Our Deadzone series has so far been focused on getting us ready to start playing some games here in the office and with both starting forces painted and the battlezone prepared its time to throwdown!

Our straw poll over on the Mighty Ape Hobbies Facebook Page had the Plague 9:4 favourites against the Enforcers so lets see how things went down.

The Strike Teams & Missions

First up with have the Enforcers, which were controlled by the dynamic duo of Ben the Computers Gorilla and Andi our Electronics Monkey, who choose a team with plenty of variety and plenty of ranged firepower:

• Enforcer Captain
• Enforcer Sniper
• Enforcer with Missile Launcher
• Assault Enforcer
• Enforcer

I was running the Plague and also assembled my strike team to incorporate a number of different models and made sure to include the big bad Stage 1A as its my favourite:

• Plague Stage 1A
• 2 Plague Stage 2A
• 2 Plague Stage 3A
• 1 Plague Stage 3A with HMG
• 1 Plague Stage 3D

One of my favourite things about Deadzone is that in regular games each sides missions are secret, which adds another level of strategy and subterfuge to the game as you can try to hide your true goals until its too late for the enemy to react.

Andi drew Yankee, which meant that the enforcers would score points by eliminating the plague leaders and specialists and also could win big by capturing or controlling the 3 objectives.

Initially I drew a fully infiltrating mission, but I decided to exchange it for another as we wanted a bit more biffo in our first game. Luckily my second draw was a combination of kill points and infiltrating.

Time for Battle

We had every intention of keeping detailed notes each turn so we could do a full play by play battle report, complete with maps, but we ended up getting too excited playing the game and forgot after the second turn. Also since we made quite a few rules errors while we were playing, as you always tend to in your first game, its better than we don't teach any bad habits.

So instead we'll do a more stripped down overview and then go through our aftergame thoughts and the key things we learnt.

Opening Moves

The Enforcers deployed first, with the sniper in a an almost perfect overwatch position and the rest of the troops holding down the other flank. I elected to deploy most of my troops behind cover in anticipation of some powerful shooting in the first few turns.

The game started a little tentatively, with the enforcers advancing to a defensive position behind a low wall and taking long range shoots at the exposed plague units.

Miraculously one of my Stage 3As survived a direct hit from a missile launcher, only taking a single point of damage!

I started by pushing slowly forward with my cheaper stage 3s and sprinting my plague dog up the left flank.

Bullets start Flying

With a low unit count the Enforcers were going to be able to hold the initiative every turn which meant lots of shooting attacks on the plague units out in the open.

The sniper was particularly dangerous, with a huge number of dice on its shooting attacks, and it was only blind luck that it only got 1 headshot on a stage 3A in the centre.

Faced with a number of high defence units in cover I decided to forgo trying to take them out with shooting attacks and instead started using the Blaze Away action. It turns out that this was a good move indeed as I was able to suppress or pin all the enforcers behind the wall.

This meant that I was safe to start running my melee focused Stage 2As forward, as well as move up my plague dog to threaten the sniper. Or so I thought as I had forgotten it needs a solid wall to be able to climb up.

The next turn the enforcers had to spend most of their activations using Get Mean to get back into the fight which cut down their weight of fire dramatically and I was also very lucky with my survive tests.

So in my next turn my plague dog rushed into combat with the regular enforcer behind the wall as the rest of my troops continued to move up; trying to keep as many models suppressed as I could and get into position to move my heavy hitting stage 2s into combat.

Getting Up Close & Personal

Up close was where I was expecting the plague troops to do well and my plague dog didn't disappoint. In the first round of combat it injured the enforcer and posed enough of a threat that Andi devoted his entire next turn's shooting to kill it.

Unfortunately for him this meant that one of my stage 2s was then able to jump off a balcony and into combat with both the enforcer captain and missile launcher enforcer. Meanwhile my other stage 2 charged the injured enforcer and the stage 1A began his slow march across the table to join in the fun.

After a few more round of combat things were looking extremely grim for the enforcers, with 2 enforcers dead and the captain and missile launcher enforcer both injured while both of my stage 2s were either in combat or about to charge in.

Since we were running out of time and I was ahead on victory points Ben and Andi conceded and the result was a plague victory!

First Impressions and Lessons Learned

Dave:
Despite not knowing the rules completely and making a few mistakes I was very happy with my first proper Deadzone game. The rules are quick to learn and the cube based movement and range system played out very nicely. The dice system is also very straight forward and with 8s exploding (creating bonus dice rolls) it means there is a chance you can pull off some great ‘hail mary’ actions or survive certain death like a missile to the face.

I'm also a big fan of the dynamic gameplay, with the secret mission cards and battle cards which you can play to boost your troops effectiveness or limit your opponents attacks adding heaps of new dimensions to the game. Being able to react to your opponent's actions during their turn through overwatch or cards is also fantastic and thoroughly enjoyed it.

As far as lessons go, the first big one is that using Blaze Away against enemy models with high survive and armour ratings is great, especially when they are in cover. With plague shooting its highly unlikely that you will damage such troops but suppressing them allows you to get in close.

I was also a little too careful with my heavy hitting stage 2s. Since they have a decent 4+ survive stat and armour 1 they can absorb some punishment, especially when their tough rule ignores the first point of damage so as long as you can avoid high AP fire they should be ok.

Andi:

My first mistake here was thinking my superior fire power and range against the Plague was going to be their undoing. My second mistake was underestimating their ridiculous toughness. And my third mistake was making TERRIBLE dice rolls.

Seriously, rolling 4 2s out of 7 dice? What's up with that.

So much fun though… Every hit is exciting, and the sense of victory when you take down a unit is greatly satisfying. Being my first match, I didn't get to focus too much on strategy or my objective – so that's something I'm looking forward to on my next play.

Oh, and the game gets 10× better when you start adding your own sound effects.

Click on any of the images to see more photos from the game

Lets hear it for our winners The Plague!.

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From the Hobbies Gorilla