But DzC makes the daring move of taking these transports as its central conceit. Lots of games have transports, where you put your little things in bigger things to move them across the board. Let’s return to those dropships as exhibit A. Or, as I somewhat questionably would think of it, good fun!Īlso noteworthy is the flow of the game itself. This means that you can fight battles that feel like battles, where hundred of people die and dozens of tanks are left as smoking ruins. Your armies are actual armies rather than a few squads that somehow got lost from the main force.
Tanks become the basic unit of measurement. DzC is not unique in this regard, but it does make it somewhat unusual.Īt this size, your soldiers are tiny and crammed 3-5 to a base. While both these extremes are pretty rare, a variety of games have been made to the somewhat-smaller-than-normal 10-15mm scale. They can range from the basically-painted-dots 2mm to the 72mm “play doll” scale. However, this is not the only scale miniatures have been made in. That means your typical person is about 3cm tall. Most of the miniatures you’ve probably seen are at a scale between 28 and 35mm. For those of you not yet inducted into the second arcana of miniatures, let me explain. Excuse me while I go eat some lunch.)Īnyway, back to the question at hand – what things make DzC different than the competition?įirst, it is a 10mm scale game. (And yes, I’ve made two food analogies in three paragraphs. Luck is like curry – delicious as a seasoning, but upsetting when overused or mixes into my troop reserve tables. Even worse, at least for me, is the fact that the system has a few peripheral mechanics (the availability of fast fliers, finding objectives) which use these rolls in ways that introduce frustrating randomness where I’d rather have the ability to plan and predict. This is great for ease of use, but the lack of granularity in probability can lead to some frustrating swings in luck. DzC often boils things down to a roll of a single six sided die. Indeed, if I had a gripe with the game, it would be an upshot of this simplicity. In other words, if you’ve ever played a popular wargame I keep having to obliquely reference in these columns, nothing here will surprise you. There is even a damage chart, although it’s a simple one. You will activate a battlegroup, you will use your ruler to move the pieces in it, you will shoot things by rolling some six sided dice to hit and then re-rolling them to damage. Where games like Infinity might be all about innovating the basic mechanics of wargaming, DzC is not. Indeed, I’ve found many games come down to who can get an upper hand in one part of the battle – say, for instance, hunting down all your enemy’s AA – and then exploiting that sudden weakness.īesides this specialization, what sets DzC apart? Interestingly, it is not the core rules. Not so for DzC, where ignoring any one element in your army can be devastating. In most games, spamming something (usually infantry or tanks) can fix all your problems, like Worcestershire sauce in cooking. However, at least in my experienced, rarely do they actually reach the level of true combined arms. Now of course, lots of games include all these elements. One of those pleasures I so rarely get to indulge. Just to rewind in case you missed it, yes, you can blow up sky scrapers in DzC.
Dropzone comander zip#
Your aircraft will zip across the whole table at supersonic speeds while blowing up said tanks and bombing high rises as well (in the 27th century you really don’t want to be a footsoldier) and your anti-air firepower will hunt down these aircraft.Īnd you will have dropships – lots of dropships. You will field tanks and walkers unleashing massive firepower into each other and those high rises, causing them to collapse. On a given turn, you will have squads of infantry searching high rises for precious objectives and engaging in running close combats through their halls. Now, 160 years later, it is time to TAKE THEM BACK!ĭzC is a game about combined arms – the necessity of diverse units fulfilling specialized roles. As you all know, in the 25th century humanity was driven from its core worlds, including Earth, by the invasion of the parasitic Scourge. DzC (as we’ll abbreviate it for time and acronyminal sexiness) is a large-scale science fiction game set in the 27th century. Today I’m talking about the sweeping Dropzone Commander by Hawk Wargames.
Some days, though, you just want to flatten a building with your opponent’s soldiers still inside it. Other days, you want something big and brassy. Eric: If you’re like me, some days you want something small and cozy, an intimate exploration of a few characters.
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