Dropzone Commander: Weitere Editionspreviews
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Dropzone Commander: Countdown to Drop 03 – UCM Faction Focus
Kicking off our Faction Focuses (Faction Foci?), we’re starting with the United Colonies of Mankind, or UCM. Find out who they are, how they play and why they might be the army for you below.
The UCM possesses the largest armed forces in the history of humanity – while Kalium conscript a greater proportion of their population, none can match the sheer number of soldiers the Colonies have put into the war effort.
Vast Resources
The UCM make up the majority of humanity in the war-torn future of the 27th century. When the Scourge attacked 200 years ago, their victory was all but absolute – roughly 90% of mankind were wiped out, and all the Cradle Worlds and Earth itself were lost in a crushing assault the Earth Administration Authority was in no way prepared for. Some survivors dug in and a number had left EAA space shortly beforehand, but the only others to make it out alive were the ones who fled to the outer colonies.
Over the next two centuries, these colonies licked their wounds. Together they formed a united government, brought together by one purpose: To reconquer their lost homeworlds, to push out and exterminate the hated Scourge, and to reclaim mankind’s lost splendour. The UCM are therefore on the offensive, possessing vast resources, immense manufacturing power and millions of willing bodies which they willingly pour into the war effort. It has been a bumpy road and victory is a long way off, but the UCM Army fight on world by world, city by city, street by street.
UCM armour is built to efficiently achieve its specific purpose, with secondary battlefield roles a luxury deemed unnecessary.
Singular Purpose
On the ground, the UCM is a huge toolkit of options for the aspiring Commander. UCM tanks possess the highest armour value in the game, letting even their basic tanks endure punishment that would knock out other vehicles in their weight class. While not the most powerful in terms of firepower, UCM vehicles can hold their own against most targets.
This focus on efficiency applies to their infantry and transports as well. Legionnaires are well trained and decently equipped, but their real strength is in their numbers – the colonies are willing to pour an unending tide of recruits into the war effort, so Legionnaire squads are priced to move, performing their tasks at an aggressively low points cost.
Similarly, most UCM transports are built for a single purpose: to swiftly deliver and extract their cargo. Being lightly armed and armoured, this singular focus on their role keeps them cheap.
Precision Ferrum Engineering
To see this design ethos in action, let’s take a look at the workhorse vehicle of the UCMA – the venerable Sabre, now known as the UCM Main Battle Tank*:
The Sabre is a purpose-built main battle tank, designed for urban warfare where its low profile hull can lurk behind cover, and its extendable railgun can lance enemy armour from relative safety. With a single crewman and lightweight materials, it’s built for rapid deployment via dropship – the Sabre can be dropped at a location, quickly and efficiently clear it of enemy vehicles, and then be rapidly redeployed to the next flashpoint by its Condor Dropship.
At Armour 7**, most anti-tank weapons will fail to punch through the Sabre’s armour plating. It only has one damage point – any penetrating rounds are likely to knock out the vehicle or kill the single crewman lying prone in the tank’s low profile hull – but your opponent will have to work hard to do that damage.
For weapons, the Sabre does have a hull mounted machine gun – now a “small arms” weapon, meaning it can only hurt infantry – but its primary weapon is its articulated Avenger Railgun turret. This supremely accurate weapon hits on 2+, and while it doesn’t have the energy to reliably penetrate heavy tanks, it was clearly built to fight Scourge – with the Tracking 1 special rule it ignores one point of Evasion, locking on to the gliding skimmer tanks the hated enemy are known for fielding.
Articulated returns from previous editions, allowing the Sabre to raise its turret and fire over low cover like walls or intervening units – exceptionally useful in the tight urban warfare scenarios the tank was designed for.
The railgun also has the Demo rule, reflecting the impact the weapon has on scenery – it may not have been built with demolition in mind, but a railgun slug will do terrible things to a building!
The Sabre is a rugged anti tank vehicle, able to hold its own against larger targets while applying damage with supreme accuracy and range. However, as with most UCM vehicles, it is a specialist – it’s good at killing skimmers but its reliability falls off against harder targets, and its machine gun won’t remove enemy infantry in droves. Other equally specialised units exist in the UCM roster however – the Main Battle Tank hull also allows the anti-air Rapier and even more focused Tachi and Greave configurations – a good commander will claim victory by writing a list that uses the full toolbox, then getting the right tool for the right job at the right time in game.
* Squads can now be taken of mixed „Variants“ of the same Unit – so a Main Battle Tank squad can have a mix of Sabres, Rapiers, Tachis and Greaves.
** Formerly Armour 15. We’ve standardised the armour and energy values – we’ll cover this more in a later article, but for now – reduce Second Edition armour by 8 and energy by 4 to get the new values. Don’t worry, the maths works out the same, and your Sabre can still take a beating!
***According to them, anyway!
Dropzone Commander: Countdown to Drop 05- Bioficers Faction Focus
With the United Colonies of Mankind covered, our next Faction Focus is all about the Bioficers – the new existential threat to humanity’s survival in a galaxy already home to several hostile alien races, these malignant intelligences add a whole new dynamic to games of Dropzone Commander. Find out how they play and whether they’re the faction for you below.
Trophy Hunters
Some sci-fi settings have ambigious antagonists where it’s not clear if the enemy are really „bad guys.“ That, er, isn’t the case here.
The Bioficers appear to be a new arrival on the galactic stage, but are in fact an ancient faction, dating back to far before human history began. Not a „species“ as such, they are Artificial Intelligences; synthetic consciousnesses seemingly built for one purpose – war.
The scientists of the UCM and PHR theorise that the ancient machines were built as autonomous weapons, that outlived – or killed – their creators, going steadily mad over the aeons since. They are able to transfer their consciousness upon destruction, but each time they do so their code degrades and they slip further into insanity. The Bioficers of the 27th century are beyond reason, bent on fulfilling their purpose of war, conquest and annihilation with no thought as to why. The conflict between mankind and the Scourge has got their attention, and they have set their sights on the UCM as a trophy hunter would draw a bead on a lion.
Their ships have already been seen in the orbital warfare game of Dropfleet Commander, but as Dropzone Commander Third Edition lands, the Bioficers make planetfall and we see where their name truly comes from.
While not as advanced as the scheming Shaltari, their technology is far beyond that of the UCM, and they have an uncanny understanding of biology – instead of fielding conventional infantry, their “Genitor” units sculpt raw material into the required form on the battlefield, generating automated flesh drones, towering hulks, and more. Worse still, they can repurpose raw material from their fallen foes, dismantling and resculpting the dead into the next wave to send against their horrified squad-mates.
Genitor units
3D printing has come to Dropzone Commander in more ways than one.
To make this esoteric form of infantry deployment work, the Bioficers bring a suite of unique special rules to the table. The first is their “Genitor X” special rule, seen on their Grievance Genitor Ark, Gyro Aero-Genitor and Gauntlet Genitor Circle.
This rule allows the Genitor to start the game with up to X RM, or “Raw Material” tokens on board. These tokens are bought as a part of your list, but don’t count as any category.
The Gyro Aero-Genitor is an analogue for a Light Troopship, able to rapidly disgorge infantry into a Zone and then bug out before the enemy can react.
Whenever the Genitor would be able to disembark units, it instead spends RM to “generate” units, with you deciding what you want to Generate on the fly! Maybe you need some Drones (4 RM per unit) for wading into enemy fire and locating objectives, or you want to send in some Hulk Blades (6 RM per unit) to eviscerate enemy infantry and prevent them doing the same. Sometimes you’ll need something bigger, which is where the Gauntlet comes in – this enormous hovering skimmer unfolds like a bear-trap after deploying and can turn raw material into vehicle-sized monstrosities.
Some of which get really quite large, like the Beta here (18 RM). And yes, that does imply the existence of an „Alpha.“
These Generated units are not true Bioficers – they’re sacks of meat, made to last the battle and no more, and have a rudimentary control chip that lets the intelligences elsewhere control them remotely.
Drones do not feel pain, and while they aren’t intelligent enough to take cover, they are surprisingly hard to put down. Removing the head or destroying the „brain“ (control node) apparently helps.
This “Puppet” rule means that if there is no “Puppeteer” nearby – usually your Commanders or other similar control units – the generated units will simply stop, standing inert and unmoving as the enemy finishes them off. The positioning of your Puppeteers, Genitors and tides of flesh-wrought Generated units will be the key to victory or the cause of your defeat.
Decon weapons
The Silence Heavy Gunship’s twin Decon Cannons are deadly in their own right, but their ability to dismantle enemy units for repurposing makes them truly terrifying.
This flexibility would be scary enough as it is, but the true horror of fighting the Bioficers comes when they bring their Decon weapons to bear. Many Bioficer weapons „deconstruct“ the target at a molecular level – soldiers have reported seeing vehicles and squad-mates simply disperse into grey smoke when hit, that then wafts in silent tendrils to the nearby Genitor vehicles.
When a unit is destroyed in the same activation* as being hit by a Decon weapon, the Bioficer player gets to place Raw Material tokens on either a Genitor or Collector** unit within range. Infantry and most vehicle or aircraft units grant two tokens, while larger ones grant four.
Similarly, if bioficer infantry fight in a CQB*** and possess Decon weapons, you gain two RM tokens per enemy unit destroyed in the CQB, up to the number of Decon units taking part in the firefight. For example, if you had two units of Drones in a CQB in which three enemy infantry units were destroyed, you would gain 4 RM.
Bioficer players will have interesting choices when deciding what to Generate for an imminent infantry engagement – do you want to send in Hulk Blades or Scuttlers for sheer damage output, or generate Drones to get more Decon in the fight, allowing more precious Raw Material to be generated?
Ominously Advancing
The non-biological elements of the Bioficer army are no slouches either. Their standard hover tanks – designated “Tusks” by their enemies – don’t have the sheer armour of UCM vehicles, but their bulk, redundant systems and lack of crew to injure or kill grant them a second Damage Point. While not as evasive as nimble Scourge or Shaltari skimmers, they can still jink and glide away from enemy fire, gaining 1 Evasion as well. They are also quite slow by Skimmer standards, gliding inexorably toward their targets.
For armament, the Tusk comes in three flavours, with the Tusk 1’s Barb Destructor turret being the default weapon. At 36” range even versus active countermeasures it can snipe all the way across the board, and while it lacks the sheer energy of a railgun, its E4 projectiles have the Penetrative 6+ rule, meaning a 6 on the damage roll will always do damage, regardless of the target’s armour.
When these exotic rounds do penetrate, they annihilate the matter around them, reducing the affected area to a cloud of denatured atoms. This translates to the Barb Destructor having Decon, so – as long as a friendly Genitor or Collector is in range to hoover up the dispersed material – you can turn the Tusk’s kills into more units!
Hopefully this whets your appetite for playing the new bad guys in the Commander universe. A huge Bioficers force will be available in the 2 Player Starter box, coming soon – in our next article however, we’re returning to the core rules to walk you through how Commanders, Command Points and Command Cards work.
*Remember that when a Group attacks, all the units in the Group do so at the same time – the squads can move individually before or after the Group attacks, but all targets are declared and resolved simultaneously. You therefore don’t need to track which weapon got the killing blow, just whether a Decon weapon hit the target or not. Feel free to tag something with a decon weapon and actually kill it with something higher-powered!
**Units with Collector X – like the Bioficers‘ Dropships – can’t Generate units themselves or start with any Raw Material, but they can collect, carry and transfer it to waiting Genitors. Your Dropships can loiter near the combat, ensuring that you don’t need to put your precious Grievance Arks in the line of fire to get that precious RM!
*** Close Quarter Battle, where infantry engage in room to room firefights inside a Zone – we’ll cover this more in later articles.
Quelle: TTCombat
Es sind interessante Artikel die TTC da bringt und es werden bereits einige Mechaniken zur neuen Edition verraten. Bleibt abzuwarten wie alles zusammen wirkt. Denke aber, die machen das.
Außerdem sind auf den Bildern teils bereits neue Sculpts alter Einheiten (oder ganz Neuer) zu sehen.
Auf einem der Bilder im PHR Artikel ist bereits ein Teil eines Gebäudes zu sehen, welcher der TTC Chroma Reihe entspringt (bedrucktes / beschichgtetes MDF). Es wird also auch einen Geländesatz Gebäude für DZC geben.