Posted by Euan on 14/01/2016
The Beta rules for Mantic Games’ new edition of their hit sci-fi skirmish game Deadzone – known as “Deadzone Redux” – have been available to the community for some time. Our group has been saying for most of that time that we needed to give the new rules a try, but life being what it is we haven’t got round to it.
That is, until now! Our first playtest matchup was between Rhys’ Enforcers and my Plague. We played 100pts as suggested, and used the simplified Patrol mission as recommended in the new rules. We wanted to get used to the changes to the core rules before introducing any additional complexity.
Enforcers
Rhys chose a Strike Team led by an Enforcer Sergeant. This gave his force a recon value of 4+, with the special ability (using the new Command dice mechanic) to spend a “splat” dice to re-roll the survive dice for one of his models. His small elite force lined up as follows:
Enforcer Sergeant
1x Assault Enforcer
1x Enforcer Specialist with Sniper Rifle
1x Peacekeeper
Which now that I check the rules, is an illegal army… (2 specialists but only one Trooper) – oh well, it’s not the only thing we did wrong!
Plague
I chose my Strike Team based on a standard Plague outbreak – led by a Stage 1A. This gave my army a Recon value of 5+, and the special ability “Mutation” which allowed me to use a Command “splat” to give a model a random boost for a round. This turned out to be very characterful as well as being tactically useful! My full Plague force was
Stage 1A
2x Stage 3A Troopers
1x Stage 3A Specialist with HMG
2x Stage 3D Hellhounds
1x Stage 2A
Incredibly, the Stage 2A counts as a Trooper, so this was very legal with 5 Troopers and 1 Specialist.
The Battle is Fight!
In the new, standard, Patrol mission there are four Objectives on the board – we used small bright orange tokens as seen above. The two Objectives nearest the centre of the board are worth 2 vPs, while the two outer Objectives are worth 1VP. If you control an Objective (i.e. only you have any models in the cube) at the end of any round, you gain its VPs. Note that this applies in every round. As a game in which we were learning the new rules, we used much less terrain than we normally would
Each model is also worth a number of VPs which is specified in its profile. For example, a Plague Stage 3A is worth 1VP, whereas an Enforcer Peacekeeper is worth 3VPs. Your opponent gets that number of VPs if he kills the model.
In a 100pts game, the first to 12VPs is the winner. The revamped rules are intended to be faster, more streamlined, and bloodier. We were keen to test these claims!
We were not disappointed! The game had everything – pinpoint shooting into cubes containing friends, epic dogs, a grenade explosion killing two Stage 3As, one dying from falling off a building. We even had a heroic last stand general’s combat with the Enforcer Sergeant somehow surviving for a glorious victory!
Man of the match was undoubtedly Rhys’ Enforcer Sergeant. He laid claim to the tower in the middle of the board quite early on, and survived a ridiculous amount of gribblies thrown at him.
First there was the injured Plague Hellhound…
Then the Stage 2A who had freshly slaughtered the Peacekeeper had a go – the Sergeant survived, teeing up his pal the Sniper to take a shot. Despite the -2 dice modifier for Friendly Fire, the Sniper killed the Stage 2A outright!
At this point both of us were on 10VPs – Rhys had the Sniper camping on a 1VP Objective, and my Stage 1A was on a 2VP Objective. I could have just stayed on the Objective and dared him to try and shift me. But that’s not very Plague-like! I was going for the true victory – murder stuff!
This was the final test for Rhys’ heroic Sergeant. The first Fight was a draw, with 6 successes each… Rhys then had the final action of the game, and attempted to move his Sergeant out of the cube and onto the 2VP Objective below. I had the chance to attack him as he broke off. We rolled… and the Sergeant was Injured! Because he wasn’t dead, he could complete his move onto the Objective. Battered and bloodied, he secured a mighty victory for his Team – 13 VPs to 10! The Stage 1A was left awkwardly standing in full view of the Sniper…
Aftermath
We had great fun playtesting the new rules. The streamlining is very apparent as the game was concluded a lot more quickly than in the previous rules, even including all the time we spent looking up unfamiliar rules. However, for all of the little changes, we felt that the game has preserved the cinematic feel. Something about it lends itself to the imagination that each of your models is about to do something epic!
The new Command dice mechanic is brilliant. I miss the cards but once we get the hang of the dice they have the potential to be even better. I’m very glad the latest (and final?) iteration of the rules reintroduced the +1 to Shoot modifier for high ground. We didn’t actually use “Fire for Effect” (a.k.a. the new Blaze Away) but that’s probably because there was nowhere near enough terrain, meaning Clear Shots were easily available. That can be a complexity to add in the next playtest game.
Fights are now very brutal, and the removal of almost all negative modifiers is a nice difference. I feel that the reduction in armour values is countered by these changes in dice modifiers. It’s all part of the streamlining making the game flow faster.
I can’t really draw any conclusions about points values yet, other than the forces that we chose felt pretty balanced (as shown by how close the game was) – that’ll require more testing. There was nothing that stood out as jarringly negative – apart from a couple of rules we got wrong first time, like Agile and Suppression – but that was entirely our own fault.
Looking forward to playing it again, we reckoned our next battle will be my Forge Fathers against Rhys’ Rebs – let’s see if the FF have been nerfed and Rebs have been boosted, as both are needed! In just the right amount, of course…
Secret Cave HQ Gaming Club 