Dropfleet Commander Balance Pass February 2022

With the world opening up for tournaments once again, it’s time for a balance pass for Dropfleet Commander!

Later this afternoon (about the same time Cutters go up for pre-order) we’ll be making some changes to ships and and adding in a couple of experimental rules. We’ll go through them in this article and both cards and builder will update later today.

Experimental Rules

The first thing we’re adding is a couple of new Experimental Rules in the FAQ document!  You don’t need to use these if you’d rather play with only the rules in the rulebook, but we’d recommend giving them a go to see if they help with any issues you may have with certain ships.

Dreadnought

Add: “Standard Orders and Special Orders that allow a Dreadnought to fire one weapon system allow it to fire up to two weapon systems instead.”

Letting a London fire both of its UF-6400’s or a Resistance Coloniser fire an indeterminate amount of weapons on standard orders gives them a bit more value before they need to go Weapons Free.

 

Overcharge

Change to: “A weapon with this rule may be Overcharged. An Overcharged weapon (and any weapons with Overcharge it is Linked with) doubles its Damage value for that attack.

If the ship is on Weapons Free Orders it may only fire Close Action or Low Power weapons but not any other weapon types. However if the ship is on any other Orders, it may not use Launch Assets or fire any other weapons, including Close Action and Low Power weapons.”

Now you don’t need to go onto Weapons Free to to get to overcharge a weapon. However the tradeoff is that you can’t fire any other non-linked weapons of any sort, or use launch assets. When you do go weapons free you get to use Close Action and/or Low Power weapons as well. Weapons free Resistance Gunboat Cruisers should have a bit more damage output with a mix of Vent and Low Power weapons.

Ship  Changes

UCM

London

• Reduce points to 450.

Washington

• Reduce points to 440

St. Petersburg

• Reduce points to 140

Scourge

Shenlong

• Reduce points to 160.

Raiju

• Reduce points to 150.

Shadow

• Reduce points to 195.

PHR

Agrippa

• Increase points to 175.
• Change Holo-Debris Field effect to “Once per activation (during any part of the activation, including during movement) you may place a Dense Debris Field within 3” of this ship. These debris fields are removed at the end of the Roundup phase and are circular with a 4” diameter (a D6 or custom template are perfect tokens to represent these). Friendly ships and Launch Assets ignore these Debris Fields”

Hector

• Reduce points to 155.

Ajax

• Reduce points to 95.

Shaltari

Jade

• Particle Lance – Remove Fusilade (1).
• Particle Lance – Increase Damage to 2.

Obsidian

• Reduce points to 145.

Hematite

• Increase points to 230.

Resistance

Frigate Weapon Systems

• N-31 Hybrid Gun Turret – Reduce points to 0.
• Light Vent Cannon Turret – Remove Scald.

Heavy Frigate

• Increase points to 35.

Senator

• Reduce points to 160.
• Increase Scan to 12”.

Triumvir

• Add Rare special rule
• Change Box Of Scraps to read – “At the end of this ship’s activation, pick one friendly ship within 6” in line of sight (including this one). Place a Box Of Scraps token next to that ship. The next time that ship would be destroyed, it isn’t. Instead remove the Box of Scraps token and that ship remains in play with D3 Hull Points remaining. Box Of Scraps tokens persist through rounds but a ship may only have 1 Box Of Scraps token”

As always we’ll be keeping an eye on feedback and will make additional adjustments to ships in the next balance pass. Though with fewer games played this past year due to *cough* certain dangers, we thought we’d keep this pass light and only make changes to the things that have been brought up the most.

All of these ship changes will be reflected on the builder, available on the Dropfleet Commander website.

You can find the FAQ document with the Experimental Rules here.