I decided it would be prudent to get more than one game in before writing anything, as there were still a few major changes that hadn’t been explored in the first game. To that end, I played one game without recording anything, and another of a 2001 point game that I made a battle report video of:

I also wanted to wait until I got the book proper. So, to focus on that topic first…

One thing I have to laud them for is the downloadable lore primer. It’s not a complete compilation of all the background information, but it’s an excellent overview of the setting and great to have available for download. My criticism here is largely in comparison to the earlier books: the introduction of the Bioficers is the primary focus, and so the rest of the story is only touched on a bit and it’s lacking the deeper dive into system by system breakdowns as the viewpoint has zoomed out some.

In any case, I believe a common refrain among wargamers is “sell lore and art, have rules be free”, with the logic being that rules will almost certainly need to be adjusted while lore and art can be made into something for enthusiasts/collectors to splurge on. So it’s nice to get both background and rules free… for the most part.

What’s missing in the online rulebook when compared to the printed version is some of the faction background info (most of said information being present elsewhere), a story timeline, and a few of the pre-designed scenarios. Those are certainly not worth throwing down a few bucks on for an already otherwise outdated rulebook. Upon release, there was an additional multi-page FAQ/errata that almost certainly arose from play tester questions that came in after a print submission deadline, once again highlighting the problems of physical rulebooks.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, I honestly don’t understand why I’ve seen multiple people insist on having printed rulebooks available for any game and deriding digital only rules. I’m not saying that having rules solely on a device is superior (I hate reading shit on my phone), but just print out the pdf to get a physical copy! Ideally steal workplace supplies and do it there for free if you can every time there’s a rules update!

Regardless, I picked the book up for the sake of reviewing it and to get over a free shipping threshold, so:

It’s a flimsy little saddle stitch book. Tolerable as a rule book to be tossed into a starter set, absolutely not something to go out of your way to collect.

In terms of visual design, there’s an increased emphasis on art deco elements, which I welcome and enjoy. For usability, so far no issue locating rules during play… but this is coming from the perspective of someone already familiar with the prior system. A nice modernizing update is that each entry has a specific section number (12.4.1.2, etc.), so telling someone where to look for something is far easier than having to say “it’s in the orbital rules section, no not that page” or whatever.

There are, of course, rules quandaries that come up after a read over. I’m personally fairly lax about these things and prefer to just settle on what makes the game move on, but there’s no reason for some of these issues to remain in the final product (stop making physical rulebooks that demand production deadlines). There is one typo in particular that truly bothers me, from the scoring section:

I even spent some time asking people if this was a British-English thing, and no. It’s “Raise” rather than the intended “Raze”. This is repeated throughout every mention of this scoring method in the book. How was this missed?

But wait.

Fucking Christ.

So long as we’re here with scenario stuff, I can touch on them: as mentioned earlier, there are some pre-designed ones in the book, but there’s a set of tables for different scenario aspects that can be used to either create your own via either rolling or (as I suspect most people will) just choosing the ones you want. There are some problems here, in that a few of the combinations are wonky, but overall I like it as it provides an easy source of inspiration for making your own setups. For example, I always found it odd how often people would complain about the game not being a straight slugfest in space, when you could always do that! It was kind of boring, but nothing was stopping you from setting the game up like that. Now, you can just choose Attrition scoring (points for kills) and Orbital Complex (all cities become space stations, no atmosphere) and you’re pretty much there with The Official Rules.

For the rules themselves and how the game plays, it’s still Dropfleet in flavor. The stated design goals were streamlining and opening up design space, and I think they succeeded in those goals. I’m not going to say that everything they did to accomplish that was good, though. While some key mechanics were changed (one of which in particular I am not a fan of), the core of planetary invasion/Space D-Day remains. I don’t think an exhaustive page by page review or a discussion of individual ship and weapon balance is justified, but I’m going to list some changes I have opinions on:

  • Launch
    • Launch assets have been reworked to remain on the table, with their own set of mechanics. So far, this is one of my favorite changes, adding visual flare and some new ways to play without adding unnecessary complexity. No longer having them be essentially wonky guns is a boon.
  • Removal of (incidental) close action weapons and point defense
    • Mixed opinion; in the prior version, they often boiled down to a lot of rolling in order to maybe get a point or two of chip damage through. It’s understandable why they were removed, but losing the flavor of ships increasing in firepower as they closed gaps and could toss more weaponry out is a loss. In the original version of the game, almost all CAW had d3 or d6 rolls for attack values, and that was altered in favor of flat values that were the statistical average to speed things up, so this feels like they just took that process forward another step and killed all the CAW rolls. In practice, I get it, it does speed things up without a significant impact on the game, but I still feel sad to see it go.
  • Kinetic/energy/core damage types
    • I just don’t understand the purpose as the rules stand now for the K/E split. There’s a few sources of save rerolls for K damage, and E seems to have a greater prevalence of save reduction, but that’s about it for mechanical differentiation. I’d say it’s a way of encouraging a diverse fleet, as various ships can have better or worse E or K saves, but the problem is that two of the factions (Scourge and Shaltari) are almost entirely E based, so you start getting weird match-up imbalances. If every faction had a good mixture of damage types, maybe it would be more interesting? Core damage at least has a clear role as being an approximation of 1.0 critical hits.
  • Orbital layers (and bombardment)
    • Orbital layers are now essentially orbit, atmosphere, and atmosphere for idiots who want to burn up on re-entry. I thought I would miss the high/low split, but in practice it’s not an issue. There’s still various weapon and ship rules that interact with firing between the layers, like bombardment. I always wanted bombardment to be better than it was, and now it’s pretty solid! If we ignore the weirdness of firing bombardment weapons into orbit, which thankfully, is apparently not supposed to be the way they work as per the claims of discussions with the designer. Let’s not touch on the multiple comments from him that imply there were changes/edits/whatever between his conception of the final rules and what was printed, as that’s Just TTC Things(tm).
  • Admiral abilities
    • Gone are the command cards, with many of the notable ones being shifted into admiral abilities. No more will you hope to draw that one game changing card, or pay extra for a high level admiral just for the sake of being able to cycle through the deck faster. I’m a fan, with one or two caveats. I’m already feeling after just three games that it might end up being a bit same-y as you settle on the best abilities and use those whenever possible. The standard faction admiral provides two set abilities and then allows you to choose one from a table; perhaps letting you pick two would be better? Also, while you do get to be aware at all times what abilities your opponent has, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. No more getting blown out by a card you could never plan around, but no more surprise twists of any kind either.
  • Features
    • This is one of the most interesting changes to me, largely because of the potential. At first the simplified ground combat/drop mechanics were kind of “eh whatever” to me, but after playing the game seen above and starting to see how things could be made interesting with unique dropsite features, and how it could bring back some more engagement to the ground game mechanics that were wiped clean, I’d really like to see where this goes.
  • Alternating activations/strategy rating removal
    • Saved the worst for last. List building is vastly simplified, and the strategy deck is completely gone. At the risk of sounding too grognardy, this is a straight dumbing down. Alternating activations works fine (it hits ships that are designed as escort/support the most, as choosing between telegraphing where you’re moving your primary vessels or trying to ~mind game~ by not moving next to your support ship is stupid), but it’s not interesting. Spending a few minutes thinking through the round, what you expect your opponent to do, what you think they expect you to do, and stacking your activations accordingly was an engaging system! Reacting to your opponent is nowhere as satisfying as predicting your opponent.

What’s my ultimate verdict? I’ve enjoyed the three games I’ve played so far, but what I’m unsure of is what proportion of that is simple novelty, and how much the core vibes of the game still resonate despite any negatives. I think where I lean now is that how it holds up in the longer term is going to be dependent on how the newer design spaces like features, launch assets, and admirals are expanded upon.

But now, the new plastic sprues! I picked up some boxes of the Shaltari light ships:

While I want to give them points for providing the paints to do the official schemes right on the box, I know they’re ultimately just advertising their own paint line. So no points for them.

I also discussed the bases a bit earlier, but I want to emphasize again: they need to do better here. The cuts are just too rough. I’m not familiar with laser cutters, but it seems to me that either their software or hardware are lacking in the resolution required for smooth curves, or the speed of production required means they have to run the cutter at larger movement steps to meet that. I decided to get some bases from Laserforge Miniatures since they look much nicer, but we’ll see when they arrive if they do the trick.

The sprues and ships themselves? Great so far at first look. The only issue is inherent to plastic production, in that certain things like gun barrels or negative spaces had to be redesigned, so that’s some visual interest lost. But you do get to not have to deal with the inevitable roughness of resin casts, so it’s a net gain.

To compare a new versus an old sprue:

Similar size, but less plastic wasted on the channels, and much thinner connections. Seems to be less wasted empty space, too. The only negative I can say about them is that you’re out of luck if you specifically want one of the new variants only available on the sprue and have an extensive collection already. But for anyone new to the game, expanding out into a new faction, or just wanting some neat spaceships, these are solid.