Battle for Starfail

For the first time in a few years, I finally got to play Deadzone again. These games were included in the deadzone Battle for Starfall summer campaign. And when I took a look at the Deadzone campaign page I was impressed. Statistics! Pie charts! Percentages! I don't think I've ever seen this detailed, complex and player-involving campaign in any of the game systems I've paid some attention to over the years.

I really should have taken a closer look on this earlier, because a campaign like that might actually have me playing more often. But it's already last week of the campaign. Boo hoo.

Opponent kindly let me make my lists from his Outbreak supplement, so I got to test some new toys, too.

Sector Xalos North, raining
150 pts
Stage 3A lieutenant with holo sight
2x Stage 3A's, one with smoke grenade and one with frag grenade.
2x Stage 2A leaper
2x Stage 2B burster
Stage 3Z Zombie
Plague Enforcer with extra ammo.

Opponent had an assortment of enforcers, but they were all normal troopers - and with that I mean that there were no vehicles, or light or heavy enforcers or supporting models.

Smoke grenade muton acts heroically by missing the smoke grenade from where I wanted it. It landed to block line of sight to and from a cube where opponent wouldn't be able to draw LoS anyway. Well, at least it provided some penalties to shooting, but it was a bit of a double edged sword as I had some units that would've liked to shoot.

Well. Plague Enforcer shoots a dud shot, gaining blast type for this round. Otherwise there would have been good position for my enforcer, but either a fusion thingy or grenade tossed this 3VP model to ground. I knew it probably wouldn't be very wise thing to do, but I wanted to try to get some work done with my ethereal lieutenant. But I somehow messed up with special action dice and couldn't move it back to safety.

Bur(k)ster held pretty well against two enforcers that were sent against it. Eventually they blew it up in melee, which triggered nice Boom effect. But nothing really happened there. Throughout this game it felt like whenever I rolled exceptionally well, so did my opponent. Best I could do was some lucky wounds to enforcers. But did I kill more than one? I don't remember.

Maybe I did once chrysalid leapers got into melee somewhere in the middle, but by then it was too late for Plague to catch up on victory points.

Game 2

Sector Unknown

200pts
Stage 3A lieutenant with holo sight
2x Stage 3A's, one with smoke grenade and one with frag grenade.
2x Stage 2A leaper
Stage 2B burster
3x Stage 3Z Zombie
Stage 3D Hellhound
Stage 3A specialist with grenade launcher
Plague Enforcer with extra ammo.
Plague Teraton

Here opponent had Strider and a few of the heaviest enforcer type they have available, plus a couple of the scouty type enforcers with tag rifles or something.

Again my smoke grenade shenanigans fail miserably. This time the grenade landed where I wanted it - but then it dissipated right away at the start of next round, leaving my troops there in the open.

Plague enforcer takes a vantage point and tries to make the experimental weapon function a little better than last time. I think it actually did one wound to the lightweight enforcers. It did soak up quite a lot of bullets before dying, but... again, it's a 3VP unit. Losing it hurts.

For some time plague survived with no other notable losses, but stage 2A's were getting wounds in which meant rampage tests.

Grenade launcher finally managed to position itself so that it could shoot an explosive, which killed one of the little enforcers. Another enforcer that was still growing died to zombie onslaught.

What griefs me most in this game was my good assault on the Strider. Movements were carefully orchestrated, and I had quite optimal set of effects stacked against it (Stage 2A leaper with army special action and extra melee, plus supporting stage 3A), but scored only one wound then, and nothing at all when it escaped the fight.

Strider got into brawl with Teraton, but Teraton isn't a good unit to crack such armor.

Desperately did Plague fight, but killed only two pathfinders and did one wound to Strider.

However, that's only half of the story. I had my chance in scoring scenario point - I did get to score points from enemy side, as well as controlled both regular VP areas for a while. But in the end I lost too many models and could not stop enforcers from doing the same. Another loss for plague.

Again it did feel like I rolled badly, but considering how resilient enemy forces were that may have been just a gut feeling, as winning opposed tests too little had no effect whatsoever.