I’m feeling a bit better today. At least I’ve managed to make it out of bed and in front of the computer, which is something. Not done that in a while.
Not that I have anything strange or exotic (or interesting) wrong with me, just a particularly nasty bout of whatever is floating about. Back now though.
What passes for normal service round here will be resumed as soon as possible 😉
Here we are again, at the start of a new year. At least, in one calendar we are.
I just thought I’d take a moment to say many thanks to all of you who contribute to the debates on Quirkworthy, and hope you all continue to have fun playing my games and pop by once in a while for a chat. Especially you. You were always my favourite. It’d be awfully dull without you 🙂
2012 was a pretty good year for games work, with DreadBall being the obvious (public) highlight. Still loads more to come on that front. Naturally there’s been considerable work going on behind the scenes on various other projects, not least of which is my own Eternal Battle, which is only one of a number of projects I’ve got going on for my little self publishing experiment. Lots more to come on them too. I’ve also been writing for Ravage and Continue magazines, which is a fun discipline. Nice to be back writing for magazines after all this time. That too looks set to continue.
Given the way things work out, I’ve already been working on 2013’s products for a while now. These will include at least Season 2 and Ultimate for DreadBall, plus another very exciting project or possibly three. More on them when I get the green light (or Ronnie blabs). For now, let’s just say that this chap does not belong in DreadBall…
Grrr.
As to this site, I started reorganising things and got the headers and some of the pages done but most of them aren’t linked back together yet. That’ll get sorted when I work out how to do some of the technical stuff.
The idea of having some specific topics on specific days I rather liked, even if it did get a bit derailed over the hols. Damn that mince-pie guzzling brigand! Anyway, I’m going to get that back in the groove and use it as a focus for posts. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be the only days I post stuff (game design theory articles don’t have a set day, for example), but it does give me a set framework to work around and to schedule things for. Assuming I can remember to put them on the right day. Working on that.
So it’s looking like a busy and exciting year to come with all sorts of gaming goodness on the horizon. I’d best get to it then.
Thanks again for all your kind support and comments.
All the best.
Jake
Yes Officer, all my time has been nicked. The last two weeks or so. Oh yes, I know who he was. A big fat guy in red. Laughing to himself all the time and muttering about magic reindeer. Drunk, I think, or on drugs…
Orcs it is then! Just have to decide on which models. Actually, I decided some time ago, but I’ll walk you through the thinking as it may be of interest. At least, I’ll ramble about orcs for a bit 🙂
One of the first armies I had was orcs. At that point I’d collected a miscellany of models for managing combats in D&D, Runequest and the like. There were quite a few of them, but they weren’t a coherent force. Not by some distance. When I started playing Reaper and then 1st edition Warhammer I needed something a bit more organised. Unfortunately, whilst I could find plenty of people who were happy to play the games occasionally, none of them were willing to invest in a whole army. So, undaunted, I collected two: one Dwarfs and the other Orcs.
All but a tiny handful of these models are long since gone and so I am starting with a clean slate. This is probably for the best.
Where Do Little Orcs Come From?Orcs in the modern fantasy sense are based on Tolkien’s interpretation, taking an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “demon” or “ogre” (or probably more accurately, “monster” in a broad and unspecified sense) and giving them a specific and defined form. In effect, this moved orcs from the dark and shadowy corners where they had long lurked, and out into the light where one could see what they looked like. This is essential for making models of them though is at the expense of some of their scariness. It also had the result of having to define something that had previously gained some of its fearful reputation by being unknown. There has been some difference of opinion on exactly what form they should take.
In terms of models, orcs generally fall into two broad camps. The first are what I think of as simply ugly humans. They might have fangs, scars and odd weapons, but essentially they are human in anatomy. More recently, this is the sort of thing you saw in the LOTR films and, therefore, the GW ranges that followed. This is nothing new though.
When I first saw orcs it was this sort of anatomy I was greeted by. These were Grenadier models sculpted by the very talented Tom Meier. Beautifully rendered models, though not really to my taste. I did have loads of Nick Lund’s Chronicle orcs which were not as finely sculpted, but had lots of character (and a vast range to choose from). Still basically ugly humans though.
Many other ranges have followed in this general vein. Whilst they may be stooped and grimacing and dressed in strange armours, they are still just ugly humans.
The second kind of orcs is the less human, more distorted (anatomically) and somewhat comical. This is epitomised by the greenskins of Kev “Goblinmaster” Adams who produced most of the classic range of orcs from Citadel. These vary in anatomy, ranging from frequently hugely overmuscled to occasionally spare and wiry, but almost always with long, gangly arms and huge heads with massive fang-lined jaws. Whether these creatures would work in terms of real world anatomy is somewhat debatable. That never seemed to reduce their popularity though, and they were a staple for Citadel and GW for many years.
Brian Nelson introduced a more carefully considered anatomy and a carefully rendered level of finer detail to the GW orcs a few years after Kev left. This has defined the classic GW orc to this day. However, they still retain the essential features laid down by Kev for GW: long, gangly arms, huge muscles and a massive head with prominent fangs.
Given its market dominance, it is hardly surprising that many smaller companies have produced orcs that are very much in GW’s style. Over the years people have produced some excellent individual pieces and these deserve to leaven the armies of the discerning Warhammer player. Others have cut their own paths with all manner of alternatives on offer. Have a look at this post which lists 41 different ranges of orcs.
Having started with orcs, and having spent many years at GW playing with Studio orcs armies, I have a great deal of nostalgia for that range. However, it’s also linked very strongly with Warhammer, as it should be. Much as I like various generations of GW orcs I can’t bring myself to collect an army of them for something else.
The ugly human approach has never really appealed to me. The only times I had such an army was when no alternative had been invented. Even then the Chronicle orcs I chose had a tongue in cheek charm that they shared with Kev’s later, classic GW orcs.
Which leads me to the Foundry orcs. These were also sculpted by Kev, and so share a style as well as a humour which I find appealing. However, they have no association with Warhammer and are sufficiently different to have a style of their own. They are not po-faced, by any stretch, but even with their obvious humour you’d not want to meet one down a dark alley.
These are the orcs I’m going for. I’ve included a couple of photos of what they can look like en masse. For more nicely painted images take a look here.
Pretty much every orc army also includes smaller critters who fight alongside them: goblins. The history of goblin models is very similar to that of the orcs, with Kev and Brian repeating their respective roles for GW.
Kev also made a load of goblin models for Foundry, but although I like a few of them they are not all to my taste. I also have a more disparate notion of the smaller greenskins and so I’m not limiting myself to a single range. Instead I’ll be including models from a variety of manufacturers including GW, Foundry, Mantic and beyond. What I want to see on the battlefield is the same motley band of mis-matched renegades I can see in my imagination. I’m thinking that with a careful selection of models, some judicious conversion and a unifying paint scheme I can meld together the efforts of a variety of sculptors into an intriguing whole. We shall see.
…twice
…and I was ignored both times by both parties. Consequently I have deleted the post with all the bickering in the comments.
Reading a litany of snide comments and sly digs is not amusing or helpful. In fact, it’s wasted a load of my time that could have been better spent answering FAQs. I really don’t care which of you has the last word.
If you can’t behave like gentlemen then please don’t bother posting here.
Morning all.
I’m reorganising the pages on the site and rewriting a bunch of them today, so things will appear and disappear. Don’t fret. It’s all for the Greater Good. Trust me.
It’s been a long while since I did this and lots has happened in the last year. What I’d planned to do on Quirkworthy and what I’ve actually done have been rather different and the site needs updating to reflect the reality a bit better.
Does this count as my “Sunday Support” article? No. I’ll be tackling some of the FAQs and adding a DB Card Commentary for that.
This is the first step in a series of articles about DzC (as Dropzone Commander is apparently known to its friends). I will be looking at the book, the models and the game play of the beast in due course. However, before we delve into all that, I’d like to talk about something I’ve heard a lot in conversation about the game: “it’s pretty, but it’s expensive”. This seems to be a general reason for people not trying the game. I thought it bore a bit closer examination.
Firstly, I’ll agree that it’s pretty. We can come back to that later though. What I’m really interested in here is the notion that it’s expensive. To start with, expensive is a comparator – you can’t be expensive in isolation. So what is it supposed to be expensive in relation to? I thought I’d make a few assumptions and then do some back of an envelope calculations to see whether that criticism holds up.
How Long is That String?
You and I both know that most figure games don’t have an end to the armies you can collect. The company responsible will keep adding cool stuff and you can always find room for another unit in your force. So where do we stop? If we’re going to say something is expensive or cheap, modestly priced or extortionate we need some idea of what we are measuring. We need some ground rules so we can compare DzC to anything else.
My suggestion is that we compare the ante: what does it cost to “buy into” this game? How much do I need to spend before I can sit at the table with an army and any rulebooks, army lists and suchlike I will need? That sort of minimal game is seldom if ever the “real” game, but it’s enough to get the hang of the core mechanics and try the thing out. Note that I’m talking about the full game rather than any cut down “try this out” version that may be available. I think that in order to really get to grips with a game you need the full rules and the full army lists (and card decks, special dice, etc for your faction – but not normal dice or tape measures as I’ll assume you probably have those anyway). You can always buy another model, but this is about the basics. The ante, for me, is all the paper products required plus enough models to make a start.
I’ll be using the RRPs in pounds to make these comparisons. Currency fluctuations, varying discounts and so on make this a less than exact science, though in general the relationships between games should hold true. Don’t worry about the details too much. I’ll also assume that you’re going to buy all of this at once so you can take advantage of whatever starter sets, etc are on offer.
Oh, and while I’m discussing ground rules, I should say that Hawk Wargames (who make DzC) kindly supplied the review copy (thanks Hawk!). I don’t think that’s going to make a jot of difference to the review, I just thought I’d say in case you were wondering.
The Ante for Dropzone Commander
This is the easiest of all the calculations here. It’s £83.
Hawk sell 3 levels of starter set for each of the 4 factions. What you need to get going is the rulebook (£15) plus any one of the smallest starter sets (£68). That gives you the full rules, all four army lists plus the faction specific card deck and just over 500 points of models. This will be a very small game, to be sure, but it’s a game. 500 points is the smallest game they define in their sizes of battle.
It’s worth mentioning that they also have a set of free pdfs of buildings for you to print out and make into a city to fight over. Always helps to have a battlefield.
So, £83 to get you going with DzC.
Compared To… ?
Dropzone Commander is a 10mm scale battle game where the eponymous dropships cart your battlegroups about a tabletop, depositing them where they can rush in to seize objectives and suchlike. Well, that’s what I read. I’ve not played it yet. Either way, it’s obviously not a 32mm skirmish game with half a dozen models a side, so comparing it to them is nonsense.
DreadBall is just £49.99, so does that make DzC expensive? Again, I’d say that it’s not a reasonable comparison. DB is a board game, not a tabletop battle game.
I think we should compare Dropzone to 40K and Epic from GW as they’re both well known SF battle games – one in a larger scale and one smaller.
Spartan have recently put out Planetfall as their 10mm bit of Firestorm Invasion and it would make a very good comparator. That’s a 10mm SF mass battle game too. Let’s start with that.
Planetfall
This is fairly new, so there isn’t a lot out for it yet. However, they do sell starter sets that include a small force which is described in the rules as being tailored for their smallest size battles, very much as the DzC ones are. These include a bunch of models, a set of rules and the cards you need for the force. They cost £45.
It is worth noting that according to the Studio Sparta site, Planetfall is currently being sold at “very special introductory prices”, and so presumably £45 is not their “real” price. Still, it’s a lot less than DzC.
Epic
As we’ve been talking about physical rule books so far, it seems only fair to keep that going with Epic. The rules then, are £35 on their own. They are available as a free pdf though (as is Planetfall), but that’s not an even comparison.
You’ll need some order dice at £7.20.
The Space Marine models to play one of the sides in the combined arms training mission (a very small game) would set you back £55.10 (with some models left over to build some more basic infantry units).
This comes to a total of £62.30 with only digital rules, or £97.30 with the softback book (which I think is a fairer comparison).
Exactly how big a battle you’re getting to play and whether it’s (a) representative of the game and (b) a fair comparison is hard to judge, though it’s probably enough to give you a flavour and will do for our purposes here. It is also true that the equivalent size (in points) of mass armies such as Imperial Guard or Orks will cost a lot more cash than this. Space Marines generally have nice, compact forces. On the other hand, DzC forces all cost the same to ante up on.
40K
Well it’s a bigger scale and that makes a difference in some ways. However, for the basic principle of getting enough to make a start at a mass battle game I think the nominal scale of the figures is less of an issue than it might at first seem.
The obvious starting place for 40K is the Dark Vengeance boxed set. This comes with a mini rule book and two small armies for £61.50. Are they enough for a scrap? I think it’s enough to get a general idea of the game.
Unfortunately, that’s not all you need though. To match the other games I’ve talked about you’ll need the codex for your army which will be either £25 or £30 depending on which side you pick. This makes it £86.50 or £91.50 depending. That said, you’re getting both sides here, not just one, which makes the comparison fuzzier.
Thoughts
Obviously you could choose all sorts of other things to compare DzC to. In historical games, DBA and a 15mm army (the most popular scale) would cost a lot less, but a Warhammer Ancients or Hail Caesar army and rules would probably be more expensive. Partly that’s because they are usually 28mm scale games, but it’s also that they field big regiments. Anything modern enough to have vehicles starts getting expensive for that reason. Flames of War, for example, has a £35 rulebook. You can get an infantry company for the same sort of price, but if you’re buying a combined arms army you could triple that.
One thing I haven’t mentioned is the quality involved. A Lada and a Ferrari are both cars. Ferraris seem very expensive when compared to Ladas if you ignore everything except the actual price tag. Here we enter the muddy realm of personal preference. What I think we can perhaps agree on is that the whole presentation of DzC (and all of the Hawk Wargames stuff) says that they want to position themselves at the high quality end of the market. You don’t go to them to buy a mixed bag of discount toy soldiers. They are claiming quality and naturally have a price tag to match.
Their price tag seems to me to be about on par with GW, which seems to me to make sense when you look at the quality and detail of their offerings. They are more costly than  Planetfall, and even if that bounces up in cost when the offer disappears I suspect they will remain cheaper than DzC. However, I think they look like they should be. Their whole presentation is not on a par, and whilst I’m sure it will be popular it is not trying to aim for quite the same niche. What I seem to be talking myself round to is that Hawk seem to have looked at the market and decided that they can sit next to GW on quality and therefore charge the same sort of price.
Having said that, I think that GW is actually more expensive than DzC will be in the medium and long term. This is especially true of 40K which has a very heavily discounted starter set. The prices you’ll be paying to build up those starter armies will not change much with Dropzone, but will jump up sharply with 40K.
So do I think that Dropzone Commander is expensive for what you get?
No, not really. It’s a lump of money to drop in one go, but not especially out of the ordinary for starting a new game.
Painting an army was what I mentioned the other day. Absolutely. So what’s the first step? Well, before I can pick up a brush, I first have to decide which army I’m going to collect and for what game. Models, basing and colour schemes all need to know such things.
To take the second part first, that’s easy. I’m going to collect a new army for my own 28mm fantasy rules – God of Battles. They aren’t out yet, but I know what the lists are and it’ll be good to have a shiny new army ready for when they are released. That way I can do some battle reports and suchlike to demonstrate how things work. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
To appreciate why this is a tricky question for me you might need to re-read this. Go ahead. I’ll wait here.
Back? Cool. So, that’s a starting point. How do I narrow this down? Well because it’s not out yet I haven’t got access to models for all of the ranges. Some of the armies are a bit… unusual. That’s actually a big help in this case. Whilst I’d like all the armies eventually I need to pick one to start with and being able to cross off a couple because the models aren’t to hand narrows the field. Looking at a list and being broad in my interpretation of “not got the models” I can actually discount 5 options. A further one can be put aside for now as it’s a favourite of a friend of mine and if he does an army it will be them. It’d be silly to have 2 armies between us that were both the same.
Of the four remaining armies I have probably got enough models in the lead mountain to build 90% or more of any of them. You know how it is.
I won’t go into detail about what they are as I told Foundry I’d keep such things under wraps till they were ready. Partly for that reason I’ve gone for the greenskins as they will be familiar to all. To be fair, I’m not sure how else I’d have picked between them.
It’s probably also worth mentioning at this stage that I am more than a little picky about models. For example, I don’t build armies with duplicate models in.* Yes, this does make life harder, but then it also makes the army look better (I think), so you pays your money and takes your choice.
I’ve built, painted and sold a load of armies over the years and have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to have to go through that rigmarole many more times. From now on, when I paint an army I will make it one that won’t need replacing. If that means I spend a bit more money and time doing it right then so be it. I’d rather get it right than have the feeling that I cut some corners when I look at them. I’ve done that before and I hated it. Every time I put that particular Undead army on the table I was willing the enemy to kill them just so I could put them back in their cases, out of sight. I doubt that made me play better.
That bilious army was an experiment, and as you follow my adventures in army painting I’m sure I’ll have a few more. I do like to tinker. Sometimes it is a horrible mess and other times it works brilliantly. All part of the learning curve.
I’ve also had an idea about bases, which is to see whether it’s possible to use clear bases for all the models in an army. Crazy? Possibly. My thinking here is based on the ideal I have in mind. In a perfect world, I’d like a tabletop wargame to look like a diorama that can be moved about. Very, very often the basing of armies is completely different from the table they fight over, separating them visually when they should look like they belong. I’m fighting back a rant about terrain, but let me just say that terrain and the way that models interact with it is a sadly neglected topic. If the models had clear bases then perhaps they would blend in better. Worth a try, I reckon. If it works it would also have the benefit of them blending in better with every tabletop, making it well worth making more specific model scenery for different battles, themes or campaigns. No more snow based models on green tables, or vice versa. It’s an idea. If it doesn’t work, I have a plan B 🙂
Choosing the models is next. I’ve picked a game and an army – next time I’ll look at which models to conscript. Greenskins are blessed with a great deal of variety from a plethora of companies and there is a quite bewildering array of options to choose between.
*This is also a convenient excuse to do a bunch of conversions, which I enjoy.
Serves me right for trying to be clever.
This was, of course, supposed to be published yesterday as a Sunday Support article, but when I did the clever scheduling thing I went and set it for the wrong date…
When one player Slams another the rules list a specific sequence to follow for the results. What I’ve seen a couple of times now is Coaches cutting some corners in this and I’d just like to point out why I think that this isn’t such a good idea.
DreadBall is, at its heart, a game about positioning. Somethings this is a general and broad concept – have you got a model at that end of the pitch? Mostly though, the positioning in DreadBall is a matter of details – are you in this hex or one to the left? Which side of the hex are you facing? How many hexes are you from that Strike Zone?These details matter for threat hexes, Evades, ranges of movement and Throws, etc, etc, and as you learn the game and develop your tactical skill you will find yourself thinking about the exact positioning of your players more and more.
The corner that people sometimes cut is to roll armour for a player that is knocked down before their opponent decides whether to follow up or not (instead of after). This is a bad idea because it takes away an important tactical decision on the part of the winner. Do you follow up or not?
The sequence in the rules asks you to make this decision when you know that you’ve knocked your opponent down and you know he’s got to roll for his armour, but you do not know whether he will make the roll or not. You must decide if you want to follow up, placing a threat hex on the fallen player, thus making it more difficult for them to stand up if they remain on the pitch. Or, do you remain in your current hex and risk leaving the opposing player on the pitch and unmarked so they can stand up and run off to do mischief without hindrance in their next Rush. Whether the opponent remains on the pitch or in the Sin Bin is critical to your decision, but you don’t know whether they will or not so you have to evaluate the current situation and weigh the risk. The exact positioning of your player can be very important depending on what’s going on around them at the time. Making this decision a risk to be weighed by the Coach was a conscious design choice on my part and I think it’s a real shame to lose it.
If you roll the armour before you choose to follow up then the decision is simple and without risk. In other words, dull and uninteresting.
It’s a detail, to be sure, and some might not think it important. However, it’s a collection of this sort of detail which goes together to make DreadBall a game of tactical skill, and whilst you may find it saves a second or two to cut the corner I think you’ll find the loss of the tactical choice a poor trade in the long run.
Just got back after another day’s testing the new teams. Had a different group of playtesters over this time and it worked very well indeed. Building on what we had the first time, plus other games in-between, I think we have the teams pretty close to being done now. This won’t stop me testing them, but it is nice to feel like they’re getting close.
I’ve rewritten the Judwan and the Z’zor so they’re more challenging as well as more fun. The initial draft of both worked mechanically, but neither was as good as it could have been. The Judwan just weren’t fun, and the Z’zor suffered from being bland, which is a shocking crime. Not any more. They now have the biggest and nastiest Guard going, bar none, as well as having Can’t Feel a Thing across the board. Them bugs takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ 🙂
The Judwan have ended up with an ability which lets them try to move their opponents about, and this helped to give them more to think about. Most players didn’t use it a lot, but I think it was good to have on hand if needed. Interestingly, the last game we played saw it used a lot more, and I think it will come out a great deal more against certain styles of play and certain teams. It’s not quite what I had in mind for them when I first envisaged the team, and is a good example of the kind of compromise which is commonplace. “Compromise” makes this sound bad, which it isn’t. I’d have preferred them to work as I’d imagined, but they didn’t. Far better that they work and are close  than they are perfect and unplayable.
The robots’ transforming ability is another feature which takes some getting used to. In some ways it’s a bit of a tease. The temptation is to use it just because it’s there, but in fact the ‘bots probably work best when you’re more restrained. It does, however, offer them a whole new realm of options which makes them rather more thinky to play.
The teams are also highlighting some awkward little wrinkles in the league system, which need a few additions. Structured leagues (and campaigns) are notoriously tricky to balance, and often have very different issues at the beginning, middle and end as teams mature and the balance of power shifts. DreadBall is no different, so I’ll be adding some extra league options in Season 2 to try and balance out some of the more common problems.
All told, it was an entertaining day, and kudos to the guys who travelled for hours to take part. Much appreciated 🙂
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