Dropzone Commander Intro Scenario

Rapiers preparing to kill my dropships dead!

As I mentioned in my last post me and other Martin had a game of Dropzone Commander planned for the weekend. I had all my Scourge nicely painted but I had promised to paint the UCM part of the starter box as well as other Martin was too lazy to paint his own. ;)

Of course the intention was to do them gradually day by day but as I kept pushing it forward I found myself frantingly speed painting the night before the game! And the Legionaries actually ended up completely unpainted as I wanted to prepp them more before basecoating them. Oh well, they look... ok to game with and much better than unpainted models. Now I just need to touch up the details and finish them off so I have to nice looking demo armies.

For this battle I didn't get to use my entire Scourge army as none of us had enough UCM to make up the cost difference, so we instead played the solid intro scenario that comes in the two-player starter. It's very bare bones, but excellent to teach you the game. Basically there are three objective buildings set up in the middle of the table (center and each flank) - each objective that you control at the end of the game is worth 1VP while objectives moved off the board is worth 2VPs.

Reapers providing cover as a second Marauder dropship is preparing to unload its Hunter gravtanks.

As none of us had played before we simply got stuck in and while other Martin headed for the right flank building first I opted to rush my AA units into the middle of the table to create a no-go zone for his dropships. I followed this with infantry to the central (large!) building with my tanks providing cover. His AA went up the left flank while his tanks supported the infantry.

The Rapiers were easily the UCM MVPs this game!

None of us managed to find any of the objectives and other Martin decided to send one of his squads in their Bear APC toward the objective on the left flank that neither of us had approached (as it was covered by his Rapier AA tanks). This seemed like it might not be a good idea, but in the spirit of trying new things they raced off down the road, passing in front of the large building where my two squads of Scourge infantry was frantically searching for the objective. This proved too tempting a target (and I was curious to try out the fabled Scourge plasma rifles) so I lined the walls with one of the squads and proceeded to blow up the Bear. A lucky roll on the Destroyed Vehicle table meant that the none of the legionaries inside survived either! Aww...

One of my Warrior squads throwing fiery plasma death at a Bear APC far below.

My joy was cut short though as the UCM Rapiers (who have a HUGE gatling cannon that rolls lots of dice against infantry) and two Condor dropships opened up on the Scourge warriors they could spot in the windows. None survived. So we were each down to one squad each and none of us had yet to even find an objective, less making it off the table with it!

My Reapers waiting to pounce as soon as the enemy MBTs are taken out.

As this was going on the UCM Sabre tanks kept pummeling the central building while my Hunter gravtanks very unsuccessfully tried to take out the Rapier AA tanks who very successfully shot down two of my dropships! My own AA kept back as they were no match for the Sabres, however their dropship flew over and started spraying plasma at them, although it mostly splashed off their armour. It wasn't until my Hunters made a lightning raid to knock out two of the Sabres that my Reapers dared approach and blast two Condors out of the sky.

After not doing any damage on the Rapiers the Hunters redeemed themselves by quickly destroying two Sabres.

On the fifth turn the Legionaries in the house on the right flank actually found the objective and hurriedly mounted up in their Bear APC which proceeded to race back toward their own lines. If the UCM could get it off the board other Martin was guaranteed the win as I still had to even find my first objective. As things started to look bleak (my Hunters were too far away to catch the Bear) my single surviving Marauder dropship saved the day by swooping in ahead of the Bear and blowing it to bits! While the Legionaries inside survived they were much too slow to make it out in time. Thank the jelly godess for guns on dropships! :D

With their APC disabled the Legionaries are caught in the open with Reapers not far behind...

So what it came down to in the end was whether I would be able to find my objective or not. If I did it would end in a draw, otherwise a UCM victory. I had been searching for three turns but as I went for the large building it was tougher to find what I was looking for. However, on the very last turn I managed to finally roll a four - enough to find the objective - meaning the game ended in a draw. Yay!

We both had a good time and other Martin was really happy that playing had not resulted in an immediate headache, which was the norm back in the day of 40k and Fantasy. His comments after the game was that he felt it a little bit confusing to activate several different units in one activation, and that it was slightly frustrating not to be able to fire at aircraft without AA weapons. However he also mentioned that this was most likely down to us being completely new to the game and that things like this would feel natural after a bit more practice.

In fact he was enthused enough to immediately start talking about (finally) assembling and painting his own UCM and considering what to get to make it into a fun 1000 point army we could use next time. This is great as I think the snowball effect is very strong with DZC as the models are easy and fun to work with and quick to paint which boosts your motivation which makes you paint more units!

As for myself, I'll finish off the starter set UCM but after that I'm a little bit torn. I really would like to build up a 1000 point Resistance force but at the same time I could make a fun 1000 point UCM army for the same price as the Resistance starter. Hmm...

Oh, and we rounded off the day with a game of Infiltration. It's a game I've been wanting to pick up for a long time as I love the theme and I don't really have any push-your-luck games in my collection besides the original Drakborgen (Dragon Quest). What made me pull the trigger now was because of my recent reimmersion in Netrunner and the fact that the game is not featured on FFG's site anymore meaning it's more than likely going out of print soon, if it hasn't already. Designer Donald X. Vaccarino has said that if he wanted to release it again with another publisher it would go back to its original theme of crooks breaking into a bubblegum factory. A theme I'm not in the least keen on.

A playmat from Netrunner for that little bit of extra theme...

Anyway, three of us played (Anders was an observer during DZC) and one of us left the building early, while two of us pushed on. Other Martin ended up wounded on the second floor and had no choice but to try and look for a second exit while I raced back downstairs. Unfortunately I didn't make it out but was arrested in the foyer! Other Martin on the other hand found some Blackmail Files allowing him to escape with loads of data, clearly winning him the game. Fun and quick! Will play again soon. :)

That's all for today. More later...

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And Believe me I am Still Alive!

Hello there dear readers! As things are wont to do my posting schedule and planned articles went out the window and I really haven't had the energy to write like a good little blogger. It's partly because of the proto-gamer of course, but also my enthusiasm for writing about new Infinity releases has lessened and meaning to keep to that schedule has meant that I haven't posted about other stuff I've been doing. It's not that I don't enjoy writing about Infinity news, but I feel that with my limited time I want to focus on stuff that is a bit more personal and unique.

So don't expect as much talk about the latest Infinity releases, but instead bask in the glory of my latest gaming achievements! Hopefully there will be more, but perhaps shorter, posts of what I've been up to lately as well as some reviews here and there. Business as usual. Kind of.

We didn't get very far...

To recap the past month... there's been some board gaming. We gave Legendary Encounters: Alien to my friend Anders and I've played a couple of games - still not won yet though. It's easy to grasp and quick-ish with a greath theme that doesn't quite click from a mechanical standpoint but still comes through enough to make it all very enjoyable.

EU won handily in this game as their economy engine simply crushed me and Anders.

I pulled out MERCS: Conflict again and I used some Fudge dice as proxy resource dice to be able to play more than two players. I've enjoyed the two player games, but three players brought an entirely new dimension to the game and it made me regret that I didn't spring for extra during the kickstarter! Also, I really like special dice... I think I need Roll for the Galaxy in my life.

Troyes about mid-game. You see all my VP-makers? All two of them? Yeah... that's why I didn't win.

Troyes made another appearance however I failed to really make a plan come together and ended up last. I was going to build lots on the cathedral, as that was my VP card, but in a surprise move it seemed like everyone had the same idea and I actually got less built than most of the other players. Lots of fun and brow furrowing though!

The keen-eyed among you might spot a painted Spriggan. I'll put up some decent pictures soon. Unfortunately I haven't got aound to painting the orcs yet though - these were kindly lent to me by Anna to supplement my game as the Razorfiend turned up.

With the release of Act I of Rise of the Revenant for MYTH that hit the table as well with four heroes against the undead hordes. The first tile was pretty brutal as we rolled an Agent as the first spawn and as we played really suboptimally for a few cycles. By the time we got to the third tile we had gotten our act together and made short work of the Revenant's cronies. At the very end our overly eager Soldier made the Razorfiend mini-boss spawn and all our actions cost double, which proved a little hectic! But clever play saw us through and we're now eagerly awaiting the next act.

Ryan Laukat - need more of his games!

There was also some Eight Minute Empire: Legends played and I like it better each time. It's very small and minimalistic but packs a lot of good decisionmaking in its 20~30 minute play time. Love it!

Jinteki doing what they do best! :D

Finally (and I think this will have the greatest repercussions) I managed to get Netrunner to the table, after over a year of no plays at all! And it's just... so good! I think I had forgotten or repressed how suberp a game it is, but I had so much fun just playing to games against my buddy Claes. First as a denial-y Jinteki: Replicating Perfection, which frustrated Claes no end, and then with a slightly wonky and very combo-y Chaos Theory deck. I pulled off two wins but that wasn't really important - simply playing the game is just... fun!

Chaos Theory had a slow start but once she started to Test Run/Scavenge her breaker suit together it was all gravy... 

Also the theme is great. The Android universe (first created by Kevin Wilson) is of course an amalgamation of lots of different cyberpunk and scifi themes and ideas, but it's been put together in a way that I think makes it far superior to other FFG settings like Twilight Imperium and Terrinoth. It has also been allowed to grow and evolve in different ways and I'm actually pretty excited to see what they could be doing with it in the future.

In fact I'm so excited that I've snagged myself a copy Infiltration, since it's bound to disappear fairly soon, and I'm also on the lookout for the original Android board game and the Android novels FFG released a few years back. Yes, I long to be steeped in Android from head to toe! Some of you might be surprised to hear that I'm looking to reacquiring Android as I gave it the proverbial last chance back in 2011. However, let me quote myself from that very article:

"Even though we talked about this being the last chance for Android in our group I don't actually think it was, the attractive elements are simply too many. I'm pretty sure that in a year's time from now some of us are going to thinking that maybe if we tried it just once more... then it might be really cool!"

While it ended up being more than a year (more like four) I proved myself right as I'm dying to get my hands on a copy. In fact, let me know if you want to get rid of yours (or the books!) - I need my Android fix! Hehe...

I've spent the last week catching up listening to the Run Last Click podcast. It's good stuff and quite funny to boot. I decided to listen from the beginning as I only have cards up to and including Honor and Profit and it's cool to hear their take on the cards as they came out. I also just made an account on Jinteki.net so hit me up if you want to give a newbie a solid thrashing - I'm Beepluck over there.

If it seems like I've become addicted to Netrunner I think you might not be far off! Let's see what the future holds.

Time for these guys to enslave the last of humanity!

In other news, I'll be playing my first game of Dropzone Commander this weekend, which I'm really looking forward to! The DropFLEET Commander kickstarter will be launching at the end of October and I will be all over that like a Wraparound on an Atman! Everything I've seen of it so far has managed to tick so many of my boxes. Very excited for it! Just look at that Scourge ship below...

Speaking of kickstarters, the Infinity rpg by Modiphius has another three days left and has blown through a number of stretchgoals. I'm in it for the core books+all the PDFs. Originally I was actually a little hesitant about the whole thing, but when I saw that they'd made Justin Alexander the line developer for the Infinity rpg I was onboard immediately! Check out his blog, The Alexandrian, and I'm sure you'll realize why. Finally I'll simply mention the ongoing Scythe kickstarter. It blew through more than $500,000 during the first 24 hours so don't really need much help, but anway... it looks awesome and I need to sell more stuff to try and afford backing it. :)

And with that lovely looking Scourge cruiser it's time to go. I feel fantastic and I'm still alive...

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Painted Scourge army for Dropzone Commander!

Having spent some time magnetizing my little alien invader jellies I sat down with paint and brush to make them tabletop ready. You might have seen some teasers over on the Facebook page, but here is the complete army, as it stands right now, in all its glory! This is roughly 1100 points or so, but I have one more starter set to build and am planning on getting some Reaver gunships and Slayer heavy gravtanks to boost it. Probably some Vampires and maybe a Screamer to. Hmm...

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I pretty much copied the studio scheme as it simply fits the Scourge so well. It is not actually the best looking colour scheme (for example these and these are actually better looking, I think) but with the strong and detailed setting information in the rulebook I wanted to paint them the way I kind of envisaged they would look if they were real and the purplish metal simply seemed more... right. At first I thought they'd end up looking boring but by the end I was very happy with how sinister they're looking.

Besides looking neat painting them like this is very, very quick which is always a plus in my book!

Of course all the relevant bits are magnetized so they can mount up, like so:

Being able to do this is an important bit of DZC for me. It just looks awesome! 

Destroyers! Big buggers...

The Destroyers were fun to paint as they are large enough to give them decent detail. Great sculpt and very characterfull. Might have to get some Eviscerators soon.

Warriors in Invaders.

Compared to the excellent metal Destroyers the plastic Warriors was quite a letdown. In fact I'd say the plastic infantry is the only lowpoint of the two player starter. They're perfectly adequate when you're some distance away but the are not very good sculpts close up. Still, some added scenery to the bases (made from cut up bits of sprue!) they certainly look the part when on the battlefield.

Prowlers, baby!

My favourite Scourge unit - the Prowlers! These were the first I assembled and the first I started painting. Love these guys! Eight is a decent number, but I think 16 sounds more Scourge like so expect to see more in the future.

A Marauder and the Harbinger that is transporting the Oppressor. Both nice looking models (although my
Harby did have some bumps in the resin that I couldn't be bothered to fix). Two Intruder Alphas can be seen in the foreground.

Dropships, the lifeline of the entire army. I'll probably get another Harbinger soon as I'd really like to try some Stalkers in the future.

Hunters and Reapers.

The main gravtanks of the Scourge. On the Reapers I deviated slightly to paint the inner parts of the Arc Caster, giving it a blue/white hue to signify the electric discharge of the AA weapon. Also, I forgot to drill out the barrels on the Hunters! Need to correct this soon.

Oppressor and one of its many, many children...

Finally we have the giant doomcrab itself - the Oppressor! Although I really like the look of the Desolator (hello Reapers!) I knew I had to get the Oppressor as my first commander when I saw it released. Love how big and stompy and... weird it is! Looking forward to letting it loose on the front lines.

By the way, all the terrain in the pics here are from the two player starter set and I love that you can get an awesome looking table setup in a matter of minutes (or an hour or so if you want to glue the buildings like me). While proper modell terrain that is well painted does look better this paper stuff still looks very very good, as far as I'm concerned. I don't get why not more games do this - at the moment the ones that spring to mind is this and Infinity: Operation Icestorm. Also, I'm still waiting for my plastic modular DzC board that I kickstarted almost two years ago now. They're saying it should be here in September. Yeah.

Anyway, let's round off with some mood shots featuring that great scenery!

Some Reapers and Prowlers deploy to secure the street for the Invaders.

An Intruder Alpha pulls away just as it has deposited a squad of angry Destroyers into a building.

Scourge warriors look down at the majestic view of their commander advancing towards the enemy.

A Harbinger dropship approaching to pick up an Oppressor.

Next up I'll probably tackle the UCM in the starter so I can actually start doing some demo games.

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Rules Reading!

Just a very quick update. For the past couple of weeks these are the different rulebooks I've been cycling through. Usually I'm reading the revised The One Ring (thanks Ville!) during breakfast and then Infinity when I get the chance during the day (skipping to points of interest rather than cover to cover) and then I get stuck in with Dropzone Commander after the proto-gamer has gone to sleep.

In fact, I just finished the DzC rulebook tonight, which I did read cover to cover, and I have to say I'm very, very impressed with it! I think it might be the best looking and most well presented miniatures rulebook I've come across in my gaming career. The miniature photos are spectacular, the fluff is good and actually interesting, the layout works well and the actual rules seem solid. In fact I was so impressed with the whole Dropzone Commander two player starter that I'll probably do a mini review of it pretty soon. I'm also in the process of painting my Scourge. I have of course already magnetized my giant Doom Crab!

As for Infinity I've played a couple of learning games with Claes who seem to enjoy it and is picking it up well. I think next time we'll try something with an actual scenario rather than just straight up annihilation as cool scenarios is what Infinity is all about. He's got his Haqq starter box assembled and awaiting some paint as well as a bunch of reinforcements still in blisters. I'm using my trusty Yu Jing but since I also have a number of units that need painting We might do some kind of painting/first battle deadline to motivate us and actually get the stuff up to snuff.

Finally, it's always a joy to read anything for The One Ring and although I've read through the first edition a number of times I was happy to go cover to cover with the revised. It's still the same game although some things have been tweaked (mainly Journeys) and the organization of the book has been improved. I did like the two book system but there were some issues with which rules were where etc.

Yeah... that's it. Just thought it was fun to talk some rules. What are you reading at the moment?


Oh, and don't forget that Fire Broadside is now on Facebook.

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Infinity Prepp

Just a quick update to show that it's not only Dropzone Commander getting some love but good old Infinity as well. I love the remotes in Infinity so I'm a bit ashamed that I don't have a single one painted. I've had one of the Yaokongs prepped for ages as well as my two Pangguling.

However, I decided to rip the first Yakong apart and put it and it's sibling together properly, with magnets. I also bit the bullet and removed the 40mm bases from the Pangulings (and I was so happy when I mounted those properly!) to make them ready for the new 55mm base size. Yes, I know that is not strictly needed but what the hell, it'll look better going forward anyway. I'll probably do the same with the my single Aragoto and Guija TAG as well, but I don't know about the Sù-Jián - putting the mobility form on a 55mm base just looks so silly. Hmm...

Anyway, just wanted to make a quick post and show what's been happening. Two Yakongs, a spec-op, a Tiger Soldier, 'Neko' Oyama and a Zuyong ready for some paint! Also, as I'm writing this I realize that I have a Ninja and a Karakuri ready to go as well. Quite the line up!

I keep forgetting to plug my Facebook page, and I keep forgetting to make a proper button for it, but yeah, feel free to drop by and give Fire Broadside a like. :)

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Magnetizing my Scourge for Dropzone Commander

Finally getting to grips with putting together and painting an army (or two) for Dropzone Commander by Hawk Wargames. First out is the Scourge which will be my main army and where I'll put most of my resources. However, I will also paint the UCM from the core box and probably add a few extra units to make it into a solid demo army.

Anyway, I haven't actually got the core box quite yet but I really wanted to get stuck in so decided to start off with some Intruder Alphas and Betas together with a bunch of Prowlers and Destroyers. Since the prowlers are probably my favourite unit in the entire game (who wouldn't love a Mini Cooper sized crab mech with five eyes and a plasma proboscis?!) I started with those.

When DzC was first released in 2012 I really didn't like the look of the Scourge as models and wasn't particularly impressed by the metallic studio paintjob either. Luckily I've grown older and wiser and the little jellies have really grown on me! The Marauder and Despoiler dropships still look a little odd to me, but I love the rest of the range! After thinking of different paint schemes and looking at what other people's armies I've come around on the purple metallics to. The thought of making them more organic looking seems common when looking at other armies, but I actually think that's the wrong way of going about it. To me they look like metal constructs that have grown in an organic way, not the other way around and for some reason painting them to look more "fleshy" actually make them seem less alien, as far as I'm concerned. That they look organic but are actually metal just feels... stranger. So yeah, that was a long-winded way of telling you that I'll be sticking pretty close to the studio scheme when painting these babies!

What's that about magnets you say? Oh, I almost forgot. Being able to easily and effectively magnetize (or simply slot in) the entire army in their respective dropships was also an attractive reason for choosing Scourge - it simply looks cool to have everything hanging underneath, like it should! So for these little guys I simply dug out my trusty old 1.5mm x 0.75mm magnets that I've been using for Heavy Gear and Infinity as well. One in each pad on the Intruder and one at the top of head of the Prowlers and off we go!

I would have made some correct sci-fi sounds but the proto-gamer was asleep in the other room. Just imagine some pew-pews, lots of scuttling sounds and the screaming howl of the Intruder as it dives in. ;)

So yeah... just wanted to let you guys know that I'm actually doing stuff even if it seems a bit quiet around these parts. Talk to you again soon!

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