It’s time!
We have a bumper Teaser Tuesday post for you all today as we unveil the long-awaited Battle for Earth. So put on your space seat belts, and let’s get into it.
What is Battle for Earth?
This is a new expansion book for both Dropzone Commander and Dropfleet Commander that introduces new rules and a new chapter in the Commanderverse.
The UCM (and others) have gained a foothold during the Reconquest, and although they have faced a great many setbacks (including an assault on the Colony Worlds at the end of Reconquest 2) have discovered a surprising chance at an assault on Earth. It will take no short amount of daring, along with some of the largest battles ever witnessed by humanity.
When is it Out?
SoonTM
Haha just kidding. It’s going on pre-order this Friday, for general release on the 14th June.
Do you want it early? We will have limited numbers on sale at UK Games Expo on the 31st May – 2nd June. And when we say “limited numbers”, we really mean it. These will be advance copies from the printers, so we don’t know exactly how many we’ll have! We’re trying to get this book out to you all as soon as we possibly can!
What’s in it?
A lot!
It’s 304 pages of Commander awesomeness. The first 190-odd pages are all background lore. We start off where Reconquest 2 left off, with the Scourge attack on the Colony Worlds and Phase 3 of the Reconquest. There are lots of things going on that culminate in an assault on Earth itself. There’s loads of information about the initial fighting planet side too.
We’ve also got a time line of events leading up to the assault on Earth (a lot has happened after all), and for the first time a map of the UCM’s territory. Oh and did we mention the artwork? There’s beautiful new artwork throughout the entire book, meaning this is the most colourful Commander book ever made (and the longest!).
What’s in There For Dropfleet Commander Players?
Aside from around 190 pages of lore?
The Resistance Fleet!
We’ve seen some pictures and information about this new faction, but there’s plenty more in there! A dedicated background section for Resistance Fleets is there, along with lots of colour artwork of various types of ships (one page of which we saw already). There are also full rules for Resistance Fleets. That’s Cruisers, Frigates, Corvettes, Battleships, Battle cruisers, Grand Cruisers, launch assets, admirals… basically it’s a full fleet!
How about anyone that doesn’t want a Resistance Fleet though?
Well – firstly – you will. They offer a brand new way of making ships and playing the game. Plus, they look really cool!
Secondly, there a rules for ships from every other race. Official printed rules for Dreadnoughts and Destroyers for each faction, along with rules for the much-anticipated Monitors!
There are also brand new scenarios and a branching path campaign for mixed Dropfleet and Dropzone games.
What About Dropzone Then?
Well, Dropzone players rejoice, because Battle for Earth contains a new version of the Dropzone Commander rules!
Hawk announced a new version years ago, and we know you’ve been waiting patiently for it. We took all the work done by Hawk and for the last few months we’ve been polishing and tweaking the beta rules with the help of community play testers to create a brand new version of the game.
And the first chance to get your hands on it is in Battle for Earth!
Originally designed as a simple expansion book, Battle for Earth seemed like the perfect opportunity to give veteran players the rules they want to get playing again.
You’ll find a lot of small tweaks to improve on the original game, along with a few larger changes based on repeated feedback from the community. We’re going to go into the changes in a little more depth over the coming weeks. We think that the game feels great and will make everyone rethink their established tactics. This is the version of the game fans have been waiting for.
Does it Have All the Stats? That’s A Massive Amount of Stuff!
Thankfully, no! It’s big enough already!
Chris showed off some progress on our digital army builder a few weeks ago, so if you haven’t seen that, check it out here.
We’ll be transitioning all of the Dropzone Commander units to an online army builder app, meaning finding rules for your collection is as simple as going to the website and building your army with a few clicks.
The army builder is going to be a living app, which means we will be updating the rules based on feedback from the community. When we launch the app in a few weeks time you’ll see a beta version of the stat sheets – complete for every unit in every army. We’re opening that up to the public to play with, and after around 3 months we will be making our first big update to go into the 1.0 version of the app. That means points changes, stat changes, and rules changes for those units that need them. The Dropzone Commander community has a long history of influencing the direction of the game, and we want to carry that on!
What Else is There?
You want more than the biggest book ever made for these games?
Oh okay.
What about Command Cards for Dropzone? We’ll be going more into how Command Cards work in the new edition later on, but here’s a set that everyone can use! 30 Command Cards and 3 reference cards make up this little box, again, on pre-order this Friday.
More?
Okay, the start of the Resistance Fleet is here too! The Resistance Starter Fleet will be on pre-order this Friday too. The box contains enough parts to make 3 Cruisers and 4 Frigates in an astounding amount of variations. Again, we’ll go into how to build Resistance ships in the next couple of weeks. Basically: there are a lot of ways.
You can build a Vega Scrapfleet or a Kalium Kabal Fleet out of the same box! Or any other disparate group of Resistance fighters too.
This box also comes with full rules for building Cruisers and Frigates, so if you want to get started straight away, or have quick reference for your games, it’s a good choice!
We’ve got a couple more things coming on Friday too – stay tuned to TTCommunity for that information!
What’s Happening With Dropzone Commander models?
We’ve chatted about this before, but for those that don’t know, when TTCombat bought Dropzone Commander and Dropfleet Commander (and chained Dave to his desk in the dungeon) we didn’t get any of the moulds for the products, since everything was made by a separate production company. We make all of our resin in house, and have taken strides in the last few years to increase the quality and efficiency of the process. We’ve still got places to go though, and are always looking to improve.
So for the last few years we’ve been remaking Dropzone Commander moulds. There are hundreds of units in the game, and almost all of them have multiple components, so that’s a lot of moulds to make! In between making moulds for our other games and miniatures ranges too. As the moulds get replaced we make products available in our webstore.
Over the coming months we’re going to be re-tooling a lot of the DZC products to offer them at a better price point and with easier ways of buying into the game – especially for new players. We will be doing this as a gradual process, offering new kits and bundles. This will be combined with the massive Behemoths (you’ve already seen the PHR one). These are the biggest kits we’ve ever made, so we’ll be taking our time getting them just right.
We’ll also be remaking the Dropzone Commmander 2-Player Box, making the most of the great plastic sprues, along with the new rules and a few extras too. Making the game more accessible to new players and more enticing for stores to stock is the big long-term goal we’ll be pursuing. We wanted to get Battle for Earth out first though to give all you existing players something to get your teeth into! The days of limited stock and hundreds of blister packs is soon to be behind us. As always, when we have more information on new products, TTCommunity will be the first place to find it!
I Want to Know MORE!
We thought you might.
We’ll be (as already mentioned) at UK Games Expo, where you’ll have your first chance to chat about the new rules, units, and lore. Plus we’ll have pre-release sales of certain things, and you can see the brand new Resistance Fleet in person!
We’ll also have more information coming to you right here over the next few weeks. Barely a day will go by without something Battle for Earth related, so check back for more!
TTCombat
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