"Rules up for some new DzC units" Topic

Two of the new infantry releases for Dropzone Commander have had experimental rules posted for them.

Scourge destroyers:

link

Praetroian Sniper Team:

link

From reading them over it seems like the Destroyer's "Tough" special rule is a little over powered. I don't know about the value vs. points but it seems that no matter how tough a guy is a railgun that his going to punch a hole through a tank is not going to produce a wound he can shrug off.

I can see where they are going with the tough rule but it seems like it should be limited to some Energy value, above which it doesn't function. E6 seems like a good upper limit.

I had a great game of DzC the other day which saw about 1600 pts of PHR fighting against 750 pts of UCM stuff.

The scenario was a UCM transport bearing the Prince Imperial from a Shaltarri tribe was shot down and the UCM were trying to rescue the Prince Imperial before the PHR could get him.

The shot down vehicle had three teams of UCM infantry and the Prince Imperial himself as one battle group. We counted him as a Shatlarri infantry squad for shooting purposes and a youngblood squad if it came down to close combat.

The "cavalry" consisted of a battle group of light tanks in a medium drop ship, an illegal* battle group of AA tanks in a drop ship, a heavy tank battle group in a drop ship and two infantry platoons in two bear APCs not in a drop ship.

The PHR forces consisted of an air support battle group of one interceptor. A command battle group with two medium dropships, with a command heavy walker and an anti tank heavy walker in each plus a light drop ship with two scout walkers, an infantry battle group with 3 APCs each containing two units of infantry with no dropships.
An armor battlegroup with two units of light walkers each in a medium drop ship and containing one AA walker and one AT walker. Another armor group containing two medium drop ships one with 2 AA walkers and one with 2 Anti-infantry walkers and a last battlegroup containing 2 infantry units in a light dropship.

The UCM managed to get the Prince Imperial off of the table without even engaging their infantry although it was a close thing. The PHR interceptor came in to shoot down the dropship that was removing him and despite having 6 shots, hitting on 3+ and damaging on 3+, it failed to inflict any damage at all.

It was a good exciting game. I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff from this company.

*illegal because you have to take them as support but the UCM forces are a little lean at this point so we allowed them to be their own battle group for this game.

From reading them over it seems like the Destroyer's "Tough" special rule is a little over powered. I don't know about the value vs. points but it seems that no matter how tough a guy is a railgun that his going to punch a hole through a tank is not going to produce a wound he can shrug off.

A human, yeah. Some alien critter with an unknown physiology, with a parasite that controls its nervous system? I can envision lots of circumstances where an anti-tank railgun wouldn't do the job reliably at all. Being able to punch a tiny hole in superdense armor is a great formula for relatively ineffective overpentration on an organic target.

I can see where they are going with the tough rule but it seems like it should be limited to some Energy value, above which it doesn't function. E6 seems like a good upper limit.

Meh, unlike the Shaltari suits they don't actually have even weak active countermeasires, so they'll be getting shot from farther away by everything, and they don't have dodge scores like other elite infantry types do. I don't see any more problem with Tough than with PHR dames dodging hypersonic rounds in terms of either realism or game balance. Both types need something to let them weather damage in compensation for their low Dp and high cost.

The snipers, OTOH, those worry me. First infantry we've seen in the Scout category, which gives the UCM a third way to get infantry on the table. Having even a slight edge in number of infantry formations can be pretty decisive in a lot of scenarios, and those snipers are going to be really hard to shift with fire. They're pretty cruddy in CQB, but you can stick them on the walls of a building safely and back them up with other infantry if need be.

"Being able to punch a tiny hole in superdense armor is a great formula for relatively ineffective overpentration on an organic target."

But it isn't just the hole that is punched, it is the energy delivered to the target. Having seen many gunshot wounds up close (even inside) the high velocity ones do a lot more damage to the target than bore a tiny hole through them.

There are also other weapons to take into account, like the super duper destroyer stealth missiles from the Athena fighter and the heavy cannons of the Enyo class walkers. It seems like no matter how tough an alien being is getting hit by a ball about half the size of the critter that is designed to knock down a building is not going to be something they can shrug off.

Also the heavenfire from the Seraphim is supposed to be able to reduce tanks to molten puddles, it seems that a weapon like that would certainly destroy any biological creature hit by it.

With those rules the only weapon in the game that would damage them every time it hits is the Particle Cannon on the Ocelot

Maybe if this were a superhero game.

For the record I don't like the Sirens either and won't be fielding them.

For the record I don't like the Sirens either and won't be fielding them.

You're going to be crippled pretty badly in CQB without them. Immortals won't do the job for building clearance by themselves, at least not against a determined enemy who's spent similar or greater points on troops and exotics.

We don't really play points based games. Often we only total up points after the game just to see how unbalanced it was. That is what we did in this game for the PHR. We knew how much UCM stuff we used because that was all we had.

Generally I like this game because it has a feel of sci-fi gaming that I like and it has a universe that, for the most part, seems geared towards some sort of reality that I can identify with. If I wanted super big breasted ninjas and a unit of incredible hulks in a game I'd go with 40K, which I like, but sometimes I want hard sci-fi stuff too.

There are a lot of troop types I leave out of my infinity games, like all those Pan Oceana troops that are primarily armed with swords, anything that has or turns into a dog of some sort and the yu-jing warrior monks.

They just don't fit with my concept of that game either.

Our scenarios are usually pretty balanced without resorting to points so I'm pretty sure I'll be okay without them.

Possibly problematic, although with restricted scenario play it's less of an issue. I've got a feeling the game isn't headed toward greater levels of realism – the first expansion wave added a landgoing midget aircraft carrier, a flying plasma-breathing artillery piece with feet, and jump-jet equipped mecha. None of those shout hard sci-fi to me, although YMMV.

Given the already low odds of getting a game locally, I'm sticking to building with the full gamut of the units so there's some hope I can get into pickup games at a con sometime. At that point the exotic "superman" infantry are vital, and I suspect the new UCM scout infantry will be too.

Heck, there's so little local interest in the game I'm considering the merits of using the DzC models for Dirtside as a backup – either as 6mm superheavies, or just doing two forces and playing it in 10mm.