We’ve got new spaceships, so let’s see what they do, shall we?

You might be used to satellites being super helpful. Letting you chat on your phone wherever you are (hah, who actually uses their phone as a phone anymore?), streaming TV worldwide, and providing charming covers of David Bowie songs.

But in the future of Dropfleet Commander, satellites do a lot more than that!

These are the Newton and Galileo, the newest additions to the Resistance fleet. The Monitor class ships are something a little weird – half satellite and half attack ship, they’re pretty slow but pack a punch!

So what exactly do they bring to your fleet? Well, how about a telescope?

Galileo Orbital Telescope

The Galileo is a rare ship in Dropfleet Commander in that (aside from limited Point Defence lasers) it’s entirely unarmed.

The Galileo boasts and extremely good Scan range… although without weapons it’s not a huge amount of use hah!

Unfortunately for this little spaceship that could, its Thrust is real low, and while a 4+ Armour save is okay, it’s not quite on par with some of the other Monitors. Although considering this thing is a telescope I’m not sure you should expect much more!

The real draw here is that these ships have Detector, which is always handy. Although I know Resistance Frigates can all have Detector, so what makes this one special?

The Space Telescope rule means that basically your Active Scans boost up an extra Spike! The usual Minor turns into a Major, and if you ping a ship on Silent Running (provided you get the 4+) they get a Minor Spike too! There’s also something a little extra and secret, but we’re not revealing that until the full rules go up tomorrow!

Newton Kill-Sat

Of course, for those that like their ships a little more killy, you can always go for the Newton (although with the poor Scan ranges in the Resistance, that Galileo is worth its weight in gold).

That massive gun is just as dangerous as it looks:

Nicknamed the “Godray”, this is your standard sci-fi space laser. It’s big and blows things up real good! A rare 3 Damage is a big draw here, as this weapon can rip through anything smaller than a Frigate in one shot, and a squad of them spells a lot of trouble!

Although that’s not even the main draw here. Particle is a special rule not seen much outside of Shaltari, but this gun is massive. Particle causes all hits to become Criticals, so have fun breaking through even the toughest armour. A whole group of these can seriously threaten even the largest Dreadnought!

The Godray is on a swivel mount as well, so if you want you can angle that weapon straight down and turn into a true kill-sat, blowing up entire city blocks in a single volley.

The Newton and the Galileo are up for pre-order tomorrow (usually around 3pm GMT fyi). We’ll be chatting about them (and the new Sci-Fi Gothic terrain) then, so make sure to stop by here or the TTCombat webstore to pick yours up and rain fiery death from a distance (or just see things a lot bigger than before, if that’s your jam).