that's a good segue into the next part of the review - the factions.