Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

No idea - they've had the market of space ships and small land battles all to themselves since Spartan Games died over 5 years ago.

"If you don't build it, no one will come"
It has no market presence because the publisher doesn't do anything whatsoever to promote it, let alone to the degree that Hawk Dave did (not to be confused with the gelded substitute 'ttcombat dave'). There's a tournament at Adepticon this weekend, 6 players (out of 16 possible) participating and two of them are the organizers. TTC won't be there, but even when they show up to a con they don't do demos, they don't organize any kind of games nor provide prize support let alone swag, they don't even setup dioramas.

Also no battle reports. Ever. The most damning sign of a bad publisher.

Dropfleet is doing much better than Dropzon, despite the same kind of disinterested negligence.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
That looks cool af, why doesn't this game have any market presence?

Bigest hurdle is they don't print the rulebooks, and the websites (with the army builders) are buggy as hell.

**NEW RELEASES**

Carryhawk Dropship
Essentially a wide-bodied, rarer evolution of the stalwart Strikehawk tiltrotor, the Carryhawk adds additional girth and lift capacity by including a pair of huge, tail-mounted ducted fans. The Carryhawks pair of heavy calibre rotary cannons can spit a relentless hail of depleted uranium-tipped bullets to chew through even armoured vehicles. These can be hot-swapped pre-mission for two deployable Sentinel turrets, much like its cousin the Strikehawk.

Badger Buggy
One of the UCMA’s most common and cheapest armoured vehicles is the Badger. Much like the ancient and famous Humvee, this can carry around five soldiers or specialists in comparative safety while offering supplementary anti-infantry firepower in the form of a twin gatling gun. A rarer variant, the Ferret, replaces this with a target designator unit, essentially turning this small vehicle into a forward observer as well as a light transport.

Find our latest miniature releases on our website:

The 'Carryhawk' is painful to look at. You can't just slap fixed mount lift fans on the rear of a tilt rotor, it can't fly like that. It's like a tank with treads perpendicular to the sides on the front and back.

If I get one, and I do mean if, I will replace the tilt rotors with the ducted fans from a PHR dropship, or better yet with fans from the Maelstrom’s Edge hover drones.

The UCM buggy looks like one of those plastic frog toys that flip when you push down on the tail end. Not something I would buy, unless they were a bonus in an armor box.

Hilariously I think the Carryhawk looks awesome but the rest of the Resistance's ground forces are dog water.

 rybackstun wrote:
Hilariously I think the Carryhawk looks awesome but the rest of the Resistance's ground forces are dog water.

Even the Kalium stuff?

I enjoy the variety in Resistance. They have Mad Max style vehicles, tanks, GW-style redonko tanks, hover tanks, Batman The Animated Series APC’s, Gobots walkers, the sexiest goddarn fighter jet in tabletop gaming, the sexiest dropship in the game, the ugliest dropship in the game, and Cobra helicopters. There’s something for everyone to hate.

It's been a while since they made any new Dropzone models I wanted to buy, let alone a batch that doesn't incite vicious mockery. I hope they get to the new faction soon, because the existing ones are feeling really played out for good designs.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
That looks cool af, why doesn't this game have any market presence?

They where sooooo close to being the "second game" spot. Being just behind 40k. with the likes of old warmachine
But the creater had eyes bigger than his stomach and released a second game a year into his first one. With a kickstarter that can charitably be called "a frickin disaster"
with that they where sold to a company that makes MDF terrain. Dont come at me with "carnivale" or "Rubmleslam" those dont exist.
The current owners have no interest in making the game bigger or expanding.
I will always lament the fall of this game, I still peruse the store page, longing for a different timeline where this doesn't fail.

It failed at the worst time as well. A few years later, and the creator could have pivoted to subscription STL sales and TTCombat would have never gotten their filthy claws into it.

The steady flow of new models and fuckery/fixes to unit stats also seems to kill the momentum of any attempt at a community edition of the rules.

If he wanted to "pivot to STL sales" he could have done so at the time he sold to TTC. There's no money in it for anyone with their own creative vision that they are trying to execute in the way Dave is. He couldn't sculpt fast enough to keep up with the throughput needed to be profitable. The big patreons and the like are making money by hiring freelancers to do concept art and then other freelancers to do sculpts based in that art, all for comparatively little pay, in order to keep up with the expected monthly cadence that justifies their value proposition to supporters. Its 3d printable shoveleware as opposed to a concentrated, intentional, and methodical approach to cohesive worldbuilding and narrative development. It's a different business model and approach from what Dave is/was trying to accomplish.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 rybackstun wrote:
Hilariously I think the Carryhawk looks awesome but the rest of the Resistance's ground forces are dog water.

Even the Kalium stuff?

I enjoy the variety in Resistance. They have Mad Max style vehicles, tanks, GW-style redonko tanks, hover tanks, Batman The Animated Series APC’s, Gobots walkers, the sexiest goddarn fighter jet in tabletop gaming, the sexiest dropship in the game, the ugliest dropship in the game, and Cobra helicopters. There’s something for everyone to hate.

The Kalium Resistance ground forces look pretty good actually. I don't know that I've ever seen them in stock photos for Resistance Ground forces, so I didn't know they existed.

 slyphic wrote:
It's been a while since they made any new Dropzone models I wanted to buy, let alone a batch that doesn't incite vicious mockery. I hope they get to the new faction soon, because the existing ones are feeling really played out for good designs.

They showed off a tank design for the new anomoly faction, but the reaction was mixed. I wonder if they’re spending more time on them to get them right before dropping the line.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
That looks cool af, why doesn't this game have any market presence?

They where sooooo close to being the "second game" spot. Being just behind 40k. with the likes of old warmachine
But the creater had eyes bigger than his stomach and released a second game a year into his first one. With a kickstarter that can charitably be called "a frickin disaster"
with that they where sold to a company that makes MDF terrain. Dont come at me with "carnivale" or "Rubmleslam" those dont exist.
The current owners have no interest in making the game bigger or expanding.
I will always lament the fall of this game, I still peruse the store page, longing for a different timeline where this doesn't fail.

How was the kickstarter a disaster? From what I remember there were delays, but everyone got everything they pledged for, didn’t they?

not really, what was pledged was so fare beyond their capabilities, some people go vouchers or gift cards as apologies.
It was a real bad time

Dang. That’s a real shame.

Even worse since Dropfleet is a much better and more popular game, and the clear successor to BFG.

chaos0xomega wrote:
intentional, and methodical approach to cohesive worldbuilding and narrative development.

It's hard for me to see that in the game after the third time they released a unit with a name that either was already in use or contradicted the most recent setting book. I see post-Hawk Dropzone as slapdash and lackadaisical in its setting.

The Carryhawk’s main combat role though is the deployment of a forward command bunker. This small, armoured structure is deployed with an onboard detail of resistance veterans and comms staff. Once landed, this bunker can relay rear-echelon commands to the frontlines while the Carryhawk rains fire from above.

That's not something that should be on the battlefield, even at DZC scale... (at least the Phoenix can run away by itself!)

 slyphic wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
intentional, and methodical approach to cohesive worldbuilding and narrative development.

It's hard for me to see that in the game after the third time they released a unit with a name that either was already in use or contradicted the most recent setting book. I see post-Hawk Dropzone as slapdash and lackadaisical in its setting.

Before the buyout. After the buyout, TTCombat runs the game, and they want stompy robots and hover-hoverers and gak. Bigger cannons! Cannons everywhere! There’s not enough feet on that tank!!

The bunker raises some "why don't they make the entire plane as tough as the black box?" questions when it's being airlifted in.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 slyphic wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
intentional, and methodical approach to cohesive worldbuilding and narrative development.

It's hard for me to see that in the game after the third time they released a unit with a name that either was already in use or contradicted the most recent setting book. I see post-Hawk Dropzone as slapdash and lackadaisical in its setting.

Before the buyout. After the buyout, TTCombat runs the game, and they want stompy robots and hover-hoverers and gak. Bigger cannons! Cannons everywhere! There’s not enough feet on that tank!!

What Bob said

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
That looks cool af, why doesn't this game have any market presence?

They where sooooo close to being the "second game" spot. Being just behind 40k. with the likes of old warmachine
But the creater had eyes bigger than his stomach and released a second game a year into his first one. With a kickstarter that can charitably be called "a frickin disaster"
with that they where sold to a company that makes MDF terrain. Dont come at me with "carnivale" or "Rubmleslam" those dont exist.
The current owners have no interest in making the game bigger or expanding.
I will always lament the fall of this game, I still peruse the store page, longing for a different timeline where this doesn't fail.

I'm sorry but that's not really what happened at all. Dropfleet was released several years into DZC, around three years, with DZC an established game by this point. The kickstarter went fine, only hiccup was the problem with the mats where the producer basically hiked up the price after the campaign was done and it wasn't actually feasible for them to be delivered so people got vouchers instead (although this took quite a bit of time). I got a shedload of stuff from my kickstarter and I'd back it again even now in a heartbeat. There was production problems (which I am privy to but won't go into detail with) with led Hawk to try and find a new producer in the form of TTCombat. TTCombat instead offered to buy Hawk to run largely autonomously (as my understanding) and allow Dave to focus on the game (he wasn't an amazing businessman) and then promptly made everyone redundant apart from Dave and killed all the community engagement. I loved DZC and DFC but I haven't played them in years, as there was some additional stuff in that story which left a bad taste in my mouth.

Every ex-hawk employee I've ever met and talked with practically sneers and spits when you mention TTCombat. The two brothers that own it are the worst kind of people, and the reason TTC haven't acquired any other games since Dropzone; no one will talk to them because word got around that they'll lie to your face and stab you in the back.

I'm guessing having a game that really made big waves when it landed and hasn't grown under their ownership (and if anything has shrunk/floundered) for years is also a big sign that even if they had the finances, they don't have the will/skill to push it further.

Which is such a huge shame. I recall when DFC first appeared and the ships blew people away with their styles.

I guess that's reason #1,358,387,501 to get the informal "promises" in writing alongside the other terms of sale in the contract if true. A youtuber I used to watch made a poignant comment years ago about the entertainment industry remarking that you don;t get what you deserve but rather only get what you negotiate (and even that is a best case scenario). In his words, it's called show business and NOT show friends for a reason.

 warboss wrote:
I guess that's reason #1,358,387,501 to get the informal "promises" in writing alongside the other terms of sale in the contract if true. A youtuber I used to watch made a poignant comment years ago about the entertainment industry remarking that you don;t get what you deserve but rather only get what you negotiate (and even that is a best case scenario). In his words, it's called show business and NOT show friends for a reason.

"Dave ... wasn't an amazing businessman"

chaos0xomega wrote:
If he wanted to "pivot to STL sales" he could have done so at the time he sold to TTC. There's no money in it for anyone with their own creative vision that they are trying to execute in the way Dave is. He couldn't sculpt fast enough to keep up with the throughput needed to be profitable. The big patreons and the like are making money by hiring freelancers to do concept art and then other freelancers to do sculpts based in that art, all for comparatively little pay, in order to keep up with the expected monthly cadence that justifies their value proposition to supporters. Its 3d printable shoveleware as opposed to a concentrated, intentional, and methodical approach to cohesive worldbuilding and narrative development. It's a different business model and approach from what Dave is/was trying to accomplish.

Mostly accurate, but there is a modest living to be made now actually creating something through digital files, there absolutely wasn't in 2018, the market didn't exist yet.

Example I'm backing https://www.patreon.com/scoutsiferstudio/posts

189 paid members probably averaging around $12 q month isn't what I'd quite call "a modest living"

chaos0xomega wrote:
189 paid members probably averaging around $12 q month isn't what I'd quite call "a modest living"

It's a middle class wage where I live, which may be why patreon artists are moving here

Patreon though is a fickle market - you've a vastly smaller market to start with buying digital files and they can "burn out" on buying stuff because the price and volume exceeds what most will print. It also doesn't help that if you're unique game has 200 customers over a global market that's tiny - really tiny. So tiny most probably don't know each other to game with.
So that's an added barrier.


It can also burn out artists because of the demand to make more and more each month constantly with almost no pause.

So it can be a very swingy and fiddly market. I'd also say its growth was artificially fast during the pandemic and now its levelled off drastically in the last half a year to year. Everyone going back to "life" and the cost of living crisis eating into everyone's budgets means growth has levelled out. I figure at some point it will start going on active growth again.

But still physical model production is a LOT more profitable and you can reach a much larger market through supplying stores.


However if your company decides to cut all its marketing and community ties well that will kill growth fast. Heck it was one of (not the only one) the major factors in Warmachine going from 2nd to GW to a firm that right now is only just surviving and starting to grow again and in doing that they basically had to abandon all normal physical production and go for 3D print manufacture (though I've seen a few others doing that so I think we might well see a future where 3D print mass production on a modest scale is used over metal casting because of the rise in metal material costs)