Alright, it’s the big one.
All this week we’ve been talking about some of the rules tweaks in the 2.1 version of Dropzone Commander which – incidentally – is on pre-order right now!
Well, for our last preview this week, we’re going to be talking about the big one: Close Quarters.
Dropzone 2.0 CQ saw one of the biggest changes between editions, and it’s one that’s been met with a lot of positivity, although also a fair amount of controversy among veteran players.
Now, you’ll definitely fall on one side of the fence or the other here when I say that CQ hasn’t had a big change. It’s still a Shooting attack, and is still done one at a time. It’s still dangerous to enter Garrisons either first or second (depending on your dice rolls). And you’ll still want to be taking more infantry in your armies than you did in the first edition of the game.
However, we do have one massive change to CQ weapons.
They can only be used in Garrisons.
So Praetorians can’t wreck a Warstrider out in the open and Razorworms will want to be chewing on people, not landed Aircraft.
Of course, there are some situations where you do want to just get out and chop up tanks. It’s not going to happen much, but what about Stalkers or Eviscerators?
Well, this little change to the shooting rules will help that!
This bit, taken from the “Measure Range” section has had a tiny tweak too. A target in physical contact with the shooting unit always counts as in range for all of its weapons. While this doesn’t overwrite CQ weapons needing to be in a Garrison, things with other close ranged weapons like the Oppressor’s Razor Claws will always be in range if in base to base.
No more hiding behind huge footprints, Leviathans!
These couple of little changes might not look like much, but help each unit to function in its desired way. Dropzone is a game of hard sci-fi, so having people charging across the battlefield with swords to chop up giant mechs isn’t what we’re going for! Certain infantry units will be getting alternate attack profiles for doing that if they really want to, but generally speaking your vicious close quarters fighting should be happening inside Garrisons.
Oh, and while we’re talking about Infantry inside Garrisons, here’s one last little taster today:
Soft Cover and Body Cover now only work on Infantry! A vehicle can be Hull Down, but not Hull Down and in Soft Cover. A little change that has big ramifications – again, straight from player feedback.
That’s it for this rules update! There are a bunch of other small tweaks in the new version, but we’ll leave those to everyone else to find – we don’t like to spoil everything for you!