GM Ian's Mini Miniature Review: Reviewing TTCombat's Dropzone Commander & Dropfleet Commander's UCM Starter Fleet.

As far as Sci-Fi space design goes, the UCM Navy or rather the United Colonies of Mankind Fleet, UCMF (I would honestly go for United Colonial Navy but I wasn't the designer...) has the coolest ship designs among Sci-Fi naval wargames. The ships for the UCMF remind me a lot of those ships from Halo's UNSC.

Okay, maybe not exactly but the aesthetic is similar(?).

Even among the fleets available for Dropfleet Commander, the UCMF are still the coolest.

Very the coolest.

The UCMF is pretty much the standard tough ships with powerful guns archetypes. Railguns, more railguns and the occasional missiles, lasers and starfighters.

The Standard-Class USS Standard of the Standard Human Faction Navy.

As in the pictures, I've assembled my fleet with the railgun variants although the cruiser kit does not provide enough railguns to assemble the heavy cruiser variant with more railguns without leaving the other ship hulls without their own railguns thus would force me to assemble other types of cruisers that I don't prefer or like.

Mmmmmm.... More dakka <drools>.

About the same issue with the frigate kit, not enough to assemble the 4 frigates with the railgun-ship variant. So I assembled 2 as the railgun frigate and the other 2 as missile frigates. However, I did feel I should have assembled the 2 missile frigates as anti-starfighter frigates instead.

However, the kits provide all the parts you need, you may just need to buy a few more kits or have more variety in your fleet composition. Not a bad thing since real world navies and doctrine does show you need ships of various roles. Also it makes for a boring game if your ships are "Do-Everything" ships. Everything should have a weakness and drawback, and fleet should have various ships doing specific roles to support each other.

As this comic illustrates, you need variety to be a strong all-rounded naval power. 

The ship models are made of this hard plastic and I like it. Not brittle but very crisp. No mold lines can be seen. Details can be seen very clearly and again, crisp. I say TTCombat did good maintaining and improving Hawk Wargames manufacturing processes. Kits are also easy to assemble and probably easy to magnetize.

Price-wise; playing 40 Quids (That's what the British called their British Pound currency, right?) for a skirmish-size game is quite alright. But the box content will only save you 2.50 Pounds. If you already know what you want, I think getting the individual box sets is feasible (and hopefully, their emphasis on cruisers and frigates being the common and tried-and-true workhorse is true). Other alternative is that you find a friend to share the DFC 2-Player Starter Set.

GM Ian's Verdict: They're cool-looking ships and you should get them if you want to play DFC or some other Sci-Fi naval wargame.

My own Rio-Class Cruiser, Hang Tuah and the Toulon-Class Frigate, Naga.