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.

There's a muton under my bacon!

Today Deadzone campaign came to an end. Originally we had planned a ten mission campaign, but since Deadzone second edition rules are going to drop to kickstarters any moment now, we just played an improvised 100 point game. Well it was the ninth game, so we didn't miss the mark that much.

As Plague had had terrible start in the campaign, we decided to triple the victory points gained from the game to give Plague an actual chance to win.

First half of the board was alien battleship. We placed the control zone accordingly. That was homebrew on the fly. Is this what I have become? Ahem...

It was time to pick missions. I had two choices, Close In and Fight Another Day. Considering the placement of control zones I couldn't bring myself to pick Fight Another Day. Gaining two victory points per turn until Enforcers would be even close to objectives on a 16x8 board, and then continuing to gain two more as long as I had over 50% of my troops remaining looked like an anti-climatic ending.

So, my old beloved Infiltrate missions it was, with a little bit of killy objectives, too.

My strike team was:

Ethereal Stage 3A General (Slow mutation, one veteran die and jump pack)
4x Stage 3A trooper mutons with various handicaps and disabilities. Hello, 7+ Shoot and 6+ Fight troopers, for example)
3x Fresh Recruits (They actually looked like they might do better than older troops...)
HMG Heavy Plasma muton
Celatid Swarm
2x Plague Hound & Silacoid
Stage 2A Chryssalid with Agile mutation. That was almost as scary as Chryssalids in the '94 X-Com.
Chovaar Sectoids with Mind Probe

Opponent had just seven models in their 100 point list.

1x Strider (which explains extremely low model count I guess)
Enforcer with Thermal Rifle
Enforcer Medic
... possibly the rest were regular Enforcer troopers?

Their mission was Zulu.

First picture is the deployment from within my battleship. It's a shame the humanoid figures in greenish vats don't show too well. They were pretty awesome. A miniature was put inside a small tube and then filled with some kind of shower gel. Brilliant.

Second picture is from the end of round one. Nothing really happened yet, but it shows the absurd threat range with Plague models plus... shenanigans.

I found a smoke grenade from inside my ship, and went into offence with that. I thought the LoS blocking would be enough, but how wrong I was... An Enforcer, probably the one with thermal rifle, just huddled a little closer and lobbed a grenade over my stack of three mutons adjacent to another space with two. Wound were caused. Reducements in aggression were made. It had a major psychological impact on me. It gave too painful flashbacks from missions 1-5...

Another Enforcer secured position one the metal barrels in the middle of eastern map. So. Chovaar psychic is awesome. Ethereal used command action to move Stage 2A one cube. Then it used Sprint and Move actions. Then Chovaar psychic took away the activation marker, and Stage 2A activated again. I intuitively played it so that I wouldn't be able to use Agile twice in a turn even if there were two separate activations. Without even using battle cards the Stage 2A moved six cubes, possibly seven with battle card or potentially eight cubes if I played the Agile wrong...!

Attack in itself wasn't too shabby. Only one wound was caused to the Enforcer.

Then another Enforcer enters the same combat to help his friend, but no damage is done to anyone.

Next turn a muton with Reinforced Spines (Tough) mutation comes to help the outnumbered Stage 2A. And I guess it does that, in a way... It fails the combat so miserably that the target gains a free escape. Now Stage 2A was able to finish what it began. Attack roll was doubled or tripled, so Stage 2A got to move one cube. Then Chovaar removed the activation marker again. Stage 2A used Sprint and then Move to enter combat with Enforcer who had thermal rifle. It was a bloody slaughter, and doubles or triples again. Another move. That's five cubes of advancement, and combat in two different cubes not next to each other. Damn it. That Chryssalid truly was living up to its name!

Though all was not that fuzzy and cute on Plague side of the board. Original non-fresh mutons started dying left and right. It's possible that the muton in the middle is the only trooper muton still alive. Oh, the little sectoids are my fresh recruits, by the way.

I was worried about the Strider, though. I boosted Celatid swarm with everything I got and launched it against the hulking behemoth - and no damage. At all. I thought that cost me the game, but Enforcer shooting was extremely inefficient that turn.

The Stage 2A Chryssalid entered the middle once more to cry havoc on a bold, yet foolish Enforcer who had entered to contest the barrels once more. But then Stage 2A failed everything. Everything!

A plague hound, the silacoid there, had to come and help the melee beast. Yay, one injury in.

Two Enforcers were in the second story of the building behind the melee. They shot the Chryssalid down. Well. That's the way you need to kill them anyway. Somewhere high with no entryway, possibly because you shot the stairs yourself to prevent the Chryssalid from climbing...

But that was a serious blow to me. One of my two killers that were worth something was dead now - and the other one was tied down to melee with Strider.

Or so I thought.

Plague Hounds charged to the Enforcer that had been in melee with Chryssalid. Bam. Dead Enforcer.

The second one went to help Celatid swarm in melee with Strider. Bam. Two wounds in.

Jealous of the performance of pesky Silacoid, Celatid wanted to show what it was made of. It managed to cause two additional wounds. But this is no Plague strider, no. This one has five wounds. So it was not over yet.

A hail of continuous bullets rain down from the building that was occupied by two Enforcers. But as far as I remember, only Silaoid actually died, though Celatid became injured and lost enraged status. Losing enraged status only made the Celatid real pissed off, and it wrecked the Strider. Things started to look pretty good, then. I started to move all of my remaining troops so that they might possibly get to infiltrate. A plague hound and one fresh recruit had already done that.

Enforcers lobbed a grenade on top of Celatid, but now the Celatid was really pissed off, and totally flipped out and killed everybody.

I'm not even exaggerating. Grenade pushed it one cube to exactly wrong direction... to the Enforcers, that is. I had Get Mean card in my hand. I played it on the Celatid, who then moved one cube and used Agile to make short Climb action to Enforcer on the highest floor of the building. It killed the Enforcer and doubled or tripled the result, and moved down to last remaining true Enforcer. There was also one some sort of support drone.

Now Chovaar psychic is moved with Move -card, and yet again it succeed to rouse passion in the... uhh... whatever can be considered a heart deep inside of the Celatid. It activated again, killed the Enforcer with doubles or triples, takes a move to the drone and wrecks that also.

I don't know how all of this was possiible, but I know that the Chovaar was far more influential in this game than my actual strike force general.

In the end I received exactly forty points . 13 times three, plus four for completing core mission minus three for using a mercenary. This brought me to 81 points.

Opponent had 78 total reputation.

Well... of course this wouldn't have been possible without the tweaks in the reputation rules for this grande finale. But hey, AI cheats.

There's a muton under my apron!

Last Wednesday I played two Deadzone games.

They were mission seven and eight from an ongoing ten mission campaign.

So far my Strike Force of angry mutons hasn't been very lucky. In fact they have been so unlucky that my army didn't have enough models to make a 70 point game any more.

My Strike Team for first mission (Careful Carnage, I think... survive and get a few victory points for killing enemy models) was:

- Plague General, the Ethereal
- Stage 3A muton with 7+ Shoot, 6+ Melee and two veteran dice
- Stage 3Amuton with 7+ shoot and two veteran dice
- Plague Hound (Orange one in pictures) with 7+ Melee and 5+ Survive and Spotter skill
- Plague Hound with AP1
- HMG specialist with Spotter skill
- 2x HMG specialists with no experience
- 4x Useless Cannon Fodder Stage 3A's (Fresh recruits)

Enforcers had:

- Assault Enforcer
- Regular Enforcer
- Engineer
- Strider
- Some sort of a spotter drone

Enforcers started game. First picture is from the same turn, but in different angles. Red oval marks the same space for a Stage 3A HMG specialist in both pictures.

Zombies are the fresh rooks. As there were only two buildings on the board, I was happy that deployment was the exact edges shown in the pictures. It was easy to try and hide from the cruel and unforgiving world that had been beating the aliens so harshly earlier.

As opponent had so few models on board, they couldn't make that many attacks in the same turn. However, I didn't feel like I had chances of taking out the Strider - or, at least I couldn't risk it by throwing enough meat against it and whittle it down. I needed to survive. But I also needed to keep Strider busy and possibly contest objectives. I was almost ready to just hide under a rock and score as many survive points as I could before Enforcers eventually would march to their objectives and win the game.

That wouldn't have been a very exciting game, so instead I decided upon a compromise between reckless abandon and hiding and pretending my aliens were alone. I'd try to shoot perhaps one or with amazing luck two Enforcers and then pull back - or if my points on board would go dangerously close to 35.

In the first picture there is a plague hound and a HMG specialist on second floor of my side's building. The muton space would become a point of interest in this game, as well as a certain ledge in the second picture.

They were the cubes both parties were concentrating on in shooting. My main plan was to make massed Blaze Away! actions with the HMG on second floor assisted by three models on ground. It worked fine enough until even the mighty psychic powers (command actions) of Ethereal and Battle Cards were not enough to raise the main shooter's morale. One of the most annoying aspects of the situation was a well placed sentry gun, who launched a volley of suppressing fire again and again against the HMG muton.

Since there had been surprisingly few casualties, I felt bold enough to sacrifice the redshirts I had gotten for free. One of them ran right next to the Strider who was checking up objective on the left. Perhaps I might buy one round with this action, who knows? At least the mental image was quite fun when Strider used it's mega sized range 12 super cannon on a wimpy model right in the next cube. Also the AP1 silacoid dog I had hiding in the rubble on the right got rabid and charged the Enforcer Trooper who had come to look at the objective on the right. I think the dog inflicted a wound on the trooper.

Now. Game had lasted already quite long, and I started to raise a little bit of hope in actually winning the mission - though I half expected Enforcers to claim victory any moment now. Somehow it never occurred to me that the HMG muton on the second floor was actually contesting the objective on the middle. No wonder it had taken quite a few bullets into his general direction during the game.

When I had something like eight victory points from survival only, the suppression wars between Plague and Enforcers finally ended to the relative victory of Enforcers. Assault Enforcer and Engineer on the ledge were able to move out of the same cube, and somewhere in the process even my muton died from the second floor. My troopers started to go into hiding and I had to face the fact that even one additional death would cost me the victory now.

It was tenth turn when somebody, I forget who, was being shot at and I was absolutely certain that this is it. Deadzone was truly twisting the knife this time. Only one more turn, damn it!

Oh wait. Nobody died.

What's this? What happened? Why the guns fell silent so suddenly?

What??

I had won my first game in this campaign, and it came from survival victory condition? Nonsense. But sometimes nonsense happens.

As a fun side note... that also meant I had been shooting Enforcers with three and four man Blaze Away's, and not a single wound was ever inflicted. Except by the dog, of course.

But this victory felt hollow, as both of my dogs died. Also the HMG muton received a penalty to its Shoot stat, but that's nothing. The dogs had died!



Game 2 (or 8)

Finally I had at least a little leeway in my Strike Team composition. My mission was nothing else but kill enemies. I had purchased one Plague Swarm with the sweet, sweet reputation points of last game. And a plague hound, too. But it's just not the same... I can't name it Scruffy II.

My team:

- Plague General, the Ethereal
- Stage 3A muton with 5+ Shoot & melee, 6+ Survive and Brawler
- Stage 3A muton with 7+ Shoot, 6+ Melee and two veteran dice
- Stage 3A muton with 7+ Shoot and two veteran dice
- 2x Not-so-fresh-recruits anymore
- Fresh Plague Hound
- HMG specialist with 6+ Shoot and Spotter skill
- HMG specialist who hasn't Ranked yet to be anything special
- Plague Swarm

Now opponent had some models on board I had learned to fear already:

- Assault Enforcer
- 2x Regular Enforcer
- Enforcer Sniper
- Enforcer Missile Launcher
- Some sort of a spotter drone

Enforcers started game. Their Sniper quickly took a kill shot position from the highest peak on the board. From my earlier experiences that was bad. And surely enough the spotter HMG muton died very early in the game, and I thought that I just had to weather the fire somehow and go to the offence.

I got one surprise melee muton to the Enforcer far there in the back of the picture by using command action, move card, agile sprint and move. But that long distance charge was useless. Nothing really happened there. No damage done, and then the immoral Enforcers used Blaze Away to knock both of the participant down.

But this had bought time for Plague Swarm to huddle closer and come to help the green guy. Swarm charged in and scored a kill. Muton was now free to activate, and it tried to challenge the Assault Enforcer. This time the result was even worse - it managed to get a wound himself instead.

What was sort of a deciding moment in the game was when Enforcers were then unable to suppress the Plague Swarm - it merely lost its enraged status.

Come next turn, and all hell broke loose. It was the moment the aliens had been waiting throughout the campaign. A lucky Blaze Away suppressed both Enforcers on the cube next to Plague Swarm. Plague Swarm then climbed up to them and ate the missile launcher, doubling or tripling the score. That triggered a free action, so Swarm got to fight against the other Enforcer, too. Again tons of damage in and doubles or triples, which triggered a free action. Swarm jumped down on Assault Enforcer and butchered it to pieces.

And the slaughter didn't end here. A random muton near the objective on the middle went on almost equal killing spree. Well. Maybe I'm glorifying that a bit. But still it climbed up to Enforcer Trooper and killed him. This was more than enough to give me a victory.

The beast that hungered had now been satiated. My only concern is... how long will it stay in torpor? Because this was eight mission in the campaign, and total victory is decided on the most total reputation points. Thanks to really poor start (if you can call seven out of ten mission a start) I need victories that equal or even surpass these to have a chance at winning the campaign.

There's a muton under my baton!

Last Tuesday I got to play some Deadzone. Ongoing ten mission campaign went past the halfway mark.

Dreaded infiltration missions were my bane yet again. I got the infiltrate/survive mission (Quietly does it, I think)

Well. At least I got both of my plague swarms to use.

My strike force ended up being:

Plague Leader
3x regular mutons + 1x regular New Guy muton
Heavy Machine Gun muton
2x plague swarm (one of which had an intimidating Survive score of 7+...)

Enforcers had a list something like:

Enforcer Sniper
Missile Launcher Enforcer
Probably some special weapon Enforcer
Most likely 3x Trooper Enforcers

Well. My mission was to infiltrate and survive, so I didn't overextend myself too far during first round. I was considering in locking up my troops in the green building at space G6. However, I needed to go and contest the objectives somehow, because I didn't know opponent's mission. If I had known it, locking myself up would have been a good enough idea!

Enforcer sniper was in a disturbing position on top of the watchtower in cube B6. Finally once I started to come out from the closets of blue and green building, I tried to suppress the sniper with HMG muton, but either it completely failed, or opponent played Steadfast card. Random trooper muton found Intel from E7.

One plague swarm speeded to eat some Enforcers in D6, and there was nice odds of scoring two kills - if only enraged Fight 3+ Brawler with a veteran die and charge bonus would be able to double opponent's survival rolls. Not today. One success too short. And there the plague celatid was... right under Enforcer Sniper.

Meh. Another such chance opened at C1 where there was a support missile launcher and some other enforcer in same cube. This swarm wasn't a Brawler, but it had a veteran die also. It was slightly tougher fight than the one at D6, but should be easy enough to at least kill the missile launcher. Nope. Not today. Missile launcher was only injured.

Those were my last activations in turn 3, so I had scored three victory points. Both plague swarms were easily removed by the Enforcers, and that combined with a couple of other casualties made me flip the table and abandon mission. I didn't score any additional kills, though, because Enforcers got their ten victory points. It was some kind of "kill specialists and leaders and control an objective" mission.


Post mission rolls were... interesting.
A trooper muton and a plague celatid swarm both rolled 1 on the injury table. Of course the dead swarm was the better one - I was left with the 7+ Survive one.

Oh well. Even if the massacre was, in the end, pretty one sided, I don't think it was a bad game. There were a couple of turning points that, if given a bit of luck, could have tipped the game in my favour - most notably the attacks of the plague swarms.



Game 2:

For five missions I had saved up to buy me a Boom Stick muton, and for the sixth mission I finally had enough reputation to do just that.

And my plague aliens truly are cursed. We chose mission this time like you regularly do: pick two and choose one. First draw for me was infiltration mission again. Second one, however, was Stack 'Em High (kill troopers and expensive models)

Since the campaign had been going so badly for me, I thought it might be fun to play high risk, medium reward game. After all I had very little to lose, and with some serious fire power I just might make it through at least one mission with plague being the victorious faction. So I hired the most notorious mercenary of them all - Wrath.

Plague Leader
2x regular mutons
3x plague hounds
HMG muton
Boom Stick muton
Plague Swarm
Wrath

Opponent had at least:

Enforcer sergeant
That thrice damned sniper
Assault enforcer
Possibly 3x regular troopers?

First for starters... The Boom Stick didn't land even one successful hit during whole damn game. It did score a couple of good blasts, though, that were slightly inconvenient for Enforcers. The plague hound on top of the tower is there because it got Spotter ability and a fight value of 7+. HMG was just one cube below, trying to lay down some covering fire.

Some Enforcer was advancing somewhere around G6 cube, presumably coming to check the objective. Command action, move card and sprint + move later Plague Swarm slaughtered the trooper. Now only it would need to survive a round of fire from 5+ enforcers, and it had only 7+ survive. If memory serves, the lucky Celatid did survive a sniper shot, but once somebody drew pistols it was game over, man. Game over.

First round Wrath acted fine. He tried to shoot a grenade, and it did throw some enforcers around even if it didn't do any damage. Second turn it did absolutely nothing. Third turn it shot MY ETHEREAL DEAD. Fourth turn he did absolutely nothing. What a fine investment of points!

I guess that was the ultimate downfall, the loss of Ethereal and 75% of inactivity from Wrath. Somehow, somewhere I had killed a second Enforcer, but I just can't remember where...

So. Quickly enough plague forces scattered into the winds, and I scored most reputation points yet during this campaign! Six.

But then I had to pay wages to Wrath for his astonishing services. What is this I don't even...

To hell with Wrath. At least I now know why his name is Wrath. It has nothing to do with his personal innermost feelings. It has everything to do with emotions he evokes in his paymasters.


Post mission. Let's... let's skip this one. It's too painful.

All celatids gone. Gone.

Ethereal leader dead.

And the most cruel death of them all. The Boom Stick muton that I had been waiting for an eternity to buy to my roster. It didn't survive even one mission.

Also one of the plague hounds, named Lucky, died. He wasn't so lucky after all, I guess.

Few next games will be interesting as my strike team will mostly consist of new recruits who have -1 dice to all rolls. As it stands, my strike force doesn't have enough models to make 70 point strike teams.

There's a muton under my coupon!

Last Thursday the Deadzone campaign also saw an additional game played.

It was fourth mission out of total of ten.

And it was fourth mission in row with Infiltrate goal - a duplicate of the mission where you only get points from infiltrating. Oh my.

My 70 point Strike Team was:
1x Stage 3A Ethereal General
4x various Stage 3A Muton troopers
3x Plague Hounds
1x Muton HMG Heavy Plasma with Extra Ammo
2x Plague Celatid Swarms

I only wish my mutons were as good in infiltrating in actual game as they are infiltrating into strike teams. There's one extra Stage 3A trooper there that should've been left home. But I guess all is well, for in the end that muton paid for its trespassing with its life. As did plenty of other plague models, too. Survive 7+ Plague Swarm makes every first generation infected evil masterminds cry.

Enforcers had:

1x Sergeant
1x Assault Enforcer
2-3x Enforcer
1x Enforcer Engineer
1x Recon Drone
Extra ammo?

Enforcers didn't get caught in the pictures so much that I could have easily backtracked their exact composition, but it was something like this. Their mission was kill plus infiltrate, so not that easy either.

Plague started activations, and since there was this big hill in the middle of board I thought it'd be a good idea to go hide behind of it with just about all of my troops. The hail of bullets that came down from the other side of the table was quite staggering. Most, if not all, Enforcers made a Blaze Away attack at various cubes, suppressing pretty much everyone. There's a pretty picture about it. Now, if I only had had some Steadfast cards things might have went differently.

Stuck as I was in the middle of board there was little I could do other than hope for a turn where my troops weren't distracted by snails and ants. One Stage 3A muton trooper managed to get to melee with some Enforcer, and eventually killed him. Considering my earlier achievements during this campaign, I was happy to kill one model.

Right after killing the Enforcer and taking a free move action to move into cover, the heroic muton was summarily executed.

Second picture shows very few models - but they're not dead yet, I swear! You can see the pincers of one of the swarms in the middle, as well as a tiny portion of another swarm's base!

Commander had founda grenade at this point. Oh, and one muton at the upper side of the board found another grenade earlier in the game. That grenade injured Assault Enforcer. But yeah, about the commander. He found a grenade. Yay, a grenade.

Once my HMG muton took position at a vantage point, things started to go a little better. Though the Ethereal commander managed to lob the grenade way off from it's target, finally Enforcers started to get pinned and suppressed. And I had finally drawn a Steadfast card, which enabled Plague Swarm (with Brawler skill) to start killing stuff at last.

It killed two Enforcers right away, and that only made it angrier! And first time ever I actually did infiltrate some models. But math told me that I couldn't win the mission with my objectives any longer. I was torn between abandoning mission and killing the three remaining Enforcers for points or trying to continue to infiltrate with commander (2 points) and plague swarm (3 points.)

I don't remember what the perceived threat to the commander was, but I thought that he'd never make it if swarm didn't come to help. If Swarm would have infiltrated off, commander would have had to dance to the sound of bullets by three Enforcers.

So I abandoned mission and wanted to kill the last remaining three Enforcers, and gain roughly as many points as continuing the actual mission.

That just didn't go too well. Swarm did kill the already injured Assault Enforcer, but once it got to fight the two Enforcers on top of the blue building, the 3+ attack dice just started failing. Oh well, that's not too bad. Swarm would kill them next turn, no big deal. And then we ran out of time, that is, Enforcers drew their last card from their battle deck.

I'm not entirely sure what the heck happened at my post-game resolution. The muton who hijacked my Strike Team died, of course. Such is the price of going stowaway sometimes. His buddy lost a point of shooting skill. I guess he's not going to be the sniper with a skill of 7+.

Celatid swarm that goes by the name of "bleeder" lost another point of survival skill, so that's 7+ survival with Really Tough being the only means of protection. Both Celatids gained Veteran Dice.

Then there were my beloved dogs... Spot is a rank two dog now, and Lucky and Rumpy gained their third ranks. Lucky lost a point of melee, which is kind of a bad thing for a disposable horde type melee unit... but hey, Lucky isn't complaining. Rumpy lost another point of melee, so that's a 7+ melee beast right there.

All three dogs gained a new skill. They're becoming the academics of my strike force. They're all missing their next game. Spot took AP1 skill, Lucky became a fierce Brawler, and 7+ melee skill Rumpy got Spotter. Hey, at least now Rumpy will have even some sort of function in an operation, right?

Well. Until now this is by far my best mission in the campaign. I got five reputation points and opponent six, or something. At least not full ten points. It's almost a victory.

Gaining a rep'

Last Thursday saw an additional game in Deadzone campaign.

There was supposed to be zombies in this scenario, which made my mission of "Close In" (kill + infiltrate) a bit worrisome. However... at least it had the kill condition. Unlike all of my earlier missions.

My strike team was:

Stage 3a General Ethereal

3x Stage 3a trooper mutons
1x Plague celatid swarm
1x Sectopod Strider

Enforcers had something like:

Enforcer Sergeant
Assault Enforcer
Missile Launcher Enforcer
Thermal Rifle Enforcer
+ troops

And their mission was "Zulu" (control Z objective and kill stuff)

Plague started game, which isn't actually very nice thing to do if there are a lot of zombies around. My initial plans had been to make two bottlenecks for zombies to come and slaughter my poor aliens - one being Strider itself, and another a group of Plague Swarm and two Stage 3a mutons. I guess it worked well enough, though for some reason Strider seemed to fail horribly in melee. At least it didn't take damage either. Anyway, because of this, the pace I managed to clear the zombies was a bit problematic.

One of the zombies that had deployed on a roof made a suicidal dive at Strider. I guess falling from heights is more lethal than a dedicated 28 point melee monster:

Anyway, the interaction between actual strike teams was almost nonexistent for a few first rounds. Enforcers and their jump packs proved to be quite nice zombie-dodgers, and soon enough all enforcers had found their way into inaccessible (at least for the zombies) locations. Most of their activations went into gunning down the endless hordes of zombies, and enough of them seemed to spawn at a constant basis that enforcers were afraid to come down.

At this point I still had faith in the melee potential of Plague forces despite the flawed (in so many ways...) Strider.

Downfall began when zombies rolled 4+ successes with three dice and a nasty group assailed my strike team. Also an outbreak of atrocious combat dice rolls on my part killed half of my team before just about all zombies had been decimated. It was perhaps the start of round 3 when I got only strider, a stage 3 trooper and a plague swarm at my disposal. I didn't realize it then, but now that I'm writing this I lost the mission right here. Even if I killed every six Enforcers and infiltrated my remaining three models, I'd gain only 9 victory points.

Enforcers had, I think, suffered an injury on one of their models.

Even if I didn't realize I had already lost, I had given up winning the game. My desperate plan to get at least some reputation out of all this was to go on a killing spree with plague swarm and hopefully infiltrate with strider and stage 3a trooper.

Obviously everything failed here, too. Plague Swarm did manage to kill missile launcher enforcer, but that was it. No killing spree for it. But it was my first reputation in the whole damn campaign! Truly paid for in blood and tears. Or whatever it is the plague bleeds and cries.

Plague Swarm was shot to pieces, but since it had injured another enforcer before it went down, I succumbed to the fallacy of exchanging fire with enforcers. And I admit it's really tough for me to give up once I make my mind up on something. And I had determined to kill that one enforcer. I believe the Strider tried to shoot him down with flamethrower for three full rounds, and stage 3a muton found a grenade that was put to use. But no. Once the Enforcer was set on fire, though.

Too late I gave up my plans, and it's quite possible I still would have continued to shoot fire on top of the green building if it was not for enforcer with thermal rifle who with just one bullet caused three wounds to my strider.

But just as I was about to start full, unorganised and cowardly rout, random zombies popped up nearby and tore strider to pieces. Last remaining stage 3a trooper had no other options than to charge the two culprits, but I think you can guess the sorry end result:

Five dead plague models by zombies. One dead plague model killed by enforcers.

One dead enforcer killed by plague.

Uh oh. When you put it like that, the game looks much more one-sided than it was. If it wasn't for a few unlucky combats, I believe I'd have had a decent chance of getting at least a bit better result. Enforcers were in difficult positions, sure, but they were just stuck there. Finding the "zulu" objective would have been very difficult for them.

Also, the plague swarm did have decent chances for slaughtering at least one additional enforcer, and with some luck it might even have eaten three full enforcers in one round.

But I had gained my very first reputation. Yay! Last remaining seven missions have to go really well if I'm going to win this campaign. But that reputation was rather costly.

I started rolling for injuries and experiences and such. Ethereal General didn't suffer anything. One Stage 3a muton died entirely, and another lost a point of shooting skill. Last muton soldier lost a point of fighting skill, but rolled a point of fighting skill for rank advance.

Plague Swarm lost a point of survival, and gained a veteran die.

And about the Sectopod Strider... let's not talk about the Sectopod Strider. In fact... let's never talk about it again at least during this campaign - unless I somehow manage to collect twenty eight points of reputation to buy a new one.

The woe that is my aliens.

There's a muton under my futon!

And it's wielding the blaster launcher!

Honestly! It's not gas, it's the blaster launcher!

Ahem. Let me get me back together.

Wednesday saw the dawn of Deadzone campaign.

It'd mostly be normal campaign as presented in Deadzone rulebook, except with a few tweaks. Campaign lasts 10 battles and Contagion zombies are used in missions 3 and 8, and last game is 100 point game.

Dying models would always receive one die and point cost from gaining ranks was modified also.

Strike Force building was opened up a little with four initial clearances plus two extra clearances for items.

My initial roster was:

2x ethereals (stage 3a leader)
5x mutons with plasma rifles (stage 3a)
3x plague hounds
3x muton with heavy plasma (stage 3a HMG)
2x celatids (plague swarm)
1x sectopod (plague strider)

3x extra ammo
2x frag grenade

Game 1:

First mission for X-Com aliens was Quietly does it. At first I thought it would be quite interesting - a mission for Plague that doesn't have any objective for killing enemy models. But that was at first sight...

Anyway, though I really wanted to take the strider in for a spin I didn't think it would be a wise choice in such a mission. I'd have 28 points tied to only one model, so if I'd lose it my survive objective would become threatened right away. And since it's 28 points and one model, I wouldn't have many models to infiltrate anything.

So alien Strike Team was:
2x ethereals
4x mutons with plasma rifle
1x muton with heavy plasma & extra ammo
2x plague hounds
1x celatid

Enforcers had:

Enforcer sergeant
2x enforcer
Assault enforcer
Enforcer sniper
Enforcer with missile launcher

Enforcers started game and deployment zones were corners. Ugh. Infiltration would be a pain. Well, at least my side had a nice building I could hide in.

First picture is from the end of full game round 1.

Apparently it's been too long from last Deadzone game, because I was kind of caught by surprise in how easily you can draw LoS in this game, after all. First turns most devastating effect was some Enforcer using Blaze Away on the cube I had plague swarm and a troop muton. Both went straight down to suppressed.

Having suddenly lost to enemy needing mostly to dominate the location markers earlier, I thought it might be a good idea to contest the upmost objective somehow. I send agile ethereal leader there with plague hound who had big, nasty, pointy teeth (AP 2).

Heavy plasma muton tries to Blaze Away at the missile launcher, but even with extra ammo nothing happens. Well. To the enforcers, at least. Missile launcher shoots the suppressed muton very dead.

Turn 2, and Enforcers have the initiative.

I somehow completely miss that Enforcer with missile launcher goes on Overwatch. Another regular Enforcer advances mid-field and blazes away at cube containing the agile ethereal and plague hound. Both fall to the ground, though I don't remember how badly they fell. Plague hound, I think, was just pinned.

Well, in the second picture you can't really see it, but enforcer sniper walks somewhere behind the blue building and shoots my precious ethereal dead. With a pistol. This is not first time when pistols are the main damage dealers...

Anyway, the overwatching enforcer had a crazy amount of Time Units in reserve, when it attacked with overwatch three (3) times in a single turn. First I noticed the overwatch by jumping down from the green building with celatid. I don't remember if it did anything, but three successes on overwatch roll gave the enforcer another attack when celatid sprinted to regular enforcer. The two missiles scored one wound on celatid. And the melee itself... well. Despite hitting on 3+ and having some AP in the acid bite, nothing happens. Not even a single wound. Just... nothing.

But then I needed to deal with the missile launcher, so muton with heavy plasma climbed up a building. And bang. Yet another missile, which thankfully didn't do anything. And the worst of all was that the enforcer still didn't lose overwatch! But then blaze away suppressed the enforcer with that horrible repeating-machine-rocket-launcher, or whatever he was wielding. No more overwatch. Ditto.

Enraged regular muton tried to finish what celatid even couldn't start, but failed just as miserably. This time there was potential damage at least, which were stopped by armor value.

My pride of the whole team, plague hound with AP 2, latched on to sniper's leg and wouldn't cause any damage, but wouldn't let the hold go off either.

Two mutons move + sprinted inside the metallic building - just being out of reach from the assault enforcer.

And next turn the assault enforcer uses jump pack and goes up to the second floor. How annoying.

Celatid and muton against enforcer in the middle fail to do any damage again. And one muton gets to the missile launcher, but zero damage.

Another muton attempted to blaze away at assault enforcer, but damage to aggression level.

Some enforcer tries to relieve sniper from melee with the plague hound, and throws in a grenade. Yeah. Well, the explosion wasn't that great and both combatants were just pinned and thrown to one of the neighboring cubes. But even during a frag grenade explosion the plague hound wouldn't let go of sniper's leg, and they both fly to the same cube. And that was their story, both doomed to spend an eternity lying down next to each other.

Well. What can I say. I still did have over 50% of points remaining though, so perhaps I'd manage to survive just a little more and then break off from the melee in middle and sprint away.

Nope. Next shot by enforcer trooper, who had personally thrown the grenade over sniper and hound, downed my other leader, which scored assassination victory for the Enforcers. Phew. Finally the torment had ended. Aliens... you really don't live up to your name as unforgiving and merciless killers you were back in '94... there was not a single casualty with Enforcers. Heck... I don't think there even was a single wound on any of them.

None of the models that had been disabled during play died completely. One ethereal suffered -1 Fight, and one of the hounds rolled the very same result. Celatid had to miss next game because of the wound it had at the end of game.


Game 2:

Ahh, a second game. Perhaps I'd get to field the awe inspiring sectopod now! I draw a mission card and... well. My mission is "swarm"... which had no other goals than infiltration.

And yet again Enforcers started game and deployment was in corners. It's a shame the other Celatid plague swarm had injured during last game and missed this game, since with 13 point models I'd score 3 victory points. And swarms are fast.

Then I had to forget my dream of fielding sectopod yet again. Though 28 points would be three victory points if it succesfully infiltrated the enemy deployment zone, if I did lose it to Enforcers' AP 8 weapons (no exaggeration here) would I even have enough points in game for a victory? Well, who knows, since my Strike Team was:

Ethereal
Ethereal with -1 fight
3x mutons with plasma rifle, one with frag grenade
Muton with heavy plasma & extra ammo
2x plague hound
Silacoid... I don't know how or when or even why, the hound with -1 Fight had been turned into a silacoid in-between the games.
Celatid

Enforcer sergeant had gained an ability in last game, so it had to miss a game practicing new moves. And looks like there was only one sergeant in the whole Strike Force, since Enforcers had:

2x Enforcer troopers
Assault enforcer
Enforcer engineer with two sentry guns
Enforcer sniper
Recon drone

During their first batch of activations, Enforcers set up one of the sentry guns, which are on overwatch. I nearly wet myself when I saw a model in overwatch, such a terrible experience the crazy enforcer with missile launcher had been.

But it turned out that not every overwatch is a horrifying slaughter. Frag grenade wielding muton survived the first shot, and then the gun went silent for the rest of the turn. Since there were quite a few Enforcers in adjacent cubes, the muton lobbed frag grenade at engineer. Engineer was thrown to same space with assault enforcer, and both were pinned.

Ethereal uses command action and moves celatid, and then celatid uses move card, a sprint from Agile, and normal move. This way it managed to enter the space with engineer and assault enforcer. It tried to chew assault enforcer first, and you can almost guess what happened. Well, it did inflict one wound on the assault enforcer, so perhaps not all was in vain?

The rest of aliens mostly just ran to hug the doge. One of the mutons (one with AP1 claws, even) got shot by a sniper through a small hole in the wall.

Second turn started quite promisingly, when celatid scored its first kill (and my first kill in whole campaign! And... And... my only kill, too. Sob.) as assault enforcer attempted to break off after engineer had fled the scene. Though now the celatid was just sitting there in middle of enforcers.

Also, a regular muton found intel (+1 victory point), though this may have happened a turn earlier.

But that was the extent of my luck that turn. Heavy plasma muton entered a cube with an item, which was booby trapped. The resulting explosion packed a plague hound and the heavy plasma to the same square, and afterwards a Blaze Away by an enforcer killed them both.

Celatid had suffered an injury somewhere, possibly from the sniper. Because of that I was scared of activating it in front of overwatching sentry gun. As a hindsight I should have risked it. Getting shot by a sentry gun should be more unlikely than being shot to pieces by every other enforcer next turn. But the killing spree with missile launcher was too fresh in my memory. And as a result celatid was shot to pieces.

Doing some quick maths there I no longer had enough models standing that I'd win even if I somehow managed to infiltrate the all with no casualties. I conceded the battle, and that gives no victory points at all. Well, I wasn't aware of aborting a mission and just killing enforcers was an option, too. Though considering how well my melee specializing faction had killed enemies in melee lately, I'm not sure if the end result would have been different.

So now was time for injuries. Yay, my favorite and very familiar part! This time I had five casualties, but at least I got lucky here. Only real injury was blurred vision (-1 to shooting skill) for celatid... who has no shooting skill at all.

Now I got a ton of ranks, however.

Both ethereals got veteran dice. I guess that comes handy in command actions. Two mutons with plasma rifle got +1 to their shooting skill. I guess that's not too bad, perhaps their Blaze Away starts to do at least something. A third muton with plasma rifle got a veteran die.

Heavy plasma muton got an ability and chose Spotter. Celatid also got an ability, and I guess it's not a big surprise that it chose Brawler. Also, one of my doges got a skill, and it took AP 1 in melee.

Silacoid hound gained +1 to survival stat.

Well, next game we will be using zombies from contagion. We also chose to draw missions for next game, and I picked up... oh, no. I'm not telling which one I picked up.

Oh, and this time there is the other side of the story available with more narrative to it. Here is the Enforcer side of things.

Plague vs Plague vs Plague

Last Thursday I played a game of Deadzone, and I try to write this up quickly before I forget most that happened. I played a game of Warmachine right after, and on weekend I'm going to play to a Warmachine tournament.

We played a normal 70 point strike team game. Well, normal when it came to team construction. We also had diseased Stage 3Z zombies wandering around, and, well... their impact on the game was a lot bigger than I would have ever guessed.

Anyway.

My list was:

1x Stage 3A Ethereal General
1x Muton Commander Simmonds (MC Simmonds?)
2x Stage 3A Muton troopers
1x Silacoid Hound
1x Muton with Heavy Plasma HMG
1x Sectopod Strider

Mission: Careful Carnage (survive and kill)

Opponent was also playing the Plague faction, so we had three different Plague "factions" on board, then.

1x Stage 3A General
2x Stage 2A
1x Stage 3A Trooper
2x Plague Hounds
1x Plague Strider

Mission: Stack 'em High (kill troopers and 11+ cost models)

I took a picture from the sector before either player had deployed. Any models seen there are Stage 3Z zombies.

First real picture with action is from the very end of round 1, and it's badly aligned, as most of my own troops aren't showing up. Also a ton of things happened during the first round, I guess I should have taken some pictures in-between.

Anyway. Those zombies had a tremendous impact on the game, as my alien plague is not past cube row two, and the original plague on the opposing side is struggling at cube row three.

Alarming thing here was that my Sectopod Strider had already suffered three wounds from the fight with zombies! And I guess it might have died altogether, because it's size 4 unit, so silacoid hound shouldn't have been able to get into the same cube to help around.

Since both of us were playing Plague faction, the zombies lead to a funny situation. Both most certainly had some sort of kill mission, but the zombies were in-between us, and they soon proved to be very capable of killing things and not just blocking way. It was some sort of twisted version of a survival game, as both players scored points from zombie kills. I guess it might have been a viable tactic for me to just hide in some building, send a dog and/or a trooper to lure away the zombies, survive over 50% and score points with that, and wait for zombies to kill enough models from the opponent.

Well, turn 2 started with a Blast Away! action at the cube where sectopod strider was standing. This cleared all but one zombie, and I sighed for relief. Strider easily beat up the last zombie, tripled the attack rolls and moved to cube right on the left.

That was my downfall, I guess. Command action moved the enemy Strider one cube, then it Sprint two cubes, and Move card was used - suddenly the uninjured Strider was in melee with my almost broken 28 point model. Cruddy rolls didn't help here - Sectopod was smashed into bits, and the culprit got a free move to the square with HMG and Simmonds. Amazing rolls helped here, though - Simmonds got a free escape from the fight.

Here I changed my plans. Now I would just hide and do nothing else, and hope that zombies would kill The Other Plague.

Silacoid Hound, however, ruined it all. Muton Commander Simmonds, Ethereal General and a rank-and-file trooper were hiding in the green building at left, HMG was in relative safety of melee with the enemy Strider (I spent all remaining Command Points I had to keep it distracted.)

But then the doge ran, but not far enough. Enemy Stage 2A, aided either with Move card or succesfull command action, killed the molten rock puppy, tripling or doubling the result, and taking a free move to attack the hiding aliens. The aliens were not happy that their secret hideout had been found, and instantly killed the Stage 2A as it entered. But this didn't really matter - thanks to the loss of Silacoid Hound, I had fallen below 50% points, so I wouldn't gain any more points from Survive victory condition. Aliens had scored two.

After counting that even if every single other enemy model died, I would still get only up to nine victory points. After the game I realised that I could have won by gathering Intel. And killing everything. If I remember right, the zombies killed a plague hound and a trooper from enemy plague, and injured the second dog.

It might have been interesting to play the game to the very end, but I decided to concede here, because within 30 minutes I would need to begin another game.

Anyway. What do I think of the zombies? I don't know. It's a nice game mode that really shakes things up, but I feel that playing too many games with uninvited guests would quickly get too tiresome and unwieldy.

Deadcom Mixed Crew Mission

I got a couple other games I need to write up, but I have to write last game of Deadzone up first. It's suprisingly difficult to remember actual happenings in a game system you're a bit unfamiliar with. So Deadzone it is.

This game was played last Friday, and it was a 100 point one-off game of Enforcers vs Plague. Twist here was that Enforcers used models from Sedition Wars starter box, which look mistakenly like X-Com agents in personal armour.

I was playing Plague with my converted X-Com aliens.

Game was played with two maps joined together to make a wide playing field. Code-13 rules were used, too. They're a ruleset for bigger games and it makes mission more difficult to accomplish.

My Strike-Team was nearly full of aliens with only one Plague Hound being the exception.

2x Ethereal 'generals' (one had Slow mutation)
2x Chryssalids (Stage 2A, one had AP1 mutation)
4x Mutons (Basic troopers) consisting of:
- 1x with Frag Grenade + Tough mutation
- 1x with Frag Grenade
- 2x with AP ammo
1x Muton with Heavy Plasma (HMG specialist)
1x Silacoid (Plague Hound. I know, I know...)
1x Plague Hound (Plague Hound)
1x Silacoid (Plague Swarm)

Mission: Head-Hunt (kill enemy specialists, expensive models and leaders)

I've tried to reverse-engineer opponent's list from pictures, but there is probably some mistakes:

Enforcer Sergeant
5x Enforcers
1x Enforcer Sniper
1x Enforcer Incinerator
1x Enforcer with Fusion Gun
And someone, somewhere had Extra Ammo?

Mission: Hold (survive and kill any enemy models, getting more victory points from expensive models)

This time around I remembered to take some pictures from the game. First picture looks like it's from the start of turn 2 on Plague's initiative. I wrote models' names to picture to ease spotting a little bit. Some fancy arrows to various locations are also included. Whee.

Earlier Sniper had taken a shot at a Muton hiding in the green building at aliens' side, killing it instantly. Mutons nearly paid back when a few random shots at opposing Sergeant injured her. It's a little bit of a shame. It would have been 5 victory points in the very first turn (she was the Strike Force commander as well as her cost was 11+. I don't think that killing a Leader and killing a Commander stacks, because that would have been ridiculous - seven victory points just from killing one model?)

Anyway, turn 2 started with pinning down an enemy trooper close to the Leader model with Blaze Away! -actions, and then sprint + move with Celatid into melee with the trooper. Despite being Enraged, having moved into the cube, Fight +1 card, having natural AP 2 and hitting on 3+ a knocked down model the Celatid couldn't even injure that agent. In fact if the Swarm would have hit only on rolls of 1 and 2, the story would have been entirely different. Oh well.

An enraged Muton with the Tough -mutation charged another trooper, faring as badly as the Celatid. Later in that turn a Silacoid charges to help Celatid, again with horrible results. I guess they stayed true to their origins. After all, Muton terror missions were quite pleasant in the '94 UFO: Enemy Unknown because Silacoid and Celatid were so easy.

Well, a rain of grenades and sniper shots and whatnots killed both of the terror units.

Another model that was loyal to the computer game was/were the Chryssalids. An Ethereal leader passed a succesful Command action and moved Chryssalid on the right, then Chryssalid used Sprint action and played Move card (my only Move card during the whole game, mind you) and butchered Fusion Gun wielder.

That was nice enough, but alien casualties were quite high during that turn when the regular trooper in melee with tough Muton escaped succesfully - in fact so succesfully that he got to make a short action. The action was Shoot, which outright killed his former melee adversary. At the end of turn 2 aliens had killed just one enemy model.

X-Com Enforcer agents, on the other hand, had killed four. Such a ratio would be difficult to explain to the big brain on Mars.

Things started to look a little better during turn 3 when the rightmost Chryssalid did what Chryssalids do best. It killed two models in a row, and another Chryssalid on the left really wanted to do the same to a regular trooper and sniper, but somehow it came out a bit like this.

Funny thing, by the way, that both Sniper and the Incinerator killed more aliens using their pistols than their main weapons. I guess, then, that they were Vincent and Jules from that clip? Also I might be exaggerating with Sniper.

The Chryssalid on right had been left in a bad position - everyone would shoot at it next, but it only made the Chryssalid angrier (by triggering Rampage).

I don't remember how the situation resolved at the leftmost Stage 2A Chryssalid. I can't find the agent from any of the unedited pictures, so perhaps it died to Break Off -action? No idea.

Looked like aliens were slowly starting to gain the upper hand despite a horrific start, and this was mostly due to Chryssalids adamantly refusing to die. Sniper finally died, and if I'm reading the pictures right, Enforcers (X-Forcers?) had only three models left in their whole Strike Force, and aliens are closing in from every possible direction - surely this was the end? Not quite!

Agents score a hit on an Ethereal, who panics, goes berserk and shoots every other alien dead with a hidden Heavy Plasma, and then it drops a primed alien grenade to its own feet, killing itself.

Enforcers had scored 13 victory points, end of mission. If I remember right they survived for five rounds and killed eight models.

In the end aliens had scored only 9 points. They could have won by either killing the regular trooper and Incinerator, or the already injured Sergeant.

So it was quite close game after all.

This game took suprisingly long. Judging from earlier experiences we might have played three 70 point games in the same time, or two 70 and one 50. I guess the 30 extra points, 3 extra victory points to score for a win and two mats start to add up to the length of the game. It's a shame I didn't have my Sectopod finished just yet, but it's funny how actually playing a game sparks interest in finishing projects - last two days I've done more work for it than during past few weeks.