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Has anyone else test out the deadzone alpha rules yet? I'm finding the plague stage 2 to be incredibly hard/annoying to deal with. With def 4 and armor 2, they're almost impossible to kill unless you missile launcher them. But with the launcher being a long action and the sheer amount of terrain on the table, this makes it incredibly hard

I've yet to play a game the plague didn't win. At the moment the shooting system is a bit underpowered as armour mean you need to win by quite a lot to do any damage and it's hard to build up enough of a dice advantage to make that likely. I think the problem is that you can't load any negative modifiers at all onto a target of a shoot action (pinning them actually makes killing them with shooting even harder). There isn't a good way of combining enforcer squad actions to make a critical shot, each enforcer still acts pretty much independently. Coordinated action works better for the plague as they can pin (or enrage) key enforcers like the missile launcher by blazing away + supporting fire while the combat monster Gen 2 plague move into charge position. I really think they need to add supporting fire to the normal shoot action (and overwatch should be a short action if you have to take a test to see if it works at all).

My local group are all waiting to see what the next version of the rules brings. Should be playing some more tomorrow evening with whatever tweaks Jake talked about at the Mantic open day yesterday (wasn't there myself).

I've played 2 games, one which enforcers lost and the other which they won. But yeah, I agree the shooting system is kinda crappy at the moment. I think Plague either needs their armor value lowered by 1 across the board or the enforcers need AP1 on their normal rifles.

And Stage2 monsters are too brutal in combat. It gets very depressing when 3 of your enforcers are 1shotted in combat by them

I think the +1 fight bonus for 'charging' could be dropped as well. You already get a free fight action for moving in, getting a +1 bonus on the free fight action for having moved as well is excessive when a move card + 2 move actions can get a gen 2 into combat from 3 squares away with that fight bonus.

Are you guys able to contribute in any way to the feedback for the Alpha, so that Jake or some of the other Mantic guys can read it?

Interesting reading your comments and how the games are turning out - I got the impression that outflanking is very important in the game, but it sounds as if CC might be overpowered and you don't get that impression just from reading the rules.

the +1 bonus doesn't make that much of a difference in the end I think. Having rampage is just sick, it's 6 dice vs 3 dice in defense most times. If berserk or the next stage of enraged came in, it would be 7 vs 3.

Pacific, I'm not sure where we would post the feedback to? Outflanking is important but the real issue is that plague are a lot more mobile than enforcers at the moment. They have 6 free movement cards, enforcers have 2. They can afford to run up with both actions. Enforcers can't. We probably want one action to shoot at least, which means we can only move one.

Mantic has a space for input/feedback on DZ on their site.
You have to register to make comments.

Here's the link to that sub-forum:
http://forum.manticblog.com/showthread.php?4069-Alpha-Rules-Feedback-Thread

You can also comment directly on the DZ site:
http://quirkworthy.com/2013/05/03/deadzone-alpha-rules/

I'm using the Mantic one just because I find the Quirkworthy thread quite difficult to follow. Most of the discussions seems to be about people not liking the true line of sight rules which I find strange as it is one of the bits of the game I think works exactly as intended and simplifies things rather nicely (I really like the movement system as well).

Plenty of people have already mentioned that the plagues stage2 are too brutal in combat

Sining wrote:
Plenty of people have already mentioned that the plagues stage2 are too brutal in combat

I'm not sure I agree the gen 2's are too brutal. I expect them to be a slaughtering machine as it's their specialism but I also expect that careful play should give you a reasonable chance of killing them before they reach your line and as it stands their armour 2 coupled with the relatively weak shooting inherent in the current rules makes them too durable outside of combat (and rampage cancels out the penalty for being injured which is a bit harsh). I dread to think what the gen 1 will be like.

Well, the weak shooting is why they are so brutal in combat. It'd be one thing if they could be shot to death on average at least 50% of the time but considering that normal enforcers already have issues shooting stage 1s to death (3die shooting vs 3die survival with 1 armor), it's really hard to break through stage2s armor unless you're using the missile launcher. Which being a long action, requires LOS to the figure itself; again an issue with terrain, and 1 turn setup.

Might work better if the enforcers just keep blazing away instead really while missile launcher tries to set up.

Just chimming in so I can sub to the thread and follow the discusion.

Talked some friends into an Alpha test, but we won't be doing it until the 25th.

Well, had my 3rd and 4th game today while introducing the game to some guys. Enforcers won both without taking a single loss, though terrain may have something to do with that. Both times, I got charged by a plague stage 2 but due to my enforcers being bunched together, I managed to survive, rolling 4 dice vs 6.

Never had my assault enforcer do anything useful that couldn't be done by a generic tactical enforcer though. Even when he charged, he didn't do anything to the Stage2. Instead, it was a tac enforcer that ended up dealing the killing blow

For me Suppression enforcer defeated the plague almost by himself 2 of the 3 games have played.

Going through my collection trying to find proxies for enforcers, other than Space Marines, then decided to just make some of my own.

^ Very clever. I've been using Space Marines and Nids, but I like your idea quite a bit as well!

A bif plus for of Deadzone is that it is not 40K, so I couldn't bring myself to use 40K figures.

Another part of it is I am trying to sell the rest of gaming group into backing Deadzone, so I figured they might find the actual figure art pretty cool.

 livanbard wrote:
For me Suppression enforcer defeated the plague almost by himself 2 of the 3 games have played.

What suppression enforcer? The missile launcher guy?

BETA Rules, or Alpha 2.0, what ever you want to call it are suppossed to be out Wednesday 5/22.

 adamsouza wrote:
BETA Rules, or Alpha 2.0, what ever you want to call it are suppossed to be out Wednesday 5/22.

Seem to be delayed until Thursday May 23rd.

~Eric

Grr Arrgghh !!

I was looking forward to printing up a few copies, reading it over, and running a few games Friday