Earth has fallen.
The Scourge, a body-snatching race of parasites has dislodged humanity from Earth as well as many other central colony worlds. Vast swaths of humanity now have a Scourge parasite living within them, controlling them, swelling the ranks of Scourge infantry, fighting alongside the disturbingly biological-looking tanks and flyers, as well as massive monsters that make up the Scourge’s military menagerie.
This is the universe of Dropzone Commander, a 10mm sci-fi miniatures wargame where combined arms is key to victory. Will you fight to liberate Earth in the reconquest, take up the strange weapons of an alien empire, or bring the truth of Trans-humanism to humanity’s cradle-world?
Dropzone Commander is a game of fast-moving flyers, slow and deadly tanks, and even slower and fragile infantry. However, you’ll need all three sorts of units to win the game. The tanks are your heavy-hitters, capable of both taking and dealing damage. However, on the four-foot-by-four-foot battlefield, tanks move slowly. Even worse, they can’t enter the buildings where your objectives are, so you’ll need the swift-moving dropships to transport your tanks and infantry around the battlefield, while enemy flyers and anti-aircraft weapons try to shoot your transports out of the sky. Safeguard your infantry until they can enter a building and search it for your objectives. Or surround buildings with your anti-infantry tanks who will kill the infantry before they can escape with the vital info or material they’ve secured.
You can play the parasitic Scourge or the humans fighting them. The humans come in two flavors: the United Colonies of Mankind, swooping in to liberate lost worlds from the Scourge, and the Resistance, rag-tag assemblies of militarized civilian vehicles and infantry struggling desperately to remain free of the Scourge on fallen worlds.
You can also play the Post Human Republic, a splinter group from before the arrival of the Scourge who have sacrificed their humanity to embrace trans-humanism. PHR armies are small, with every unit being elite.
Finally, there are the Shaltari Tribes, highly advanced aliens who value knowledge but venerate a warrior ethos. Their sleek and graceful high-tech weapons give them a unique flavor on the battlefield based around the use of teleportation gates to bring their weapons and warriors into the heart of the battlefield.
Did I say finally? The Third Edition of Dropzone Commander has just, er, dropped. Along with rules for a greater number of terrain types to battle in and destructible building features, the new edition introduces a new faction: the Bioficers, ancient and malicious AI that views biology as raw materials for their weapons. Part way through the battle, they’ll unleash new units constructed from the biomass of the units they’ve killed so far!
The third edition of Dropzone Commander is something of a greatest-hits of the first two editions, and delivers the new Bioficers in the two-player starter box. The minis (68 in total) are now all plastic, but still show a lot of great detail. If you’re tired of skirmish-focused miniatures games and want to play out real battles that engulf large chunks of a city, or you think there’s too great an emphasis on infantry in sci-fi wargames, without enough combined-arms coordination, talk to the minis wargaming experts at your local Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® today to get your hands on the new starter box and begin your own battles for the future of Earth.
