British wargames terrain maker and game publisher TTCombat has previewed six, 32mm scale, special-edition sci-fi miniatures of foot troopers from the firm’s Dropzone setting. Shown off in a December 16 blog post, the special edition miniatures are available now, and are a harbinger of a coming wargame, Striketeam Commander – although details on that are still light.
There’s the United Colonies of Mankind Marine Force Recon Droptroop, a jetpack-mounted professional soldier; Post Human Republic Aristaeus Hellion, a high-tech posthuman in bodyglove and visor; a Resistance Fighter in bulky armour and toting a machine gun; Shaltari Warchief and Pungari Serf, two cute aliens from the advanced Shaltari civilization; and a Scourge Warrior, wielding a raygun and wearing a face-enclosing, tri-lens mask.
The six minis are on sale from the TTCombat webstore over the winter holidays. The blogpost describes them as ‘event exclusives’, products that TTCombat only sells when it’s attending an in-person convention. Most of the models retail for $9.70 / £8, with the Shaltari and Pungari at $8.50 / £7. They’re the first models in 32mm scale (close to Warhammer 40k and the same scale as Marvel Crisis Protocol) for TTCombat’s ‘Drop-universe’, a sci-fi setting which has five factions fighting for control of a ravaged earth.
TTCombat confirms that there will be a Drop-universe wargame in the 32mm scale, called ‘Striketeam Commander’, but “for now there’s no active development on [it] outside of these collectors’ pieces”. However, the firm is developing a boxed game called ‘Project Hunter’ for the setting, according to the blog post – but so far, there’s only one piece of artwork to show from it, pictured above.
TTCombat publishes two wargames in the Drop-universe already. Dropzone Commander is a 10mm scale game, which sees mobile forces of armour and infantry deploy from dropships for rapid manoeuvres around dense cityscapes. Dropfleet Commander features fleet combat between space vessels in low-earth orbit as they jostle for position in support of the ground war. Dropzone Commander’s rules and models were first designed by Hawk Wargames, which TTCombat acquired in 2017.
There’s a lot of competition among games at the 28mm and 32mm scale – all five of our best miniature wargames of 2022 are 28mm or 32mm scales. Wargamers seem particularly attracted to the scale for building and painting miniatures, not to mention gaming, so this could be an opportunity to reach a wider audience. We hope that Striketeam Commander lets TTCombat lavish as much love over the five Drop-universe factions as the Warhammer 40k factions receive from Games Workshop.