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.

Virus vs Bacteria

I played a couple Deadzone games yesterday. Both games were Plague vs Veer-myn with two different point sizes and scenarios with hidden objectives.

My two lists were:

150 points scour mission:
Stage 3A leader with energy shield
2x Stage 2A
2x Stage 3A, one with frag grenade and one with smoke grenade

3x Stage 3Z zombies
Stage 3A specialist with grenade launcher and smoke grenade
Plague Swarm

Hidden objective was a reminiscent of infiltration missions that I had come to fear in last edition of Deadzone.


200 points search and destroy:
Stage 3A leader
2x Stage 2A
2x Stage 3A, at least one with smoke grenade
5x Stage 3Z zombies
Stage 3A specialist with grenade launcher
Plague Swarm
Helfather with holo sight (should read them crazy rules a little better...)
Plague Strider with flame thrower

Hidden objective was to kill enemy leader. Only 2VP area scored point for me.


In the first game opponent had pretty much full melee Veer-myn army. And gosh, were they fast!

In the first 150 point game there were at least two nightmares and night terror, piper (some kind of kickstarter exclusive?) and an assortment of troops.

My side of the board had a lot of items tokens that you're supposed to pick up in scour mission. I had won initial recon check and was able to leave one Stage 2A to ambush.

But before I remembered to take a second picture, the ambusher had already died without accomplishing anything at all. Two big rats equipped with drills exposed themselves next on the left side of the board, and I somehow thought that Stage 2A and Plague Swarm would know how to fight in melee. They had completely forgotten how to wield their own claws. Perhaps they were baffled by the extra ammo crates they were carrying and tried to shoot the nightmare rats by squeezing a single bullet into their hide one at a time.

The grenade launcher Stage 3A specialist scored a kill with an indirect shot. A courageous trooper rat tried to challenge my leader in melee, but was overrun by zombies.

I think I got a third kill somewhere, but I really can't remember where it was. Some rat swarms did die here and there, but who counts rat swarms? One Stage 3A trooper infiltrated via enemy deployment zone before just about everything I ever held dear was dead or dying.

Last picture is just before the Stage 3A ethereal leader flees the scene. Injured, both physically and emotionally. I think I got to ten victory points or something.

Game 2:

In the second game veer-myn were lead by a Brood Mother. There were still a ton of huge melee rats, but this time they were supported by things like chem-fire throwers and grenade launchers of their own and what else.

I forgot to take pictures for quite a while. So far the chem-fire thrower in melee with plague swarm has shot Stage 3A leader and another random muton dead (or perhaps it was the melee trooper, who went to hunt the grenade launcher muton who isn't quite there in the picture.)

Sectopod Strider is already a smouldering wreck. It got a clear charge to enemy leader model, yet whiffed every roll it was called to make. The fact that it took damage from a non-armour piercing 6+ shooting attack with it's armour value of 4 and survival 4+ tells everything one needs to know about the Strider's performance.

Stage 2A's were also failing their miserable existence. Looked like the only proper soldiers I had were the zombies. They scored almost all of plague's kills.

Plague Swarm was at least doing something - it took out the chem thrower and assassin-like trooper rat. But I believe that was just because it had been fixed up by a zombie medic - it must have poured a little bit of it's own essence into the surgical field operations on plague swarm!

I had lost my faith in actually killing veer-myn models, so Helfather started to climb up the tower where was the objective that gave two victory points.

A couple of zombies were completely tying up Brood Mother and other hulking rat beasts. One of the nigtmare rat monsters that had dispatched Stage 2A on the left had started to climb up the victory point tower, but plague swarm has already killed it in the picture. Helfather starts to shoot veer-myn broodmother and a lucky fire damage roll deals two damage before Brood Mother manages to take it out.

Then Helfather slowly grind enough victory point to give win for Plague.

What a weird game. It had looked such a game-over only a few turns earlier. I guess the Strider rush and useless Stage 2A brawls slowed and tied up veer-myn to get some time for the real heroes to show up - the zombies. And of course the plague swarm. Some kind of a veer-myn with grenade launcher was also continuously missing grenades against Helfather, which immensely helped to get those few remaining victory points.

Deadzone 2

Last Sunday I played a few games of Deadzone second edition.

Three games took about four hours to play or so. Point sizes were 100, 150 and 200.

I played with X-Com '94 Plague faction.

My lists were:

100 points:

Stage 3A Leader

4x Stage 3Z zombies
Stage 3A trooper
Stage 2A

Stage 3A specialist with grenade launcher
Stage 3A specialist with HMG and extra ammo


150 points:

Same as 100 plus

- Chovar Psychic
- Stage 3A trooper with Frag grenade
- Stage 3A specialist with HMG

200 points:
Same as 150 plus

- Strider with Chainsaw
- +2x Stage 3Z zombies
- extra ammo for the second HMG specialists


Opponent played with Enforcers.

First two games were Recon missions.

I got only one uninformative picture from the first game, so I'll just try to sum it up briefly.

Shooting proved itself to be far more lethal than it used to be. I mean, Plague strike team was shooting Enforcers dead in this game... Though those were pretty much the only kill Plague got in that game. Enforcer shooting was even more deadly, and I lost Stage 2A very early. Throughout all these games there was an awkward trend of Plague trying to score an objective victory instead of wrecking face in melee combat. Perhaps Enforcers made it easy just by the virtue of having so few models on board.

However, having lost most of my actual fighting power to a few well placed shots, Stage 3Z zombies weren't ultimately enough to grind the required number of victory points.

Game 2:

In second game I had the Chovar psychic. Yet again a good shot nearly killed Chovar on first turn. One bullet must have cut through it's psychic membrane as it failed just about every Invigorate attempts it made during whole game.

Plague shooting results from last game proved to be anomalous, and one by one my specialists went to various vantage points just to die uselessly.

Stage 2A got into melee, but didn't do much. Zombies, on the other hand, were the masters of martial arts. Casualties were inflicted to both sides, and yet again I only had a few zombies shambling in the end. Game was a really close one. I think Enforcers had 11 victory points when Plague got to 12+ ... which, by the way, was incorrect victory point number for the point size of this game, so Plague victory can be questioned.

Game 3:

Scenario in this game was Search and Destroy.

Enforcer Sniper and Missile Launcher were terrible nuisances in this game. If I remember right, I finally nailed the Sniper who was on a tower about in the middle of the board by shooting it with two HMG's with extra ammo, Grenade Launcher and rifle from Stage 3A Leader, and activating some specialists again with Chovar. In this game Chovar was an amazing combo piece, by the way. For a long time that Sniper was my only kill, though here and there I scored lucky injuries.

By combining lots of command dice and Chovar skills and everything else that I had in my possession, I got Strider into melee with a pinned Enforcer. The Sectopod was probably bugged or something, because it just ran next to the Enforcer and... stared. Not even in an especially menacing manner.

And then Missile Launcher blasts it into a wreck. Just as planned.

Well, at least the Strider had drawn some activations away from Enforcers and bought time for Stage 2A Chryssalid to enter melee with the very same Missile Launcher guy. What ensued was one of the most iconic moments of X-Com: Enemy Unknown '94. I had the zombie contagion command die in reserve.

Enforcers were on an unlucky streak, and Stage 2A wreaked havoc in their lines, while meagre zombies were scoring points from the objectives. An honourable mention goes to the frag grenade carrying trooper. It tried to lob it on top of a building with Enforcers on it, but missed. I guess it didn't have the Time Units to throw the grenade after priming it. Grenade scattered to the very same cube where the enthusiastic little pyrotechnist was.

Enforcers couldn't kill the Stage 2A until it was too late. This time it was an honest victory for Plague.

- - -


So. What do I think of Deadzone second edition? From my point of view, the streamlining has been done quite well. I hadn't been an avid player of the first edition, and I never could quite grasp all the small details of different modifiers in different modes of attacks. Probably because not all of them were very intuitive. A lot of such confusion seems to be gone.

Battle cards had been a nice mechanic, but I think I can live without it. Only thing that bugs me is the loss of asymmetrical scenarios. Sure, they are optional there in the rulebook, but as far as I'm concerned, that aspect of the game was done better with cards.