Exploding 8's a little too much !

We played another game of deadzone over the weekend. Having read the rule book closer we realised our armies were well over sized so they shrank considerably for these two scenarios down to the official 70 points. This meant the enforcers had a very limited five figures, but they make up for this with good old shootiness !. First scenario for the enforcers was a mix of killing the enemy but keeping alive. This really suited them as they could stay back and 'blaze away' as the plague ones tried to get across the board. Needless to say the lucky rolling of dice always has an impact and I have a bit of a reputation for being able to roll very high when needed. This enabled the enforcers to cut the plague men down pretty quickly without the need to get too far down the board. 

Set up for initial scenario, enforcers finding cover

Plague seem reluctant to poke their noses out !

Charging down the middle has to be risky !

So we sorted out a second scenario, my enforcers kept the same five troops whilst the plague men upgraded to have a captain with a bit more punch. The objective for the enforcers this time was to kill as many as possible but more worryingly to attempt to assassinate the enemy captain. In previous battles this has proved almost impossible to do. So finally after yet more good shooting by the enforcers we get to the title of this post. In deadzone (based on D8's) when you roll an 8 you get to re roll a fail and then if you roll another 8 you can roll again. Now when you add this to my obvious excessive luck at rolling dice you can get quite dramatic results. Step up my captain to shoot at the enemy commander and with 5 dice he scored a pretty unbelievable 8 hits ! Game over although I can't but feel a bit guilty...........still not limbed for a force yet, but getting closer.

Set up for scenario two enforcers holding back again !

All about a dog - Deadzone

Now what is all that about I hear you say. Saturday evening we had our second run out with Deadzone, always easier second time as the rules bed in, we still made a few mistakes one of the main one being we had far more troops than we should have. Again I'm not going to run through every move in the game. Just the highlights I can remember.

Initial set up Enforcers taking the first turn.

One of the great things about the game is you select a random and secret objective specific to your faction, so whilst you try and attempt yours you don't know what the enemy is upto. In this battle deployment was at each end of the battlefield with my objective to hold the 3 objectives, shown in the picture as the coloured star shaped discs.

Holding back shooting whilst plague boys rush forward

Initial plan was to hold back and shoot then rush forward closer to the end.

Set upon by a dog but not the dog !

This seemed to work really well in the start as my guys picked off several smaller plague monsters without any loss. At one point the enemy was close to capitulating.

Close combat not advised, Plague Captain asleep ?

The picture above shows the high point for the enforcers, I had already caused multiple deaths on the enemy side and had knocked the plague captain down by blasting away at him. But then things started to go wrong as one by one my enforcers were brought into combat and swiftly despatched. Things started to look really bad, but I had a really small chance that if I could sneek past I could grab the objectives. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the final turn. (the game play means that as battle cards run out the game gets closer to ending and very tense). At this point I only had about 4 cards to play and I was probably up points wise, however, the critical objective on the far right of the board was held by a plague "specialist". But he was injured and enraged which means on a low roll I could move him off the objective. Right on queue John rolled a 2 and the objective was clear. Remember at this stage he had no idea what my victory conditions were........and then unbelievably he moved a lowly plague dog in the way by mistake ! calamity. But  I still had three guys including the sniper to finish him off, clear the objective and claim victory, easy surely ......... you have to be joking the dog was hit 7 or 8 times and saved everyone of the hits. An excellent game which went right down to the wire.

Not long for the end ......

Even more tempted to get some figures now and some blue 8 sided dice !

Trying something new - Deadzone !

John one of the regular occupants of the dungeon has a vast collection of board type games and every now and then we get one out to have a go. The weekend saw us play Deadzone for the first time. For those that don't know it is a skirmish level Futuristic game, half way between a true board game and something like 40k. Much akin to space hulk. Smallish units of 10 or so figures but scalable if you can afford it, although some is quite cheap on eBay.

 After an initial run through the rules we set to a scenario, then we realised we didn't understand the scenario so picked another one. However, once we got going it was great. Above you can see the initial setup. Enforcers (armoured humans I think) from the left and plague monsters from the right. Hidden objectives and lots of details on the board.

The scenario definitely seemed to favour my enforcers as I was out to kill as many of the plague guys as possible this meant I could dig in, or in this game climb up to get the safest places to shoot from. The rules are fairly easy to pick up with a few complexities of special rules but nothing to faze regular gamers. Cards used for special abilities. One thing I do like is both sides have different hidden objectives so it isn't obvious what the enemy is working to.

The final shot from behind my lines so you can see the defensive position my guys have taken up, as always you need to roll dice and when you have good arcs of fire eventually you are going to bring stuff down. Would like to play again as some of the scenarios would have been much harder for the enforcers to complete. The only question now is do I collect a few of the figures.........very tempted !

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