Dropzone Commander – Review
Since there has been some discussion about Dropzone Commander I thought that I'd post a review that I originally wrote for a friend's blog. Hopefully it'll be worth reading, even though most of the details can be found in the FAQ.
I've been following the development of this game since I first read an article about it a few month ago and pre-ordered the rulebook back in June. Now that I've had some time to read through the book a few times I thought that I'd write a short review.
The rulebook is about 150 pages and nicely laid out and illustrated.
In addition to the excellent models and terrain on display all the necessary diagrams and tables are easy to read and collected in the relevant sections of the rules with very little flipping back and forth required to catch all the details, which is a definite plus when trying to get your head around a new ruleset. The only thing missing is an index, which may make looking things up during games a bit difficult.
The first ten pages of the book is taken up by a short background section describing the game's setting. While nothing special (it reads like a mash-up of Halo and Battlestar Galactica with a hint of Starcraft), it gives you some idea of why the armies are supposed to fight each other.
The next fifty or so pages contain the rules and the scenarios while the final half of the book consists of army lists and background material for the four armies, templates and counter sheets.
Reference sheets, templates and counters can be downloaded from
Hawk Wargames' website.
Armies are organized into battlegroups, with each battlegroup consisting of several squads of infantry or vehicles and any attached dropships. Dropzone Commander emphasizes the combined arms approach since most ground units are relatively slow, requiring the use of dropships to get them where they are needed quickly. Dropships have excellent speed, freedom of movement and cannot be fired upon by ground units (except when landed) but are vulnerable to AA units and interceptors. Vehicles provide most of the army's firepower while infantry are the only units that can take, hold and search buildings or dense terrain for mission objectives.
Command units affect initiative rolls and are able to use 'command cards', abilities that provide various bonuses.
The movement rules are rather simple and straightforward, but the way the unit types interact means that maneuvring and being able to limit the opponent's ability to do so (usually by shooting their dropships to pieces) is the most important part of the game.
Another thing that help define the units' roles is the 'counter-measures' system.
There are two types of counter-measures, one that modify weapon range (weapons have a 'full' and a 'countered' range stats, the 'countered' being significantly shorter) and one that gives a saving throw against hits. Most units have some sort of counter-measures, the exceptions being infantry units and buildings. This means that vehicles need to maneuvre to get shots in and that infantry units are easy targets unless hiding in terrain or riding in transports.
A game turn begins with an initiative roll, the winner deciding to act first or last.
Then the players take turns to activate their battlegroups one squad at a time. The inactive player is able to react under certain circumstances (for example with AA units).
When all battlegroups have been activated the turn ends and players check mission objectives.
The combat system is nothing special. Target and damage allocation as well as line of sight is handled on a weapon/model basis. The attacker then rolls a number of D6s determined by the weapon's stats and every die that equals or exceeds the weapon's modified 'accuracy rating' is a hit. Then the attacker rolls 1D6 for each hit, comparing the target's armour to the weapon's damage rating on a table to find the number required to damage the target. Each success deals one (or more if the damage rating and the roll is high enough) point of damage.
The terrain rules are quite detailed, with a large portion of this section taken up by rules for buildings. Buildings can be occupied by infantry or attacked, potentially damaging occuping units or destroying the building. Infantry can also move through buildings or other dense terrain without penalty, assault buildings to capture them and may voluntarily evacuate buildings that are about to be assaulted or destroyed.
Building assaults are decisive buckets-of-dice affairs that are quite unpleasant for everyone involved. They are similar to regular combats, but with an added morale phase that determines which side sticks around afterwards.
Since Dropzone Commander benefits from a large amount of terrain Hawk Wargames plan to release a range of scenery including modular resin buildings and recently released
printable paper buildings so that players can get started immediately. The printable buildings are in my opinion really nice as well as supposedly fully compatible with the resin models.
The rulebook contains twelve scenarios with one variant each, mostly centering around retrieving objective markers or holding key buildings. Recommended standard table size is 4x4 feet and all the scenarios have a suggested terrain layout as well as directions on how to adjust the scenery and mission objectives depending on the points limit and table size.
All in all, the scenarios seem interesting, reasonably varied and (as the author mentioned in an interview) more inspired by 'Black Hawk Down' than the 'King of the Hill' scenarios that I've played countless variations of (don't worry, the book contains one or two of those as well).
As I mentioned earlier about half of the book is dedicated to the army lists. Dropzone Commander uses a point system and a force organization chart dictating how many and what types of battlegroups each army may take. The organisation chart also takes into account game size which is orded into three categories: Skirmish (up to 999 points), Clash (1000-1999 points) and Battle (2000-3000 points). One advantage of this is that armies tend to have a similar number of activations, limiting the number of battlegroups one side is able to activate without the opponent being able to react. The battlegroups remind me of the formation system from Epic 40K, although far more restrictive.
Models
The models are amazing. I ordered a PHR Neptune dropship along with the book and the level of detail is excellent, easily on par with or slightly above Spartan Games' models (the closest equivalent), and there is next to no flash or mold lines.
Quality comes at a cost however and the models are quite a bit more expensive than most 10mm or even 15mm models. This is somewhat offset by the fact that you don't actually need that many models but the entry cost is still significantly higher than for most comparable games.
The army deals correspond to the three game size categories, each being about 500, 1500 and 2500 points respectively.
Conclusions
Dropzone Commander is a nice little ruleset that succeeds in what it sets out to do.
It may not have the tactical depth that the level of detail suggests, but it seems like a fluid, quick game that reflects the theme and this along with the excellent (but unfortunately really expensive) models makes it interesting enough to deserve a closer look.
The scenario system is also worth mentioning- it's entirely possible to run a tournament and/or a campaign using only the scenarios from the rulebook. Since I usually end up doing just that for my gaming group any game that has a solid scenario system gets two thumbs up from me.
Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to try a game or two soon.
..... I used to collect pretty miniatures, now if I don't play with them, they get sold off.....
