FIREDROP - Drop Pod Warfare
War! What purpose would we have in this life without it?
It’s been five years since the Siphonapterian scourge was first encountered on Apterion VI. In the years since, the superflea plague has spread across more and more of our great Empire. We still do not know how they spread, but we do know wherever our ships went after fighting them last they would appear, as if following us—clearly aiming to discover our homeworld and consume it.
Now more than ever, we need good and honorable Soldiers to take the fight directly to the Siphonapterians and show them there’s nothing a little national pride and a heaping dose of lead (and explosives) can’t solve. Oorah!
In FIREDROP, you and your friends play as Soldiers dropped from low orbit to fight the hordes of superflea’s infesting the planet. Each mission will be unique, with its own objectives, Siphonapterian nests, and extraction point. Your job is to complete the objective and, if you can, extract with your life intact. To aid you in battle, you will have a number of clone reinforcements available upon your death as well as high impact firepower like sentries, orbital bombardments, and more.
FIREDROP is a 28-page, half-letter, black and white zine hex and dice wargame. It’s something fairly new for me, but it’s been a lot of fun to make and really fun to playtest. And yes, it is heavily inspired by Helldivers 2! I started making it while I was waiting to get into the game’s very overloaded servers to play!
FIREDROP was originally created for and released for free as part of Missives from the MeatCastle's, MCGW's free monthly newsletter, February issue (coming 2/28/24). To subscribe and get your copy FOR FREE, click here!
CREDITS
Design and Layout: Christian Sorrell
Editing: Jarrett Crader
Art: Perplexing Ruins, Thomas Novosel (via Patreon)
Publishing: MeatCastle GameWare
Purchase
In order to download this wargame you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $7.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.1 is Here! Print Run is Ordered!Apr 05, 2024
- Small text/display correctionsFeb 28, 2024
Comments
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Gave this a run last night with two buddies... was a good time. Med difficulty with 3 soldiers was a bit too easy so we will ramp it up in our next drop. Question: Speed seems like a better option to have more in since it serves the same function as Armor but Speed also allows you to move faster. Unless you want to Tank and have the high stats in Speed and Armor. is that right?
I would love to see this game built out some more, lots of potential. Thanks for making and offering it in a bundle.
Thanks for playing (and reporting back with how it went)! I would definitely like to expand it out further down the line. I have some notes for a proper campaign of missions (and I'd want to touch up and expand the rules a bit too). Sometime!
You're generally right on the Speed vs Armor front. You can tank by getting high numbers in both but Speed, with what's there now, is typically the optimal play. That's something I'd build another bonus around for Armor in a v2, for sure!
I have another question for you. When a soldier dies and is reinforced, do they have their soldier ability/resupply refreshed as well along with ammo or does that stay on the same refresh rate prior to KIA?
That's a great question and definitely an edge case I should include in the updates rules. My initial thoughts is that the refresh rates should stay the same as prior to KIA (since they often represent stuff happening around the soldiers from the dropship above and such). Also, that keeps there from being times it may be more advantageous to die and reinforce, which seems silly.
Thats a good point, you don't want it to be a tactical decision so maybe only Ammo refreshes.
If you are interested in learning more about the game, The Weekly Scroll did a full review a few months back:
Are there plans to expand more in this game?
I'd love to on the future! I have super early notes for a campaign with new map types and such, but it's not something I'm actively developing right now. Hopefully sometime down the line!
Very cool design !
Thanks! I hope you have fun with it!
This may be self-explanatory, but when playing solo, can I just make a squad of 4 soldiers anyway? Likewise, 2 people can each control 2 soldiers? (this is assuming 4 is the max squad size?)
Definitely! As long as you are taking the Soldier turns in the same order each time, you are good. Nothing stopping solo play with more Soldiers (you'll just likely want to bump the Difficulty up to match the higher squad total). And yea, 4 Soldiers is the intended maximum.
Played it a bunch and love it so far! Always been a fan of being surrounded by hordes of monsters. But something I’m not clear on is, does difficulty scale with the amount of Soldiers in a game?
Thanks for playing! I'm glad it's been fun. Right now, difficulty does not scale to the amount of Soldiers (meaning the doing the highest difficulty with just 1 or 2 Soldiers is likely to be near impossible, for example). I am planning a v1.1 update before I take the game to print so I may add a few more difficulties or a scaling option as well.
Ooh, I’ll keep an eye out for that
Got Firedrop free bc of the newsletter - awesome! Played Firedrop with my son yesterday. Excellent quick space marine/bug killer game. Clean rules. Loved the random generation of the missions.
5 stars!
For 2p, easy was too easy but good into to play. Hard gave us a good, tense fight.
Thanks for playing (and for the play report)!