Dropzone Commander?

[Astrella]

So because my mind suffers heavily from new Shiny Syndrome I'm looking at Dropzone Commander, the rules seem pretty cool with the whole rapid redeployment through dropships, combined arms emphasis and objective play. Does anyone have any experience with?

(The annoying thing is that with Malifaux, Guild Ball and X-wing, last one I'm thinking of trimming down to just a squad though, I already have stuff and there aren't really that many players who'd even play DZC around here I think.)

[amanwing]

I have two armies and I rarely play. It is a great game but at first you will need a special kind of terrain.
The other problem is that there are a lot of other games around and when I get the chance to play then I prefer Malifaux, Flames of War or Star Wars Armada. So Dropzone Commander is almost never the prefered game. The reason for this might be the rules. The rules for Dropzone Commander are different enough from other tabletop games with the cards and destroyable buildings that we thend to forget things. Especialy a problem is that there are no official unit cards. That would help. For us it is harder to just play a round of Dropzone Commander than the other games. For example when we last time decided to play a game of dropzone commander we forgot a lot of abilities, cards and other things. Sure you can say the same about most other games when you don`t play regular but I have the feeling Dropzone Commander is little too special to be only a third game choice.

[Phototoxin]

I played it for a few months when it came out but I stopped and sold my stuff for a number of reasons:

1) Cost - they are relatively expensive for poor sculpts that are TINY and spotty quality control. Some models (the hades) are gorgeous though.

2) D6 factor - you always fail on at least a 1. Your uber gun of which you might have 2 isn't reliable. This leads to luck being too skew-y

3) Luck is too much of a factor compared to skill - while your uber gun might miss 16% of the time if you happen to miss again that's a big deal. Also you could camp in a building for 3 turns and not find the objective whereas your opponent gets his objective first turn because it's dice based with no chance for re-rolls. It's more pronounced when you have people of similar skill.

4) Listhammer - There's a rock/paper/scissors thing that effects your list building - AA beats flyers, flyers beats non-heavy tanks and anti-armour beats heavy tanks (including AA). Sometimes your list is just hard countered.

I didn't enjoy it. I won my first lot of games and then in a tournament just fluffed it all because I didn't care and was just making up numbers for a mate. I find it frustrating as your tactics are rendered moot by randomness

Edited December 4, 2015 by Phototoxin

[Astrella]

I played it for a few months when it came out but I stopped and sold my stuff for a number of reasons:

1) Cost - they are relatively expensive for poor sculpts that are TINY and spotty quality control. Some models (the hades) are gorgeous though.

2) D6 factor - you always fail on at least a 1. Your uber gun of which you might have 2 isn't reliable. This leads to luck being too skew-y

3) Luck is too much of a factor compared to skill - while your uber gun might miss 16% of the time if you happen to miss again that's a big deal. Also you could camp in a building for 3 turns and not find the objective whereas your opponent gets his objective first turn because it's dice based with no chance for re-rolls. It's more pronounced when you have people of similar skill.

4) Listhammer - There's a rock/paper/scissors thing that effects your list building - AA beats flyers, flyers beats non-heavy tanks and anti-armour beats heavy tanks (including AA). Sometimes your list is just hard countered.

I didn't enjoy it. I won my first lot of games and then in a tournament just fluffed it all because I didn't care and was just making up numbers for a mate. I find it frustrating as your tactics are rendered moot by randomness

Isn't the idea that you have to build a combined arms list so you have the tools to deal with everything? Like I wouldn't call it rock paper siccors when it's about elements of your list, rather than the list itself. The only way I feel your list would be hard-countered is if you just slanted your list too much I think.

[Paelios]

I haven't played too much myself but am stocked to get things going in my area.  The only thing at the moment truning me off is the number of players in my area. Which is one.  In a city about an hour a way is a huge fan-base and everyone I talk to there loves playing it and have been at it for over a year.  I think once everyone's mind set gets acclimated to the rules that they will be fine.  

Overall I am pretty impressed with what I have seen and haven't heard too much negativity.  This maybe due to the fact that I don't know too many people who play though.

[rover1013]

I've been collecting the game for just over a year but only recently started playing "decent" games of it.  The biggest early problem we had was that in armies of just starter forces + some extras, the game is super random and objectives feel impossible so most games came down to kill points.  Once everyone started playing at least 1500+ point games with varied forces (and learned the value of taking loads of infantry), everything started to click much better.  I like the game quite a lot.  We didn't really know better at the start, but you *might* be able to mitigate some of the randomness in early, small games by limiting the number of large sized buildings and placing most objectives in smaller buildings (possibly on a board smaller than 4x4).

The negative comment that rings the most true for me in previous replies is the cost though.  It is high.

The cardboard terrain packs that they sell are plenty adequate for playing the game so long as you don't mind the fact that they're printed cardboard and I don't have a problem with scenery being a barrier.

The FFOR army builder is also very helpful (once you learn its quirks) since its printouts include all of the units statlines and abilities.  http://www.dzc-ffor.com/

[Bengt]

I've only just started with DZC so can't comment much on the gameplay. But I don't think the cost to get a bare bones army of "standard" size (1500) is very high (assuming you get some plastic stuff), sure it's more than Malifaux but that is a pretty low bar (my other reference point is Games Workshop ). And going forward there will be a certain number of models that you'll continue to use in every army, i.e. you always need a certain amount dropships, AA, etc. Malifaux kind of encourages you to swap out more of your models.