Tuesday, 27 January 2015

Dropfleet Commander: New and Improved Battlefleet Gothic?

I quite liked Dropzone Commander rules (they do combined arms rather well) and I have often agonised over their excellent resin model range. In the end I went (to my regret) with the equally pricey Heavy Gear models, though the Hawk Wargames card terrain was a great buy and works fine for 15mm too.

Anyway, I am interested in a new space game. Firestorm Armada is a poor rip off of Battlefleet Gothic (inferior in almost every way) with stupidly oversize models and Full Thrust is old, tired and hitbox-y.

I stole this photo from Hawk Wargames' Facebook.  The epicness of a 10mm scale strike carrier announced Dropfleet Commander with a bang.  They have some great concept art and I must say I like how they communicate with players.

Andy Chambers did a great job on Battlefleet Gothic which had some interesting ideas (Orders and Blast Markers) that are still worth a look for space gaming.  Heck, I liked it so much I made silhouette ships out of ice-cream lids (even then, GW was overpriced!) and played it extensively (Chaos vs Empire, not the unbalanced stuff like Necrons).   I like the "big ideas"shown in Dropzone Commander (the mutual dependence/synergy between units, and the consideration given to terrain and scenarios).  With the solid DzC team mixed with Andy Chambers' BFG hindsight, Dropfleet Commander is surely shaping to be a major challenger to shake up the stagnant space wargaming genre.

Also, I admire Hawk Wargames - a one-man show without any Kickstarter (which even established companies seem to "need" these days) started a complete miniature line and rules from scratch. And they're solid rules and very nice (if pricey) 10mm miniatures, at that.  Would like to see them do well with this. 
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6 comments:

  1. FilmExile28 January 2015 at 02:11

    I like DZC, I like it a lot. But I just cannot get a game of it round here. The model costs are just to big for the other club members to buy into. In the end that is going to kill it for me. I'm considering dropping my PHR onto eBay, :(

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    1. evilleMonkeigh28 January 2015 at 03:02

      Same. I liked the game, which filled an Epic-shaped hole in the market. Good ideas, etc, lovely sculpts. But just too pricey to buy-in for a 10mm game. I mean, I can get metal 15mm stuff for half the price.

      It's horrible to admit, but I''m waiting for a gamestore to do a sell-off of their stock at 50% off....

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  2. Paul O'G28 January 2015 at 09:24

    I was a big BFG player back in the day - I was the Imperial player in our group of 3 and between us we had weekly battles, a campaign going and it was a lot of fun. Would love to recapture that.

    DZC looks awesome but I struggle enough between 6, 15 and 28mm. I don't need or want 10mm too!

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    1. evilleMonkeigh28 January 2015 at 23:23

      I''m simply put off by the price of the miniatures. The 10mm DzC card terrain worked with 15mm. I'll have to have a look and see how well 15mm terrain works with 10mm. If it's OK I'll post up a photo.

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  3.  Ashley4 February 2015 at 06:52

    IMO 10mm is 6mm heroic, in the same way as 28mm grew out of 25mm.

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    1. evilleMonkeigh4 February 2015 at 13:08

      I'm not sure - I'd be interested to know the history. I'd say 10mm has its own "heroic"offshoot (12mm-ish), just like 15mm is now closer to 18mm+.

      10mm seems to have 'always been around' with 3-4 manufacturers without the widespread fame of 28mm, 6mm and even 15mm.

      I'm sure an 'old timer' from the 70s-80s will chime in sometime...

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