Dropzone Commander: Weitere Fraktionsartikel
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Dropzone Commander: Countdown to Drop 11 – Resistance Focus
The 27th century is a distant future. War in Dropzone Commander is a game of railguns, projected energy weapons, gliding hovertanks and more exotic technology – for most factions, anyway. Some make do with a pile of C4, some assault rifles and a can-do attitude. It’s time to talk about the Resistance, and why these scrappy underdogs may be the faction for you.
Just normal men
When the Scourge attacked Earth and the Cradle Worlds, only a small fraction of the population escaped. Some fled just prior to the attack and went on to evolve into the Post Human Republic. Others managed to get away during the chaos, and later formed the United Colonies of Mankind.
For every person that escaped however, nine others were left behind to fend for themselves. The vast, vast majority were killed, hijacked as host bodies for the Scourge or domesticated; kept as livestock for future generations of the parasites to make use of. A tiny number of survivors went underground, however, and their descendants are known as the Resistance.
In practice, the Resistance aren’t one united faction, but are a catch-all term for many groups, tribes and pseudo-military forces of varying tech levels. A Resistance force often represents the underground network of free humans, hiding in the shadows of urban areas and fighting a 200 year guerilla war against the occupying Scourge. It could be anything from a cell of irregulars fighting alongside the UCM for the liberation of their homeworld, to a band of crazed cannibals who see the anarchy of the 27th century as an excuse to just do whatever they want, to whomever they want.
You can even use the Resistance to represent actual militaries that are smaller and maybe lower tech than the UCM or PHR, but still fearsome in their own right. The totalitarian regime of Kalium is smaller in overall population than the other two human factions, but still has a vast number of souls under conscription and can field a military that may be crude or outdated by Colonial standards, but does not lack in firepower.
Old Warhorses
On the table, this mix of subfactions and capabilities means the Resistance have the most diverse range of unit types and styles in the game. Many of their units are venerable military hardware – 200 year-old EAA relics, built before the Scourge arrived and now hidden away, painstakingly maintained. Built in peacetime, their armour is often the opposite of the UCM ethos of efficiency – with a high design budget and no actual war to worry about, these vehicles are by some measures over-designed, with an EAA-era MBT having more armour, damage points and secondary weapons than such a vehicle arguably needs. The Colonies have stripped their vehicle design down to the bone for lightweight rapid deployment and ruthless efficiency, whereas the Alexander Super Heavy Tank is a lumbering monster on the battlefield, packing chainguns or missile launchers as secondary weapons and enough damage points to give even a PHR Scorpion pause.
As you can see, the Alexander and Napoleon are now one Unit with multiple variants. Along with a Belisarius and a Genghis, whatever they are.
These pre-war designs often have other quirks that make them that little bit different to their contemporaries. They lack a true barebones APC for ferrying infantry around, instead fielding the Jackson Halftrack – in many ways more resembling a light tank than a fast troop transport – or the Patton IFV.
This was just a Standard combat vehicle in Second Edition, but has been redesigned as an infantry transport, and while it has only moderate armour it sports either a twin autocannon or liberator railgun turret. Its grenade salvo weapon is only good for one shot – shown by the Limited 1 (L1) rule – but can be used to Concuss enemy units.* A weapon only needs to hit to place its Status Token on the enemy Squad, so the Patton is capable of defending itself against far more powerful units when necessary.
In a cave, with a box of scraps
These EAA relics are the treasured possessions of most Resistance tribes or cells, and are often very few in number. Lacking the gigafactories of the other human factions, they have to make do with what they can scavenge and maintain. This means many Resistance assets are jury-rigged civilian assets – a pickup truck just needs an autocannon or rocket launcher and someone brave or desperate enough to man it to be a bonafide combat technical. Buses get sheet metal welded to the them, optimistically dubbed “Battle Buses“ and rolled into battle filled with zealous resistance fighters, or in even more desperate situations, high explosives. These civilian vehicles have the Un-Countered (UC) special rule, which means that weapons with two ranges may use their first, longer range against them – active countermeasures are a technology beyond what the Resistance can reliably manufacture, and that will often mean enemy anti-tank weapons can hit them from the other end of the board. Delivered into battle in Hovercraft** that don’t have UC, these irregular vehicles are at least sheltered from incoming fire for the first round or two, but will need to be played cleverly once disembarked.
Fortunately, the Resistance have their own long range weapons, and – being mounted to barebones wagons – they can be surprisingly cheap to field. The Artillery Wagon does have Resilient, as anti-tank railgun slugs can often as not overpenetrate and achieve little – but is otherwise very flimsy. Its firepower makes up for that, however.
The Thunder Wagon sports a single shot Golgotha Missile, a one-shot weapon (the payload is almost the length of the wagon, after all). It does have a countered range of 24” due to its comparatively slow projectile speed, so it will need delivering into firing range, but the enormous warhead hits with a staggering Energy 10, doing 3-4 damage to any target it hits and blowing straight through Resilient and Passive Countermeasures!
The Storm Wagon variant trades this one-and-done punch for a rack of rockets instead. These have a far lower energy of 3, but pick up the Blast rule, meaning you centre the blast template over a primary target and then roll to hit once against everything under it.*** It also has the Battery X rule, which represents the squad firing together – when a Squad attacks with Battery weapons only one unit actually fires, but adds X to the energy for every other unit in the Squad. A full squad of six Storm Wagons therefore puts an Energy 8 blast template downrange every turn!
Both weapons also have the Indirect rule, so the barrages can be fired at targets the Wagons can’t even see, so long as there’s a friendly somewhere that can. If at least one friendly unit can see the target you can draw line of sight from it and shoot at a -2 Accuracy penalty, and if that unit has the Scout rule, you ignore that penalty.
Finally, the Artillery Wagon – and all other Wagon types – has a Ram attack. When your Thunder Wagon’s spent, just drive it straight at the enemy – at E4 it’s by no means a good attack and the Ram special rule will have the Wagon take 1 damage on a 4+, but it is free!
Level the playing field (or specific buildings on said field)
One thing the Resistance have always excelled at is demolition. With many units sporting secondary weapons like grenade launchers, 90mm cannons, sidearm missiles and so on, they’ve often been able to do “chip damage” to Zones in previous editions, which adds up when combined with their more serious firepower. Some of that has been reined in, as the armour of zones has generally increased slightly from second edition and most machineguns are small arms so cannot damage buildings. However their dedicated demolition weapons still allow the Resistance to flatten problematic Zones with impunity if not stopped.
The Lifthawk Gunship’s Goliath Bomb is a prime example of this. Carried by both the Barrel Bomber and Sky Terror variants (which trades its Frag Barrels for more guns), this weapon only has one shot per game, but it’s a big one: Against a Zone its 5+ accuracy goes to 2+, Blast means it rolls to hit 1d3 times, and those hits each land at Energy 9, Demo 7. A lucky roll can be 27 damage in one go, easily enough to obliterate anything short of a large building or area.
The Movement Allowance of 8” does keep the bomb from being too oppressive, and its range is GB, or “Gravity Bomb” – this means the bomb can only be dropped on a Unit or Zone the bomber moved within 2” of during its move. A Lifthawk’s hull is quite rugged, but you’ll need to be wary of AA as you make your bombing run – there’s nothing worse than losing an expensive unit before it gets to fire its one-shot weapon!
Guerilla Warfare
The Resistance Command Card set is, as with the army in general, a mixed grab bag of improvisational tactics and underdog guerilla tactics. Adaptability is a simple but useful card for when a round has just started and your hand doesn’t match what needs to happen – you can simply toss the hand in the discard pile and draw another or, for 1CP, only toss the cards you don’t want and keep the ones you do.
Reveal Cannon, Reactivate Jammer, Place Sentries and Rigged Zone all let you play the home turf advantage – the Resistance have been resisting for two centuries and know the lay of the land better than any others. Many other cards let you give the impression of prior planning – Rigged Bus allows you to unveil that your simple troop transport has actually been carrying more than just troops the whole game!
I.E.D follows the same theme – cheap and with good range, with up to two copies in a deck – it’ll make your opponent very wary of activating their mission-critical vehicles as every pile of refuse or burned out car starts to look suspicious.
In CQBs, Resistance are often the underdogs – in a world of 8ft tall monstrosities, aliens in powered warsuits, reanimated former squadmates armed with molecular deconstructors and so on, the Resistance are just normal innocent men. Some of their cards let them power up somewhat, however, with Go Berserk letting you swap out a whole squad of Resistance Fighters for Berserkers. The red mist descending will mean they’ll ditch their rocket launchers and won’t be much good for searching, but it can be a nasty surprise for the enemy as Berserkers hit much, much harder than regular troops do!
The Resistance are a really fun army to play, not least because they’re 2-3 disparate sub-armies in one. A commander can truly make them their own, leaning into one archetype over another or taking a spread of unit types to fit their plan – and their command card deck can prove that if you bring enough explosives, you don’t necessarily need a plan. We can’t wait to see what you do with this characterful faction, especially once they get their new models in the near future!
*The Concussion Status gives that Squad a -2 accuracy penalty until the end of their next activation. If it hits infantry, they count as Sited for CQBs (halving their OF value) and don’t prevent the enemy entering the Zone – useful for setting up an infantry assault if you can land the hits!
**Hovercraft like the Kraken, Thunderstorm and Leviathan have the Strike rule, meaning that they always begin the game Ready – something normally limited to Aircraft or units in Aircraft. In addition, their occupants can attack on the round that they disembark, albeit at a -2 Accuracy penalty.
***Blast templates are now 2.5” radius, or a 5” diameter, but unlike Second Edition the centre of a unit must be under the template to be hit, as opposed to just any part of it. This means no more moving in weird formations to avoid blast templates with oddly shaped units, and the centre of each unit will be clearly marked on its stat sheet so this is unambiguous. Blast templates never “scatter” in Dropzone Commander, so you can easily use a tape measure to check the effect radius without needing an actual template.
Dropzone Commander: Countdown to Drop 13 – Shaltari Faction Focus
We’ve finally got there, to the last of the six factions in Dropzone Commander – it’s only fitting that we finish with the masterminds that orchestrated everything. It’s time to introduce you to the Shaltari, and find out if they’re the faction you’ve been waiting for.
First Contact
The Shaltari Tribes were the first alien species mankind’s explorers encountered, long before the Scourge or the Bioficers attacked. Their technology vastly outstripped humanity’s; with them seemingly able to travel across the reaches of space with no need for foldpsace nodes, and possessing esoteric weapons and defences on their warships and ground forces. They even appeared to have managed to cheat death, able to transfer their consciousnesses to new bodies at the point of expiring, rendering them functionally immortal.
Spiny and small in stature, the Shaltari are derisively nicknamed „hedgehogs“ by many humans. Do it at your own peril; they have long memories.
The tribes were initially friendly, benevolent even – they gifted the primitive spacefarers a number of „Cradle Worlds“ – cherry-picked planets in the galaxy ripe for colonisation. They asked nothing in return, at least initially, seemingly happy to just share the galaxy with the younger species.
However, their actual motive eventually came to light. EAA spies discovered that the friendly tribe’s plan was to uplift and weaponise the fast-breeding humans in an internecine war against another Shaltari tribe. Few in number, the Shaltari were nevertheless a warlike species, quite happy to have their “client races” die in droves for their own agendas. The relationship between the aliens and humans soured immediately, and communications came to a frosty and bitter end.
Hundreds of years later, the Shaltari continue to pull the strings from behind the scenes. Their true motives have never been uncovered, but human intelligence forces speculate that they have been fighting – and fleeing – the Scourge for aeons, throwing species after species in the path of the parasites, of which humanity are just the most recent. The Shaltari have harried both sides in the war for reconquest of Earth and the Cradle Worlds, doing their utmost to ensure neither side pulls ahead or achieves total victory as the UCM and Scourge bleed each other dry. They have no qualms subduing the upstart PHR or Resistance, but seem to fear the Bioficers, aware of and evading their approach rather than standing and fighting.
If the galaxy is a Savannah of lions and trophy hunters slugging it out, the Shaltari are the birds; circling above out of reach, picking off the wounded when convenient.
Clarke’s Third Law
On the battlefield, the Shaltari are a grab-bag of esoteric and advanced technologies. All of their vehicles and aircraft are equipped with Passive Countermeasures in the form of energy shields that simply negate incoming fire, whether it’s in the form of solid projectiles like railgun slugs or directed energy like lasers. Whenever a unit with P X+ takes damage, they roll a dice per DP suffered and negate it on an X+, so most Shaltari units will shrug off incoming damage a third of the time with their P 5+ shields.
These can be boosted further* by supporting units, making Shaltari units often surprisingly hard to crack – as the attacking player you can hit, damage, maybe even get a high roll on a Devastator 1d3 weapon – only to see the Shaltari player smirk** as they make just enough saves to keep in the fight.
Their transports are similarly alien and advanced. Whereas most primitive species put the thing they want to transport in the thing that transports it directly – how quaint – the Shaltari use Gates. These transport vehicles move into position and activate their teleportation gates, at which point the Shaltari ground forces – waiting in orbit aboard a mothership – simply stride through, instantaneously appearing on the battlefield where required.
This gives Shaltari an insane level of flexibility, as any unit of the appropriate type can come out of any Gate. This also means that list composition works a bit differently for Shaltari – as their transports are technically empty, the structuring of Groups around their transports doesn’t really work.
Instead, when building their army, Shaltari players may combine any number of non-Gate, non-Aircraft Squads into a Group, provided their total points cost does not exceed 250pts. This means they are still able to make larger Groups for more impactful activations – the equivalent of another faction’s heavy transport filled with tanks – while mixing in smaller, more focused Groups as well.
The Gates themselves meanwhile are purchased outside of Groups, but activate similar to transports in Second Edition – when the Shaltari player activates a Group, they may activate any number of Gates with that Group. Some measures have been taken to stop this being too egregious – a unit can only be targeted by one Aircharge*** weapon per activation for example, so the flock of Edens surrounding an enemy aircraft and all shooting it when it twitches no longer works – but this peerless flexibility will still mean the Shaltari play very differently to other armies.
Finally, Gates can be embarked into or disembarked from outside of the Gate’s activation. Aircraft no longer land in Third Edition, so provided neither transport has moved further than allowed, performed too many Embark/Disembark Operations or used up its capacity already, nothing stops a Squad from moving into range of one Eden Gate, striding through it and popping out of another Gate elsewhere on the board, in the same activation!
Jade Wind, Obsidian Wall, Turquoise Spear
Arcane utility aside, Shaltari units are no slouches in firepower, defence, movement or any of the other characteristics they share with the lesser species. Most of their vehicles fit into one of two archetypes – agile Skimmers or durable Striders.
A real effort has been made to give the Skimmer half of the lineup a shot in the arm. The change to critical damage mechanics, where a high energy weapon can still only crit low armour on a 4+ means that these low armour vehicles are slightly more durable than they were in Second Edition, and their speed and agility remain unparalleled.
The Main Grav Tank – a Standard combined unit of the Tomahawk and Kukri – only has Armour 4, but its Evasion 2 and 9” speed mean it’s hard to even get line of sight on the unit if it doesn’t want you to, and when you do it’ll still jink and weave to give you an accuracy penalty. Flat Out 5” means that if it doesn’t embark, disembark or attack it can go even faster, moving at a blistering total speed of 14”.
The Tomahawk’s Gauss Cannon is a supremely accurate weapon, sharing properties with a UCM or PHR railgun. While it lacks the tracking capabilities of a Sabre’s turret or the firepower of an upgunned PHR walker, the unerring accuracy of the Tomahawk’s targeting systems means it can be fired on the move. Drive-by means that if the Tomahawk moves in a single straight line, it can draw line of sight and range for its shot from any point along that line – so it can zoom from cover to cover, firing as it goes and never giving the enemy the chance for a good shot back.
At the other end of the scale are the towering Striders, the most iconic of which is the Warstrider – a single Unit entry covering the Jaguar, Oncilla (previously just the Bio Atomiser-armed Jaguar, now in possession of its own cat name!), Puma and Lynx. At a much higher armour of 6 and with 4 damage points it can endure significantly more abuse, and every version mounts both a primary weapon on its arms and a secondary weapon as a turret. Other Striders like the Dreamsnare replace their turret weapon with a powerful shield booster, while the Panther and Ocelot mount devastating particle cannons instead.
The Shaltari are not limited to the ground (or about a metre above it in the case of skimmers) – they assert their superiority on every level, and the Shaltari Interceptor exemplifies this. As a Fast Mover**** it can more or less cover the whole board in a single move, meaning nothing is safe from its Twin Heavy Ion Cannons. With T3 they essentially ignore all evasion on enemy dogfighters, and the Critical 1 rule adds +1 damage when they land a critical hit, allowing them to harass heavier dropships and gunships as well.
For their Infantry, the Tribes have a mix of actual Shaltari and their client races like the Pungari. The Shaltari themselves are diminutive creatures, so they usually go to war clad in armoured Warsuits – hulking powered armour that belies their agility. In addition to a decent DF and the Hardy rule, these units fittingly have the Warsuit rule, that forces Small Arms and weapons of Energy 1 or 2 to use their short range when targeting them. This allows Braves to man the walls of a Zone in relative safety, and other Infantry to potentially even engage out in the street – something usually suicidal for less sophisticated species.
ome units have undergone significant changes. The Heavy Warsuit – formerly known as the Samurai and Ronin – is now a light vehicle, rather than infantry. Redesigned as fast skirmishers, they can still jump out of Infantry Gates – a nasty surprise if you were expecting no more than Pungari – and both variants possess Assault and Rapid Insertion, allowing them to really lean into these ambush tactics.
All according to plan
The Shaltari card set is built to really make you feel like a Warchief, outsmarting your opponent’s clumsy attempts at strategy and planning.
That’s not just marketing hype – one of their iconic cards is literally called Outsmart. Many factions have access to deck manipulation mechanics; cards that let you place cards on the top or bottom of your own deck, and so on. Outsmart is an infuriating card, letting you simply shuffle the opponent’s deck and foul their plans, and its gold outline means it cannot be prevented from taking effect – so cards like Espionage cannot negate it.
Inspire Minions meanwhile lets you, well, Inspire your Minions. The lesser infantry in Shaltari forces typically have lower than average OF and Bravery, but have the Subservient rule, where they gain boosts to both those stats if in a Zone with friendly infantry without it – i.e., with an actual Shaltari present to supervise and inspire.
Inspire Minions powers this up further, letting your inferior infantry fight with an almost religious zeal and, if boosted, throw themselves in harm’s way to protect their masters.
Many other cards are themed around archetypes – Jade cards improve your Skimmers, Turquoise buff your Warsuits and Obsidian, your Striders. Obsidian Tree lets your striders plant their feet, gaining Precision – an accuracy bonus if they don’t move – and if boosted, Overcharge – a bonus to energy for again, not moving.
The Shaltari are an incredibly satisfying army to play – if all goes according to plan you’ll feel like you’re two steps ahead, managing your gate network to make cunning plays across multiple rounds. At the same time, some of their units can feel refreshingly direct – no other army lets you field a force of sword-wielding footsoldiers (albeit some of those footsoldiers being taller than lamp posts) that charge the enemy and cut them down.
*Units with the Shield: X Y” Z+ rule (yes, we know that’s a lot) grant units of X type within Y” range a Passive of Z+. For example, the Dreamsnare Shieldstrider has Shield: Friendly Vehicles 6″ 4+, giving nearby vehicles a 4+ save instead of their native 5+.
You use the best version of a duplicate rule you have, so this has no effect on units like the Lynx that have a native 3+ Passive. Rerolls are also completely absent from the game, so these “under the hood” changes let us balance a unit for exactly what we want it to do (buff nearby vehicles to no better than a 4+ passive) without unexpected and unwelcome consequences (Lynxes with a 2+ rerollable passive).
**Smirking is optional, but apparently comes naturally to Shaltari players.
***The new Shaltari-specific rule for the electrical fields around Shaltari Gates, that lets them reaction fire at aircraft that come too close.
****As with all Fast Movers the Warspear (and its bio atomiser-equipped cousin, the Khopesh) is an agile aircraft, and we’ve redesigned the Fast Mover rules to ensure your beautifully painted fighter jet spends more time on the board. Fast Movers now make one turn of up to 45 degrees at the start of their movement, then move between their minimum and maximum Mv (so 20-48” for the Shaltari Interceptor), then make a second 45 degree turn, then shoot.
This reduces their ability to get perfect beads on hiding targets and means the old “last-first” double tap (where you’d activate your fast mover last in one round and first in the next to shoot the same target twice) is gone, but simultaneously makes them more flexible – you now know where within a 90 degree arc an enemy Interceptor on the board can go, rather than knowing exactly where it’s going to go.
Quelle: TTCombat
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