"DzC Games 4-8" Topic

Yesterday we managed to get some actual DzC models on the table to play a few games. We had about 650 pts of Shaltari vs. about 500 pts of Scourge.

The Shaltari force was not street legal in that it didn't meet the requirements for the army list, it had two medium gates, 3 warstriders, 2 units of infantry and a Warspear fighter.

The Scourge had the contents of the basic set, so 3 grav tanks, 3 AA grav tanks, 2 APCs with a unit of infantry each and medium dropships for them all.

The Scourge did not do very well in any of the games.

In the first game they did better than in any of the others. They managed to occpuy a building on the enemy side of the table and hold it for most of the game before being whittled away on the very last turn of the game while some Warstriders skittered across to the other side of the table.

In that game the Shaltari fighter made a huge difference to the game. It was able to shoot down one of the scourge dropships with the grav tanks still on board killing everyone aboard when it crashed taking out about a third of the scourge force on turn 1.

The 2nd two games were over on turn 2 when the Shaltari were able to eliminate the Scourge infantry which pretty much prevented them from searching for any of the objectives.

In the fourth game the Shaltari were able to eliminate the entire Scourge force except for one stand of infantry and one drop ship. They lost one of their gates had a hit on one of their wastriders in exchange.

I think the problems came in from the Shaltari force not being a standard force. The aircraft was probably too powerful for a skirmish level game and the warstriders were almost invulnerable to what the Scourge had to throw at them with a combination of armour, AA capability and longer range.

Still we were mostly playing to learn the rules, we had never used fast flying attack craft before. They do put a new dimension on the game but I can see how with a bigger game, which would allow them, the amount of AA assets on the table would probably make them a lot less powerful. I think they would still be a very useful choice if only to force the enemy to be somewhat more concentrated.

It really was a rock paper scissors type thing with one needing to concentrate their forces to protect them from aircraft while simultaneously needing to protect the AA assets from ground attack.

That is probably something that gave the advantage to the Shaltari, their Warstriders did not need to worry about that having ground and AA assets rolled into one unit.

These descriptions make the game come across as extremely unbalanced. Are you sure you weren't missing anything?

Of course it came across as unbalanced, the Shaltari force was not only illegal, it was also nearly a third larger than the poor street legal Scourge. They didn't have to spend points on their obligatory unit of grav tanks – not the strongest element in the army list. They had a fast mover at skirmish level – totally illegal, and for good reason since you can't afford enough anti-air stuff to counter them at such low level play, and even a single interceptor can easily snuff a key dropship with a little luck. That can happen with ground-based AA as well, but you have to be a bit careless (or taking risks) for it to happen.

While I'm sure the games were good learning experiences for both sides, they were about as even as playing a game of checkers with one side missing a half-dozen pieces.

Still, nice to hear some play going on. All I've gotten in is some solo proxy tests while I wait for the figures to show up.

As Rich says the games were extremely unbalanced for the reasons I mentioned in my descriptions. I think the game is actually probably very well balanced within the armies in the sense that you really need the different stuff. It is certainly not like 40K or Infinity where you can get away with having all one type of thing. A 40K close combat army is a viable force, an all light infantry Infinity force can still win games. In DzC you are going to need tanks and AA and drop ships and infantry.

Our first couple of games with balance point or starter armies played pretty balanced, that is, with balanced reasonable builds and also the starter armies, they played balanced