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My buddy John and I just got our first two games of DzC this Saturday and I thought I'd post a couple of short batreps.

We were both using forces built from the large starters, John's UCM vs my PHR. John threw in his attack fighter to make up for the point difference.

We each had 4 battlegroups; 1HQ, 1 infantry, 1 armor, 1 fleet (fast-movers). John messed up a bit and loaded his large dropship with 2x3 MBTs squads and 1x3AA tanks. You can only have 2 squad share
a large dropship so he should have done 6xMBTs and 3XAA.


For the first game we played the first scenario in the book (can't remember the name, at work, no book). The basic idea is; there are 5 objective buildings, 4 small and 1 large in the center (worth double). Your infantry must enter and search the buildings for the objectives; controlling an objective is worth 1pt, transporting it off of the table edge you deployed from is worth another.

We had about 10 or 11 buildings on the table and not a lot else, we were a bit more focused on learning the rules than table setup at this point. 1 large and 2 small objective buildings were placed right down the middle line and 1 small building a few inches acroos the middle on each side. All forces start off table with the fast-movers in reserve.

I wasn't planning on doing batreps so I can't recall the blow by blow, but here's the basic flow and highlights. Also note, I suck and forgot my card deck so we played w/o.

Turn 1: Both sides move dropships on and start heading for objectives. John drops his HQ APC behind a small building in his rear area, he drops a squad of 3 AA tanks to cover them as well as 3 MBTs.
I decided to keep my large dropship loaded up with walkers one more turn but I drop my HQ and scouts as far ahead as I can. All fastmovers still in reserves.

Turn 2: John sends his infantry into the small objective building on his side of the table and one of the small objective buildings in the middle. I move to the large building and the other small one in the middle. My HQ heavy walkers put a point of damage on his HQ APC (despite it being hull down) and pick off 1 AA tank. John tries to get a heavy walker with the orbital ion cannon but rolls a 1 for damage. Our scouts duke it out a bit and I drop my medium walkers in the middle near the large building. John drops his other 3 MBTs on my right flank to deal with the heavy HQ walkers. I got my FM from reserve and used it but I don't recall it doing much.

Turn 3: John gets his interceptors from reserve. John finds an objective in the middle small building and hops in his transports, my super cyber soldiers find nothing. The ion cannon kills a medium walker so I call in an airstrike on the HQ APC. I use the long range of my Aurora to force John to intercept me over my AA walkers if he wants to interupt my shot. He gives it a try and my AA makes very short work of his intereceptors. I put 2 more pts on the HQ leaving it at 1. There's some more shooting between walkers and tanks, thus far the stealth missles on my dropships are proving pretty worthless against his very solid armor since I can't seem to roll 6s. The heavy HQ walkers bounce a lot of fire and kill a tank.

Turn 4: More searching but neither of our men find any objectives this turn. John gets his infantry squad and dropship with the objective off the table. He also finally gets his attack fighter out of reserves and
calls an airstrike. I intercept and shoot it down. John then sends a squad of infantry to attack the large objective building, his 3 stands are no match for the 4 I have in the building. He takes 12 dp vs 3 to me and runs.

Turn 5: I'm still feeling good here, I'm winning the shooting war and hold the prime objective. More searching and I still find nothing, John finds his 2nd objective and loads up and nearly gets to the table edge. I'm in trouble now. I fail to get my airstrike. Our tanks exchange a bit more fire but my units are too slow to press into his deploy this late in the game.

Turn 6: I win initiative and immediately call in the Aurora fighter. It engages the the medium dropship with the objective and blows it out of the sky in a huge glorious fireball killing all on board and that damned objective. I search and finally find the objective in the small building but still not the large double value one. At this point we thought it was a tie, not realizing that you get the 2nd point for getting an objective off the table. We counted up kill points before realizing John had won on objectuves and it was about 2:1 in my favor (largely due to the dead infantry from the dropship kill and the CQB).



Game 2: Encroachment. Points are scored from kills and units in the enemy half at turn 6 with units in enemy buildings counting triple.

This was a much more one sided game mainly due to some very good luck for me on turn 1.

We started everything in readiness (off table in dropships) and rolled reserves. I rolled a 6 and got my fighter, John did not. This meant he had to move everything in via air and either drop them immediately (hurting his chances for this particular scenario due to the general slowness of ground vehicles) or just eat an airstrike and hope for the best.

He chose to risk it so, I waited for a troop transport to fly in and blew it out of the sky with a 6 on the destruction table killing everything on board. This freed up my whole left flank from infantry threat. I pushed hard up the left and left my HQ heavy walkers back to gaurd. It looked like I was just going to walk away with this one but John's attack fighter started pounding my buildings with bunker busters to really good effect. I tried to intercept it but was shot down by John's intercepters instead. In the end John just couldn't make up the lost ground and I think splitting his armor up into groups of 3 really prevented him from making much headway vs my very tough walkers.

Pretty good batrep, but pictures would be great too.

Nice read, can't wait to play this!

Mad4Minis wrote:Pretty good batrep, but pictures would be great too.

Thx, I'll bring a camera once our models and tables are a bit more presentable. We're both mainly Flames of War players so the pic would have been grey dropships invading 1940s France since we used our 15mm WWII buildings.

Thanks a lot, sounds fun stuff. Any opinions on how the rules compare to other games yet, or is it too early to call?

stuffah wrote:Thanks a lot, sounds fun stuff. Any opinions on how the rules compare to other games yet, or is it too early to call?

I've played most of the mainstream games and several less common games at one point or another and my first impression is that this system is pretty solid. It's very objective focused and conventional ground forces move very slowly so you really have to use dropships to move around (for UCM and PHR in any case). It doesn't seem like a game where you can just shoot your way to victory with high kill counts. That gives me a lot of hope that factions that use speed and manouver will be competitive.

One comment John made was that he missed the "armor save" step in this game. So, using 40k as a comparison, you roll to hit, then wound, then your opponent makes an armor save. In DzC your opponent doesn't get a save unless he has passive defenses (basically Shaltari and a few units here and there). I actually don't really miss that at all, and I think that the alternating activation keeps everyone involved in the game despite shooting being a bit one sided.

I agree about armour saves. It might be necessary in 40k because it gives you the feeling that you're actually doing something in your opponent's turn- but really it's just an illusion, because it doesn't matter who rolls the saves. But since Dropzone–along with AFAIK most other games–has a more dynamic turn structure anyway (alternate activation), you don't need the illusion - you're actually taking actions in direct response to your opponent, and your opponent is responding in turn.

From what I've heard about the rules, the main thing that seems to be lacking is suppressive effects of fire. That and alternate activation are two of the things that immediately leapt out when I read the Epic rules, making me think 'why the hell does 40k not do this?'. But I'd need to actually play to see if this is a problem- and I suppose realistically suppression applies more to infantry than to the tanks and aircraft that are the main Dropzone units.

stuffah wrote:I agree about armour saves. It might be necessary in 40k because it gives you the feeling that you're actually doing something in your opponent's turn- but really it's just an illusion, because it doesn't matter who rolls the saves. But since Dropzone–along with AFAIK most other games–has a more dynamic turn structure anyway (alternate activation), you don't need the illusion - you're actually taking actions in direct response to your opponent, and your opponent is responding in turn.

The benefit of a defensive roll is player participation. You have yourself to 'blame' if you rolls 1's.

In any game where there is a parry skill there needs to be a defensive roll, it a firefight when its luck/fate whether a bullet has your name on it then a defensive roll isnt strictly needed. 40K is in the former position Dropzone Commander the latter.

True, it makes sense for close combat. Although I think Dropzone has that too (in buildings only).

Yeah, some of the elite infantry units get dodge saves in close quarter combat. And if you do like to make your own defensive saves, Shaltari has a ton.

On the point about supression, I agree that it's needed for infantry focused games but I don't really miss it in DzC. Infantry is important but not the focus of the game. The game is more about (post)modern mobile warfare in which infantry is mounted up or hunkered down in terrain.

Infatry running around on foot in the open in this game probably won't last long enough to worry about suppression.

jophiel wrote: Infatry running around on foot in the open in this game probably won't last long enough to worry about suppression.

True. After looking at the stats, a possible exception to this might be if you're fighting Shaltari. Almost all of their units mount anti-tank weapons- seems even the giant Ocelot gun will only take out a maximum of two guys from a stand- and their Gates are unarmed against ground units. So that leaves the lightly armoured Kukris, Yaris, and the Shaltari's own infantry- I could see PHR infantry doing alright in a straight firefight.

Oh, and on close combat I didn't just mean the dodge saves, I meant that both sides are involved in rolling dice to resolve the fight. I could be wrong on that, though...

stuffah wrote:Oh, and on close combat I didn't just mean the dodge saves, I meant that both sides are involved in rolling dice to resolve the fight. I could be wrong on that, though...

Ah, yes both sides do fight and roll at the same time in CQB.

@ jophiel, thanks for the reports, very informative.