/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General:

/dcg/ Dropzone/Dropfleet Commander General

Happy Scourge Mugshot Edition

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>Hawk Wargames website, with links to models, rules, and forums
hawkwargames.com/

>DZC rules, units, errata, etc
mediafire.com/folder/3e69ovwksc27r/DZC#3e69ovwksc27r

>DZC Phase 2 units
mediafire.com/download/hjxrk1f2i0fv283/Phase2_units.pdf
>DZC Phase 2 rules and scenarios
mediafire.com/file/9o0mghzvf3gsnzg/Phase2-rulesScenarios.pdf
>DZC Phase 2 fluff
mediafire.com/download/novaydro2mxo074/Phase2-fluff.pdf

>free DZC army builders
dzc-ffor.com/
solomonder.com/scoldzap/

>dropfleet preorder, showing prices and lotsa pics
waylandgames.co.uk/3951-dropfleet-commander
miniaturemarket.com/table-top-miniatures/dropfleet-commander.html
thewarstore.com/dropfleet-commander-preorder.html

>DFC Kickstarter, lots of useful information to drudge through
kickstarter.com/projects/hawkwargames/dropfleet-commander

>All currently leaked photos of the DFC rulebook, courtesy of the facebook group and multiple anons
imgur.com/a/i48YR

>DFC ship stat pics
dropbox.com/sh/ci1w3beqaeu5nca/AADismn1gX0dYWShk45csdRca?dl=0

Reminder to ignore bait, unless it is masterfully crafted.

Initial Topic: What models are you going to look forward to assembling/painting the most?

Other urls found in this thread:

volleyfirepainting.blogspot.com/2016/10/dropfleet-commanderfirst-look.html
anyforums.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>What models are you going to look forward to assembling/painting the most?
That massive fucking 2-up Beijing

A pair of Seattle Carriers!

>What models are you going to look forward to assembling/painting the most?
My Diamond. Glory be to the particle triad.

UCM frigates are great too, though. They're cute and I reckon they'll be fun to paint.

UCM Starter Box in all it's glory.
Then the Scourge with a Borg-like color scheme perhaps.

I wonder how UCM looks in an actual colour. All of what I've seen so far has been greyscale or close to it, I might try navy blue with mine, or maybe dark green.

Trying to make sure that I understand Battlegroup construction -
Would an Orion, a group of two Europa's, and a second group of two Europa's be a legal Line or Pathfinder Battlegroup?

It would be legal, but there wouldn't be much point in it. The Europas would all activate together since they're the same ship class and in the same battlegroup.

So this leads me to two questions :
1) Can the two pairs of Europa's move apart from each other, provided they remain within the 12" battlegroup coherency?
2) If not (and they merge into one giant group), does that mean I'm limited to no more than four Europa's in one battlegroup? (as that is their group cap)

1) Nope, the group mechanic is just there for listbuilding. All ships of the same class in a battlegroup funcitonally merge into one big group.
2) Also nope, the group limits are also just for listbuilding.

That is ... annoyingly counter-intuitive.
But thanks for answering my questions!

Huh, I just noticed that Scourge get fewer ships than everybody else, with 19 classes compared to the 20 of all the other factions. That's a little odd.

>Jelly deserves nothing more.

What do you mean by it being counter-intuitive?
The reason everything clumps up is to prevent people from activating one ship at a time to optimize every move and shot.
>And that would take an excessive amount of time.

What you have there is a Battlegroup with 1x Orion group and 1x (4)Europa group that still has room for 2 additional Europas.

Well, you're hard capped at three groups per battlegroup anyway, so there's minimal danger of that.

But I understand why it is the way it is, it's just not something I would have expected by looking at the battlegroup construction chart.
It also creates some weird scenarios. If you play a high point level Clash game and decide to field two battleships they have to stay within 12" of each other... unless they are the same class in which case it's 6".

It's not bad. It just feels weird.
Then again maybe I'm just more familiar with war games that have fixed unit sizes.

Wouldn't it be room for four more Europa's? (Assuming you can fit the points)

Haven't got my PHR yet, but I've got 20 frigates on the way and a LOT of them are going to be Europe's.

Plurals don't use apostrophes, apostrophes are used to show ownership

My grammar is fine, but if you could talk to my autocorrect that would be great.

You don't HAVE to group up your battleships.
I don't know if Battleships comes in pairs or not, but by simply making them spearhead their own battlegroups you circumvent that particular problem.

I don't know. Doesn't Europas come 1-2? Because if they came 1-4 you could potentially take 12 Europas and 2 Orions in 1 group.

Tell your autocorrect to kill itself.

2-4, like all the other gun frigates.

8 Europas and 2 Orions, you're still limited to 3 groups in a battlegroup during list building.

Aaah. Right. I read 1-3 Light and 0-1 Medium in pathfinder, so I tought i could take 4 for some reasons.
But yeah, 1 BG/G of 12 Europas is possible then.

And only 480 pts, so doable in a 1500 pts game!

Idle thought- for the Hector / Bell, does it seem possible to convert them so that the twin lasers are arranged horizontally? I was thinking that it would let you use the normal frigate undersections rather than the grand chin, and then just use some spare curves to attach the outlying laser barrels to the main body

volleyfirepainting.blogspot.com/2016/10/dropfleet-commanderfirst-look.html

Grey and yellow is really fantastic, thanks user.

You mean sort of how this guy's done with his Echo kitbash?

Yeah, sorta like that. Take the twin lasers, do them horizontally, use the normal cruiser bottom section, then cover up the ends so you dont have half the lasers hanging off the sides as it's not very aesthetic.

What IS that echo made out of? Reversed large front prow?

Looks like a normal cruiser bottom lip glued onto a light cruiser bottom lip.

Well shit. If I get those parts left over after making my fleet, I will copy this and have corvettes.
It looks pretty aestethic too.

>Not enough classes fot Scourge

That's because you only need 3: your dropship carrier, your Shenlong, and a horde of Wyverns.

Joking aside, I really hope that this is a viable list because everything in the H, S and L sizes look a bit shit.

>H
>shit
>Scourge BC's and HC's
>shit
user, I...

>[hiigara intensifies]

I've been wondering about the shenlong, actually. For 30 odd points more you can get a basilisk/akuma, which brings a full cloak and battleship levels of firepower. Or, for ~60/80 points less, you can get a sphinx/yokai which only fires one shot fewer than the shenlong, albeit without any cloaking/stealth. Oh, and all of those options are faster than the shenlong.

It just feels like it's in a slightly odd place, I'd probably go with either a basic sphinx or splash out on a battlecruiser over the shenlong.

The BCs are amazing

I mean appearances. I fully recognise the power.
> enchanted hat of +5 sneak

>not liking how they look
user, please, the hats are -fabulous-

I really don't like DZC scourge and even I have found the DFC scourge growing on me

Or in my ear onto my brain, one of the two

>HC has little ridges along its spire
>BC has little ridges along its spire
Dave, pls

Giant hat of consequenceless station keeping and weapons freeing

The frigates and hatships I understand disliking, but I'm genuinely curious as to why you don't like those sick as fuck battleships.

Well, the Shenlong is an H choice, so comparing it to a Sphinx or Yokai isn't really appropriate. The Basilisk comparison is a fair one though, 30pts more nets you a MUCH better cloaking device on a faster platform and with more firepower, and realistically, what else can you put those 30 points towards? A better Admiral is the only thing really that springs to mind.
If the partial cloak prevented you from taking Minor Spikes, and meant that Major Spikes came out as Minor ones instead. It would be a lot more viable.

Now, the Raiju is more tempting because it has a different weapons loadout to the Bassie and Mantie, as it's an upgunned Ifrit, as opposed to the Mantie which is an upgunned Wyvern. The benefit to the Raiju is that you can use stealth to set up silent running strikes from the backfield without worrying about retalitation (except from bombers). Whereas both Battlecruisers have to try and close with the target, the Manticore especially.

>tfw no good studio pic of the Basilisk at this angle

>If the partial cloak prevented you from taking Minor Spikes, and meant that Major Spikes came out as Minor ones instead. It would be a lot more viable.
This; instead of capping spikes at 6", it should have reduced spikes by 6", to a minimum of 0".

>If the partial cloak prevented you from taking Minor Spikes, and meant that Major Spikes came out as Minor ones instead. It would be a lot more viable.

Word of Dave in the video battle report had him playing the Shenlong exactly like that

If that's the BoW demo game, then he had it working in the opposite fashion. The Shenlong took minor spikes, but could never receive a Major one.

Right, duh.

Still waiting on my pledge to come in but I couldn't wait so I bought a scourge starter set. Been trying to play with my friends using the rules we know and what's in the blurry pictures of the book but anyone know if there is a good full scan of the book yet? I'd like to play some games without needing to wait until whenever my pledge decides to arrive.

>retail 2p box shipment gets delayed till tomorrow
Reeeee, I want my book

>Shaltari and PHR starter sets just got in
>actually have models in hand
>suddenly decide that magnetization is for suckers
Fuck, lads, you have no idea how tiny and how big these things actually are until you see them.

I am skipping for the most part so I can have ships have identities.

I am going to make some of the turrets and that is it.

I have a theory, that the Taipei exists solely because no one spends points on missile batteries for their dropships.

>one of the PHR ship names is "A Thousand Fathoms"
>another is "Foe Confounded"
Confirmed for cheeky names

How do the Corvettes stack up?
Might have the wrong expectations, but the Santiago just seems really underwhelming. I appreciate that it's cheap, but it seems to throw almost nothing out and still demands you to be in CAW range.
Echo is obviously hot shit. Dunno if spam is an option, but like..
40 of them.
Plus a flagship would be interesting.

Most corvettes are there only to kill strike carriers in atmosphere, UCM doesn't get anything like light broadsides to fish for 6s with. The only way they can get a lot of non-CA dice out without resorting to something ridiculous like weapons free Moscow is to bring a bunch of Toulons.

>Might have the wrong expectations, but the Santiago just seems really underwhelming. I appreciate that it's cheap, but it seems to throw almost nothing out and still demands you to be in CAW range.
Compared to everything else, A2A makes it worth it. Just two squadrons of two is enough to seriously put a hurt on strike carriers, and the fact that they're explicitly designed to go after scoring ships make them far more valuable than their points.

They're not going to be putting out much, but all they do need to put out is 2 or 3 damage across the squadron to cripple a strike carrier, and suddenly your opponent is down one scoring unit for the small investment of 44 points.

Remember the echo doesn't have the air to air rule on its turret, only its CA weapon, so the turret is only hitting on 6s when in atmosphere. And without that, it only has the firepower of the santiago on its CA.

Santiagos have two and only two targets

A) strike carriers, which they're the best point for point killer of, full stop.

B) other corvettes in atmosphere, which they're quite good at

Strike carriers are supposed to be non trivial to destroy no matter what for all factions, they're that important to the objective game

Is the echo's doodads really worth the price?

>echo turret only hits on a 6

That is definitely true but a squad of 3 puts out 6 shots from their turrets which means they'll get on average another non PD-able hit every turn.

Of course they cost almost 50% more than a Santiago so they had better be a bit Killier

What's nice about the Echo (and glass) is that they're actually not shit at hunting stuff in orbit since they can hide in atmosphere until they see something worth blitzing and attacking.

3 echoes will do 2 Europa broadsides worth of shots with stealth, they're pretty versatile back up to your Europas that aren't worthless when they have no A2A to hunt

Yes, they're effective strike carrier hunters while being fairly difficult to kill themselves in atmo.

When they aren't killing atmo strike carriers they can go on silent running and put out a respectable amount of front arc shots.

They also have about the same survivability as UCM frigates as they don't roll on the crippling table and most frigates that take 2 damage will explode anyway.

Eh. I'm faintly underwhelmed by silent running on a signature 2" ship.

Eh, every little bit helps.

It means that it's a pain in the ass to active scan and snipe the primary threat to your strike carriers, which is a nontrivial advantage.

Corvettes are really important since they're the hard counter to strike carriers, killing them early is quite important

I'd still rather active scan the enemy's strike carriers before they dive into atmosphere.

They should be in atmo at start of third turn, early kills are hard/lucky.

The one I'm really interested to learn about is the Glass. Good speed, ability to ignore PD and very nice range at the cost of being the most fragile piece of shit in the game and by far the most expensive corvette. Not to mention a weapon with lots of shots, but a total inability to crit. PHR are going to give it a tough time, methinks.

Itll be difficult in practice to pull the strike carrier alpha off as on turn 1 those strike carriers are going to go down a layer and nobody on your side will be able to go weapons free to guarantee a kill.

The other issue being that even with a major spike most strike carriers will will be sitting at sig 14-15" and will be around 36"-38" away from your table edge, which puts them out of move+scan+sig for everyone except shaltari

This is all ignoring that strike carriers themselves will almost always come in on silent running, making scanning them to a major spike require at least 3 ships and activations.


This sounds complicated but once you get a demo game in it'll become very obvious

Okay, I never claimed it was easy to do, just they were my preferred targets to corvettes. Why then are corvettes easier to alpha strike than strike carriers?

They typically won't be if they're just hugging silent running but echoes will at least be throwing out some non trivial damage while they wait to pounce

>non-trivial damage

If scyllas had A2A they wouldn't be shit

I feel with one more shot they'd be okay, kind of like an atmospheric toulon. Maybe that would make the toulon look poor, but they cost more points already.

I guess, maybe.

They're only good for sitting under critical points or objectives and annoying the shit out of enemy capital ships. Except they're so god damn expensive.


>guy on Facebook complaining that the Achilles sucks because the Heracles does everything better

There's a 120pt difference, Jesus. You could buy SHIPS for that price!

There is another one who dislikes the Bellepheron because it's slow compared to Scipio...

Worse is that he likes the Hector, and would probably pick it over the Bellepheron

Is it bad that my first thought was "but surely it's the Minos that overshadows the Achilles?"

According to Dave, the price of the glass will come down a LOT when the errata hits. Like maybe to less than 20pts

So we're on general topics of BCs...
Which Scourge BC do people prefer? Basilisk/Akuma has tremendous, BB-level Firepower that never gains a spike
Manticore/Banshee has strong CAW and a Torpedo.

Brace for "PHR is underpowered" whining

That's true but someone told the moron that the DMC will do the same average damage as a torpedo plus whatever crippling damage.

Manticore every time.
This thing presumably pays a lot to Run Silent all the time and so packing guns to WF every turn seems silly. Going for a small handful that just happen to be crazy-powerful seems like a much better idea.
That it comes in 15pts cheaper is just the finisher.

Of course a lot of this depends on how Corruptor gets ruled, and if you get Razors on a hit or a crit. Because on a hit is fucking mental for BS-hunting.

I like the basilisk/akuma, that much firepower without getting a spike looks brilliant, plus the ability to always get an oculus phalanx onto a target with a course change order. I feel the basilisk could actually be good enough to take over a daemon, maybe.

Manticore isn't a bad ship but not sure it gives you enough over silent-running other scourge CA options. Also taking a ship without exactly 5 launch capacity in a scourge fleet would bother my fauxCD something fierce. Still not sure on how the corruptor torpedo works though, currently I think it needs to crit to corrupt, but if it just needs to hit then that changes things.

I'm trying to decide on 7 cruisers to build and the Hector looks pretty decent for marking heavy targets and burning apart smaller ones when closing.

Maybe 2 Orion, 2 Ajax, 1 Bellerophon, 1 Perseus and 1 of those troopships that has bombardment guns as well. Maybe drop the troopship for another fleet carrier.

I don't know how I feel about how deadly corruptor is.

Assuming you hit on turn 3 (which seems the first turn you're likely to be able to engage a target of your choice), you've got a 50% chance of landing a crit.

That's 4 damage points outright. Even if the fire's put out, an average battleship's getting 3-4 more, which will do 2 damage on average at Turn 4. Turn 5 and 6 will be pure profit if that BB hadn't died yet.

So I guess, it's about even with a normal front-loaded torp of Corruptor's on-crit. It's far, far superior if the hit isn't a critical and Corruptor goes off, as your average torp's landing perhaps 3 damage, while this'll wreck the BB hard next turn.

Manticore would also have to stop silent running to fire that torpedo. Can't just sneak up and stick it in them.

I think both are great, but it's the basilisk tha gets me hot and bothered

I'd always take Perseus in pairs, so you can combine the heavy guns into a decent battery.
I don't like the Ajax, I'd rather take Orpheus for the same weapons but with troops and unless bombardment turns out to be very important I'd rather take them instead of Ganymedes as well and rely on the strike carriers for bombardment.

I've built a Bellerophon, 2 Orions and an Orpheus so far and want to try those out before buying anymore ships.

Gonna second that, the Maticore bothers me too by making me wake up in cold sweat from nightmares.

>Basilisk not Manticore

I'm trying to get my head around the numbers here and have made some simple spreadsheets to help organise my thoughts. I reckon that I have a basic grip on the UCM at this point.

> Damage options
Lasers out-damage turrets when looking at averages. They also throw spikes onto the target, making them better support pieces. The critical effects of Burnthrough make them outstanding armour-hunters.
Turrets do less damage on paper but have far better arcs of firepower, meaning that they often apply more in reality. This is critically important on larger ships where 'Weapons Free' becomes more important.
Launch assets do *far* more damage than other weapons, but are subject to PD and hence they see a sharp decrease in performance depending on the enemies size. Stacking waves seems absolutely essential against large targets.

> Ship sizes
When considering M and H classes, you are buying thicker armour, more guns, more hull and more PD at the expense of Thrust and points.
Larger ships are pushed harder and harder into going 'Weapons Free'; the boosts to defense are arguably worth the price increase alone, but to make the most of your ships, you want to fire every turn.
A WF-Heavy will do 2-3 times as much damage as the lower-class equivalent. This is *massive*
However when not WF, they have similar / identical outputs.

> Ship evaluation
In consideration of these 2 points, ships begin to make sense.
Lasers generally want to be kept on small ships, where staying on Standard Orders has no loss of firepower. That turn can make all the difference in the world when working with narrow arcs.
In contrast, gunships can go as large as they like and just WF their way out of trouble.

I'd argue that all gunships are viable and that generally speaking, bigger is better. You will get your investment back from upsizing.
The Berlin and Petersburg are far harder to work and you will often waste your shots to turn.

Toulon and Taipei are the highest DMG/pt in the fleet.

>Manticore would also have to stop silent running to fire that torpedo.

Normally yes, but since it has Stealth I think it's actually able to fire from Silent running.
Even so, I still like the Basilisk, those broadside guns all by themselves are pretty vicious, and full cloak means that it can go weapons free with a lot less downsides.

The equivalent of 'Weapons Free' for your typical laser boat is actually 'Adjust Course' orders, to give you full targeting access to your entire 180 degree arc plus the extra few degrees from the beam angle.

I can absolutely see using that order frequently once battle is joined at close range to keep a Berlin on valuable targets. Possibly with some Taipei in squadron with the Berlin to deal with enemies that try to get close or out of arc on it.

Everything dies so quickly that the fragility of smaller ships isn't too bad.

> Santiago
Necessary for anti-capping
> Toulon
Highest reliable dpp
> Taipei
Ridiculous dpp, slaved to PD and range
> Osaka
2 Toulon taped together
> New Cairo
Outstanding, high dpp and spike spam
> Rio
Mainline for a reason. Worth the upgrade for defense boost alone
> Berlin
Defense is nice, not as clear an upgrade as the Rio
> Moscow
Weapons free every time, stunning output
> St Pete
Highest paper dpp, in practice never going to see it
> Johan
Why is this less popular than the Perth? Mental output
> Perth
BFG. Major spike dispenser, can get away without WF.
> Seattle
Huge damage for a cruiser, blob them to overcome PD. Versatile from fighters.

> Lima, Toulon and New Cairo seem like rock solid foundations.
> Either go heavy Launch or don't bother at all.

The silent running rule states that you can't use launch assets or shoot. Stealth allows you to fire one weapon while silent running. Unfortunately a torpedo is a launch asset, not a gun. They've been having this same discussion on Facebook

Huh. For some reason i tought you couldn't armor-save against the Torps.

YOOOOOOO