Drop Complete!

It has been long in the coming but Dropzone Commander is here at last!  I've just taken a detour on my way home from work to pick it up and I now can't wait to start building, painting, playing and collecting a second army!

After I had dug through all the packing peanuts and disposed of the cardboard I was able to reveal this little collection:

My order consisted of: The rulebook, a UCM premium starter army, a pair of Archangel Interceptors and a pair of Falcon Gunships. First impressions are excellent, the models look to be well cast and the book looks good quality.

I chose the premium edition army to get the KR mini-case and I'm glad I did as it will allow me to keep everything somewhere together and safe.  The internal foam liner is the standard pick and pluck type with a nice little DZC cut out on the top layer.  There are three layers to the box, the bottom of which has cut outs for the removed flying stands.   The KR case itself is the standard that is to be expected from KR and hard to fault.  I must admit at the time of ordering I thought it would be slightly larger than it is, not that this is a problem or a reason to not buy one!

The rulebook is not overly hefty but Hawk have managed to fit a good deal of background and rules into its 152 pages.  In a move I find slightly strange the book starts off with the background to the game world before starting on the rules and then the scenarios.  It finishes off nicely with the source material for the four races the UCM, the Scourge, the PHR and the Shaltari.  As Ken has said in his posts there are no prizes for guessing at who is who when comparing to the 40k universe.  Having all four races listed together, I think, is a stroke of genius as firstly it means you don't have to buy expensive extra codex books (although I'm sure before long there will be some source books) and non-collectors of the different races can get some intel on how they will perform on the battlefield.  Some may argue this will make the game purely revolve around the luck of dice roles but I think it will actually improve the level of competitiveness in games and make you rely more on winning strategy to overcome your foe.

The rules look to be a mix of those that we are already used to plus some variations on a theme, for example wounds in shooting are calculated using weapon energy and target armour value.  I am sure we will have some discussion over the rules in the coming days as we get chance to read them!  The book is colour throughout which is nice, and something that GW only seem to have cottoned on to recently.  In some places the text looked a little fuzzy to me, possibly as a result of textured backgrounds rather than bad printing, but otherwise it is good quality print and paper.  

Onto the models now - In the starter army you seem to get a good mixture of units with some AA vehicles, some main battle tanks, some infantry and transport and the all important drop ships.  The models look great and I can't wait to start putting them together and cracking on with the painting.

The models are an interesting mix of resin and white metal.  The infantry, shown on the right here are resin bases with metal soldiers whilst the vehicles and aircraft shown below are all made of resin with, in the case of aircraft, plastic bases.  

The two other items that I ordered make up a small fleet of aircraft, a pair of fighters and a pair of light ground attack aircraft.  I chose these, not realising that with the limitations of units (similar to force organisations for WFB where you are limited on special units depending on the size of force) I legally wouldn't be able to fit them into armies.  Hopefully however, and given that Ken has some aircraft in his proto-collection, we will be able to come to an amicable agreement and start using them straight away!


All in all I'm very happy with this as a starter collection although I can immediately see how I plan to extend by including a command vehicle and drop ship, some Praetorians and possibly a couple of heavy tanks.  After that I think I will probably get a PHR force because the photos in the book look really cool and have given me serious army jealousy towards Ken!  I could quite easily see me ending up with one of each of the four armies in the future however!


Now all that I need to do is decide on a paint scheme, hmm...urban, desert, winter or woodland, decisions decisions...

Dropzone Commander Preorder

With my intention to start playing Dropzone Commander as soon as possible, I have placed a pre-order for some of the starter faction army deals and the core rulebook.

The first faction I have placed a pre-order for is the PHR, this will form the basis of my future main army. The army deal consists of 3 x medium dropships, 2 x Ares battle walkers, 2 x Phobos battle walkers, 2 x APC and 4 x troop stands.

The second faction I went for was the UCM, both Ginge and Jon have shown an interest in this faction so it should be fairly easy to twist their arms into a game :-P. This army deal contains the following units, 3 x medium dropships, 3 x main battle tanks, 3 x AA tanks, 2 x APC and 6 x troop stands.

I have also ordered a few of the PHR Athena interceptors, partly because this is an absolutely gorgeous looking model, also, I have a feeling that interceptors will add a separate dimension to the rules then if playing with solely dropships and ground units. This does however remain to be seen.

I can't wait for this game. If anyone has any information on the way the game plays or initial impressions, please feel free to share. 

Dropzone Commander

As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been looking at games to expand to other then 40K, one of the games I have settled on is Dropzone Commander by Hawk wargames. This is partly because the models look awesome and also because dropships.. big robot mech walkers...tanks....fighters... I'm there, this sort of game seems right up my street. I confess to having absolutely no idea as to how the game will play, hopefully it'll be as entertaining as it looks in the pictures. 

So onto the armies / factions:

The Scourge: 

In the not so grim darkness, of the non too distant future, the largest threat to ever face mankind is the tyranid menace sorry, the scourge. Basically parasitic life forms, that embed themselves into another life form taking over control of their victim. Their military strategy is to get close and win, or die trying. Seems life is cheap for the scourge. probably because it's someone else's. 

Although this seems to have served them well as in the background they have taken over Earth and all the central colonies. So if i had to liken them to a 40K army it would be tyranids. They look pretty cool, however they aren't my favourite faction, solely based on the look of the models. I prefer the aesthetics of some of the other factions.

The Shaltari:

The Shaltari seem to be the equivalent of the Eldar in dropzone commander. With the most advanced technology of all the factions, the Shaltari use transporter technology as opposed to crudely attaching vehicles to dropships. 

They have some super cool looking vehicles like the Jaguar (right) and their actual dropships look fairly cool as well. This would be my second army should I enjoy the game and decide to invest more money into it.

The UCM:

The United Colonies of Mankind are what is left of humanity after the Scourge has taken over Earth and the cradle worlds. They have been geared for mass production of war machines and weapons. In a state of war since it's inception 150 years ago. With it's ongoing mission to recapture Earth, the UCM has become a military state. The UCM is probably the Imperial guard equivalent. Where the human weakness is made up for through weight of numbers and simple but effective firepower. This is Jons preference for his forces.

Which leads us to..

The PHR:

The 'superhuman' faction of Dropzone commander, these are humans that left the core worlds before the scourge invasion, labelled as rebels by their human counterparts. They have returned, with advanced weapons and technology. Though they don't have the numbers of the UCM they are more then a match for them on a 1 vs 1 basis. 

From a model point of view, they look absolutely superb. I love the look of their, fighters dropships and mech walkers. So this is going to be my initial force when starting out in the world of dropzone commander. I for one can't wait till the 23rd of July for the release of the game.

Images are used without permission from Hawk wargames :-P