Jump into the combat faster with this easy to follow guide…
Starting a new game system can be a little daunting for some people and hey, that’s okay! Learning how to assemble your first army is a big stepping stone for some would-be commanders. Thankfully, today’s guest writer happens to be a self-proclaimed expert (I can confirm he really is) on the subject.
The following is written by Alex from Bottom of the Barrel.
Hello Commanders. Alex here from Bottom of the Barrel Battle Reports, here to walk you through how to make an army for Dropzone Commander. I’ve been playing the game for a couple of years now, and have filmed quite a few battle reports on our YouTube channel I’ve even won one or two!
Caption: I’ve also built up, er, quite the collection. I think I’ve got nearly 5,000 points of UCM now.
If you haven’t already, I’d recommend having a watch of our how to play Dropzone Commander video series, as that takes you through the basics of the game. In the videos I do touch on list composition, but this should help you understand my thoughts on what I actually put into a list, and why.
We’ll go through tactics in a bit, but let’s start by going over how to make a list first – then we can cover what you want in your army.
How do I write a list?
Dropzone’s a game of alternating activations – this means that each round, you activate something, then I do, then it goes back to you and “alternates” (get it?) until everything has activated. Each of your activations is a portion of your army called a battlegroup – everything in that battlegroup activates together, along with any transports they’re in.
Battlegroups
The army builder at dropzonecommander.com is handy for this, as it’ll let you create battlegroups, warning you if you have too many or too few of each. The battlegroup types, and the number you can have of each (at 1,750pts, the standard size of Dropzone games) are:
– 1x HQ – your Commander and their entourage.
– 1-2x Frontline – your basic infantry and their support.
– 1-2x Armour – your standard tanks (or bipedal equivalents, PHR fans) and your heavy hitters.
– 0-2x Vanguard – your exotic specialist units, your fire support, and often your elite infantry.
– 0-2x War Machines – your giant behemoth(s!)
Unit types
Each battlegroup will in turn have specific squad types that it can take. Again, the web builder is good for this as it’ll only show the squads that can be assigned to that battlegroup. For example, an armour battlegroup requires:
– 1-3x Standard choices – your basic armour units
– 0-2x Heavy choices – your more powerful or points-efficient tanks
– 0-1x Support choices – your artillery, gunships, AA platforms, etc
So you can see that you must take at least one standard choice per armour battlegroup, but fielding the battlegroup “unlocks” two Heavy slots, letting you bring your heavy armour to bear.
Transports
Dropzone is a game of lightning fast deployment and redeployment, with fast dropships and zooming in from your board edge to get your tanks in position, APCs hurtling from building to building to get your troops to the objectives, and nimble troopships waiting on standby to get those troops and the objectives back out and off the board again.
Transports are usually “auxiliary” choices, meaning they can be attached to any battlegroup at the start of the game, and can activate with any battlegroup when they’re empty (but no more than once per round). Some other units like interceptors and bombers will often also be auxiliary choices, letting them choose which battlegroup to activate with each round!
So, when all is said and done, you’ll have an army that is made up of a number of battlegroups (usually around five, sometimes up to seven), each of which will be a selection of units that fit into that battlegroup, with their attached transports.
What do I want in a list?
At a glance, Dropzone might look like it’s about tank battles, armies lining up and shooting each other until someone stops twitching and so on, but it’s not – or at least, not just about that. It’s first and foremost about objectives.
There are exceptions, but almost all scenarios will involve sending infantry into derelict, long-abandoned buildings, locating the mission critical objectives – these could be enemy plans, agents that need extracting, or even man portable foldspace nodes – and getting them back out again. This means that almost everything in your army list is going to want to be contributing in some way to this.
So, in your list you’re going to need:
– Infantry to find the objectives, and transports to get them there and back again. Redundancy is good, as – sorry, Legionnaires – some of your guys are going to die.
– A solution to enemy infantry, so you can stop the opponent doing the same. This might be your own close quarters specialist infantry, like Firstborn Duellists or Sirens, or it might be units armed with flame weapons that let you burn out the enemy infantry from a safe distance. The other option, of course, is to just level the objective buildings you don’t want to contest!
– Anti-air, to stop the opponent being able to bring in their own transports safely and to prevent them escaping, and to prevent them doing the same to you.
– Anti-armour, to knock out enemy anti-air, APCs and other mission-critical ground targets.
While tanks shooting tanks is fun (and looks awesome), it’s rarely (but not never!) what wins games.
In a perfect world, every unit in your army would be able to find objectives, clear enemy infantry, air power and armour, take a punch and move quickly, but – obviously – that’s not how a combined arms game works. Most units will be able to do one, maybe two of these tasks, or they’ll pay a premium in points for flexibility.
This means you need a balance of roles in your list. Generally speaking, you want roughly:
– At least 25% of your list focused on getting objectives – so that’s your own basic infantry, and maybe your Close Quarters (CQ) specialist infantry (as they can go in, gun down the enemy troops and take the objective they found for you from their still-warm hands).
– At least 25% of your list able to kill enemy infantry – so your flame tanks, your CQ murderers (these can go in either role really) and, of course, your demolition units.
– At least 25% of your list for air superiority – these could be your ground-based “denial AA”, that create no-fly zones for enemy aircraft, and/or your fast-moving “hunting AA” that go chase down and kill aircraft that are trying to hide from your more static guns. Having a combination of the two roles is usually a good idea.
– Around 25% of your list able to kill enemy ground targets.
When working out these boundaries, remember that almost every unit will need a transport. Three 35 point Sabre tanks doesn’t cost 105 points to field, it costs 135, as they’ll need their Condor to get to the battle!
These aren’t hard rules, of course. What you’ll bring will vary based on your playstyle, your theme, what your local community brings – my local group have all been bringing a lot more AA ever since my “UCM Flying Circus” list terrorised our tables for a bit. It had two ground vehicles. It was great.
There are other roles to consider as well – you’ll need a commander, and will need to spend points on their command value if you want to dictate who wins initiative and to get use out of your Command Cards. Similarly, you might want to include some scouts for spotting for artillery, projecting Influence range, and so on.
How many battlegroups do I want?
Short answer: It depends.
Usually, the more activations you have, the better. This is because it gives you an “activation advantage.” Often you’ll have two opposing squads having a standoff, daring the other to activate and move into range first – if you have more activations than your opponent, you have the option to go do something safe and pass the decision back to your opponent.
However, lots of small battlegroups have downsides too. A small battlegroup – say, an armour battlegroup of a single squad of standard tanks – won’t have that dramatic an impact on the game when it activates. When you do want to act decisively, it can help to have a large hammer of a battlegroup with multiple squads in it, as that can make a dramatic change to the board with no chance for your opponent to interrupt or react.
Aiming for somewhere between five and seven battlegroups is a good idea, but experiment!
What does an example list look like?
With all of the above in mind, here’s a very standard UCM list I’ve run a couple of times, that mostly follows the guidelines above. I’ve added the unit’s role in brackets so you can see what it’s intended to do:
UCM, 1,750 points – codename “Daring Today, Aren’t We?”
HQ Battlegroup 1
– Ferrum Dronebase with CV3 Commander, 220pts (Anti-Air, Anti-Armour,
Commander, Scout)
– 1x Archangel Tactical Bomber, 50pts (Anti-Infantry)
– 1x Archangel Tactical Bomber, 50pts (Anti-Infantry)
– 1x Archangel Interceptor, 45pts (Anti-Air)
– 1x Archangel Interceptor, 45pts (Anti-Air)
Frontline Battlegroup 1
– 3x Legionnaires, 60pts (Infantry)
– 3x Legionnaires, 60pts (Infantry)
– 1x Bear APC, 15pts (Infantry Transport, Scanning)
– 1x Bear APC, 15pts (Infantry Transport, Scanning)
– 1x Condor Dropship, 30pts (Armour Transport)
Frontline Battlegroup 2
– 2x Praetorian Spec-Ops, 80pts (Infantry, Anti-Infantry)
– 2x Praetorian Spec-Ops, 80pts (Infantry, Anti-Infantry)
– 1x Raven Light Troopship, 25pts (Infantry Transport)
– 1x Raven Light Troopship, 25pts (Infantry Transport)
Armour Battlegroup 1
– 3x Sabre Tanks, 105pts (Anti-Armour)
– 3x Rapier AA Tanks, 120pts (Anti-Air)
– 2x Gladius Heavy Tanks with Twin Avenger Railguns, 110pts (Anti-Armour)
– 1x Albatross Heavy Dropship, 60pts (Armour Transport)
Armour Battlegroup 2
– 3x Katana Light Tanks with Flamethrowers, 105pts (Anti-Infantry)
– 3x Rapier AA Tanks, 120pts (Anti-Air)
– 1x Broadsword Super Heavy Tank with Mythslayer Railgun, 85pts (Anti-Armour)
– 1x Albatross Heavy Dropship, 60pts (Armour Transport)
Vanguard Battlegroup 1
– 2x Hazard Suits, 70pts (Infantry, Anti-Armour)
– 2x Hazard Suits, 70pts (Infantry, Anti-Armour)
– 1x Vulture Troopship with Missiles, 45pts (Anti-Air, Infantry Transport)
So, that’s 1,750 points on the nose, which is the standard size for Dropzone games. In my list:
– 575 points (32% of the list) are either boots on the ground that can grab objectives, or the transports that are getting them there and back again.
– 365 points (20%) can do decent damage to enemy infantry, by either a) hitting them with assault grenades or b) setting them on fire. The Legionnaires and Hazard Suits can also chip in in a pinch, but they’re not great at it.
– 595 points (34%) can provide anti-air, with a balance between denial AA with the Rapiers and hunting AA with the archangels. All of the infantry can also give it the old college try with the Reduced rule, but that’s not reliable.
– 660 points (37%) are able to seriously threaten enemy armour or other ground targets.
Some of the units fill multiple roles, which is great – the Hazard Suits can go to the walls and shoot at tanks, but they can search just as well as a legionnaire. The Drone Base is a commander and a scout and can do anti-air and anti-armour (although not all at the same time), making it incredibly versatile. But broadly, the list follows the guidelines, and can handle most missions and problems. It is a little light on anti-infantry, but hopefully by winning the armour game and gaining air superiority it can make up for that slight imbalance.
I’d love to hear what goes through your minds when you’re making your own lists. Do you try to go for a balanced “take all comers” approach? Or do you “skew” into a particular part of the game and try to win through hordes of infantry, ground war dominance, and so on? How does demolition factor into your plans? Let me know and share your approach in the
comments!
Love from,
Alex
