Saturday, November 9, 2013

Dropzone Commander: Battle Brief You Wont Believe, and Reviews


Brief time out. The Tyranid infestation is consuming my brain, and I am concerned the Inquisition which is arriving next week will discover me. Soooo.....

Lets talk Dropzone Commander. I was able to get in another large game against the PHR, but this time I took the Scourge to battle those indestructible walkers in a match that was a little bit crazy.

Plus I have seen two reviews lately on the Faeit 212 BlogExchange on the game, I thought I would link them up so that you can see what other people are saying about the game.



First the links.
http://baddeployment.com/2013/11/08/dropzone-commander-impressions/
http://gamingranting.blogspot.com/2013/11/dropzon-commander-first-game.html


Scourge vs PHR Battle. 3000pts
This was going to be a fun one. The PHR are slow moving, long ranged, seemingly indestructible walkers, while the Scourge are Vulnerable, fast moving, short ranged but hard hitting. The mission of course, was a kill point mission. That meant an in your face, confrontation was going to happen, and only the strongest of the two was going to come out on top. (man I wished I had video taped this game).

Of course the scourge jumped head first into the game, rushing as fast as possible to forward positions. There were 3 buildings in the game that had a special rule, " excellent vantage point" which doubled the ranges of weapons on infantry bases inside these buildings. Of course being the scourge, I got to them first with my smaller dropships which are incredibly fast.

That being said, I thought that dropping my prowlers (little spider bot swarms that rush forward and inject plasma directly into the inside of heavy armor) up front would slow him down some and make him deploy his walkers prematurely. This did work some, but not a single prowler made it to attack.

I also took the center building with the vantage point, and put 12 Scourge Warriors with plasma rifles in it (now able to shoot 24") I had figured that this would matter in the end, and set me up with an unbeatable set of fire bases. The PHR are stronger than that.

The PHR quickly damaged my artillery with fast moving aircraft (fighter bombers dropping their bombs on me, and my interceptors just were no match). Alongside that, the first of my vantange point buildings had to be evacuated due to extreme fire power, and the building was coming down.

I tried to limit the firepower coming at me, using my speed to the advantage, but every time those walkers got a hold of me, they ripped me apart. Between dodging falling buildings, and ducking around and behind buildings, it was a game of cat and mouse, but I learned one important thing.

The Scourge weapons are short ranged. I might be able to move 9" but my guns only fire 9-12". That means moving in close, and to do so, meant facing the big guns of those Type 2 walkers.

Using my speed, I tried to overwhelm one side of the field, while holding the center. It worked well for a couple rounds, but as what appears to be a common theme in dropzone commander, the early game (rounds 1-3) involve only moderate fighting. The final rounds is where things heat up in this game, and get ugly.

The PHR almost lost his Commanders during this flanking attack, his two Zuess walkers taking heavy damage. I destroyed one, and a some bad dice, and some good passive armour saves saved his level 6 commander from dying right then and there. His next activation he was able to use his nearby dropship and extract the damaged mech walker out of the hotzone.



Buildings dropped, mechs died, skimmers crashed. My mothership (Desolater) dropped her big bomb which should of done damage to a lot of walkers, but instead damaged a couple and did two damage to my artillery. Setting it up for the PHR to take out in the last round of the game.

Those PHR have great access to technology, and twice in the last two rounds of the game, used nano bots to take over the firing of my artillery and save himself from any large blasts ripping through his walkers. That was the last of my large Scourge artillery, as it was ripped to shreds and killed, but at the cost of both of his aircraft who died tons of reaction fire during the bombing run. One of the interceptors I think also took one down.

So after all that chaos, and a tremendous battle the game was over. Round 6 was done, and it was time to add up the points. There was a lot of casualties, and out of a 3000pt game, I had lost 1310pts of Scourge to the PHR. I had figured I was lost, but the final tally against the PHR was 1324pts. So yes, I had technically won by 14points in a 3000pt game!!!!

So we called it a draw, and talked about the game for the next hour or so.