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signalnoise posted:What's the appropriate magnet size for magnetizing for dropships I used 2mm (1mm thick) magnets on my plastic type 1 walkers and it was fine, but I found my heavier type 2 walkers, which are resin with metal legs, just weren't secure enough so I switched to 4mm magnets (also 1mm thickness) which are nice and solid. The 2mm are great for magnetising arms or the IFV turrets though. I bought all mine off eBay, you can pick up 50 for next to nothing.
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May 1, 2015 19:57
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signalnoise posted:OK, I read through the book and I like the rules. I want more of this game, if even just to paint. Beyond the starters for PHR and Resistance, what should I buy to expand my options, rather than just buying more of the same? What are the units to avoid that are just poo poo? The good news is that the recent errata did a big balance pass and made the worst stuff better. You want to be looking at exotic (elite) infantry and light dropships as an early addition. Play a few games to get a feel for things and figure out what sort of tactics you want to pursue first.
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May 2, 2015 07:28
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Grey Hunter and I tried stepping things up and played a larger game today. We hadn't gone past the standard 1500 points Clash before so today tried dropping everything we could onto the field and came up with a 2500 point UCM vs PHR Battle! This also meant that we played on a 6x4 table rather than the usual 4x4. It felt huge at first but really you do need the space as we had units using the full width of the field. The scenario was encroachment where you score points for ending the game with your own units in the opponent's table half with a bonus for infantry occupying buildings in the opposing table half. Finally you also score for kill points, so it really all comes down to keeping infantry alive while blapping anything on the ground in your own table half. We picked our lists then the scenario so we had to approach the game flexibly. Here is my PHR list. 2500pts PHR Battle Battle: 2498/2500 points Standard Army PHR Standard Roster [2498/2500 pts] Hand of the Sphere [668 pts] Mercury Drones: 4x Mercury, 2x Triton A2(+Stealth Missiles, +RN-5 Skyhammer) [116 pts] Command Squad: Zeus(Supreme Vizier), Zeus, 2x Odin, 2x Neptune [552 pts] Battle Pantheon [260 pts] Battle Squad: Menchit, Phobos, Neptune [140 pts] Erebos Squad: 2x Erebos-A, Neptune [120 pts] Battle Pantheon [364 pts] Battle Squad: 4x Ares, 2x Phobos, Poseidon [364 pts] Immortals [300 pts] Immortals: 2x Immortals, Triton A1(+Stealth Missiles, +Miniguns) [114 pts] Angelos Squad: 2x Angelos(+Immortals), Neptune [186 pts] Immortals [228 pts] Immortals: 2x Immortals, Triton A1(+Stealth Missiles, +Miniguns) [114 pts] Immortals: 2x Immortals, Triton A1(+Stealth Missiles, +Miniguns) [114 pts] Heavy Pantheon [408 pts] Helios Squad: 2x Helios, Neptune [160 pts] Heavy Squad: 2x Enyo [130 pts] Heavy Squad: 2x Hyperion [118 pts] Air Wing [270 pts] Athena Squad: Athena [135 pts] Athena Squad: Athena [135 pts] This used very close to every model I have, putting it together made me think that I maybe need to buy more Neptunes! When you start playing with more points the need to find transportation gets tricky. I still haven't picked up any Sirens or type 4 walkers which is why both are absent from this list. I would have loved to put in some Hades/Nemesis as they just seem well suited to bigger battles and would have had room to slot them in. Maybe next time! Grey fielded an air-heavy UCM list including his new Archangels & Seraphim along with the flying doom engine he got in the post yesterday - his Phoenix. He fielded a Sabre-Rapier tank brick in an Albatross, some more armour and gunships topped off with Praetorians in Ravens & Legionaires in Bears/Codor. The first thing that struck me about scaling up is the feeling that setup took longer (more stuff to unbox/put on flight stands) and that it feels like there is a lot to think about. With a wider range of stuff on table, and more of it, things felt less snappy for the first half of the game. The game didn't drag, but putting more stuff on the table certainly made things take longer. This probably wasn't helped that both Grey and I rolled god awful with our shooting for the first two or three turns so not much died! I started off by placing my Command squad in centre field, my Poseidon carrying Type-1 group on my right flank with the smaller Erebos/Menchit group between them while my Heavy group (with Mercurys projecting sphere of influence) stomped on to hold my left flank. Grey had managed to roll sixes for most of his fast movers on turn one while my own Athena's were still stuck in reserve. This meant I had an Archangel threatening my dropships on turn 1 that I couldn't really do anything about. This pushed me into playing it a bit safe and landing (but not deploying from) a lot of my dropships (especially the squishy troop carrying Triton's) to prevent them from getting picked off before my AA cover was in place. I quickly realised (and so had Grey) that I had committed the cardinal sin of the PHR and miss-deployed with AA. I had placed my Helios on the left flank but bunched up both the main Poseidon walker squad and the Menchit/Phobos squad too far over to my right. That just left my Athena's to belatedly try and plug the gap as with PHR being the slowest moving force it is difficult to switch gears once you set things in motion. Grey set to work widening that gap by ramming most of his air units into my left flank and making sure that the Helios covering it died first. Grey then pushed the bulk of his infantry down the left flank to begin occupying buildings (for extra points) while I was forced to get my own infantry into some place with a longer life expectancy. That didn't work out as one squad survived their Triton being shot down only to find themselves stuck in a building in my own table half. My Angelos squad tried to push across the table and fiend a decent building to hole up in but got stuck around the mid table brawl before getting torn up by Eagle Gunships.  That mid-table brawl consisted of my double Zeus/Odin command squad steadily marching between buildings throwing supporting fire towards my type-1 brick on the right flank. Grey and I are developing a habit of picking forces that include chunky tank/walker bricks in heavy dropships and just ramming them into each other. In this instance we played out a reverse tug of war where our respective armoured cores advanced down a main road and tried to shove past each other over the centre line. While turn 1 was spent rumbling heavy dropships forward, turns 2 through 5 saw deployment and inconclusive fire fights. I had shifted my Erebos squad over to join the Type-1's and provide their ECM cover to raise survivability, but naturally they died first so didn't. I then played some command cards to both grant temporary 5+ passive saves and to activate the squad out of sequence but rolled dismally and failed to achieve anything. Fortunately Grey fluffed his shooting too so that fight dragged on for awhile as I slowly pushed my walkers forwards 3 inches at a time. Eventually I did gain the upper hand, whittled down his tank block and pushed my survivors over the centre line. My left flank also fared surprisingly well as my two heavy walker pairs did not bear the full brunt of the Phoenix and gunships. Grey's attention instead was drawn more towards my hardy command squad in the centre which proved a marvellous bullet sponge for some time. The problem was that my Type-2's were kept busy by Wolverines and the Infantry squads taking up residence around them which slowed my advance. I used my Enyo's to soften up the surrounding buildings but they and my Hyperions were never going to reach the centre line so I settled for truing to kill the Infantry instead by dropping masonry and buildings. Between building demo and some brutal CQB with my now stranded Immortals taking on Praetorians I was able to kill two of the three squads infesting buildings on my flank. Meanwhile on my far right another vicious round of CQB saw another Immortals/Praetorian match up result in a mutual wipe out as whomever was the last man standing sank to his knees and bled out. My Menchit (thanks to its recent buff) earned its keep by single-handedly torching a legionnaire squad out of a captured building, which is good as I had put it down in that area to do this. On the other hand it was that descion which lead to me bunching up my AA cover so it was something of a double-edged sword. My fourth and final squad completed a flanking maneuver and took up residence in a building on the far side of the field. Grey naturally put an end to that threat by sending his Seraphim to drop a couple of over-sized bombs on them and levelling the whole structure. By this point the tide had turned on my command squad as the damage seeped through and my commander's Zeus and one Odin went down. I was able to push the survivors over the line but the loss of a CV6 commander is painful indeed! A Phoenix does indeed lay down a punishing amount of firepower and my AA hole left me unable to deal with it. Throughout the game my Athenas, once they turned up (one each on turns 2 and 3), managed to arse about failing to shoot down Archangels or performing attack runs against the Phoenix and failing to hit anything. I eventually lost one to an Archangel intercept at the end of the game, which frankly served it right! The appalling shooting of my air wing ultimately rendered them next to useless in this battle, which definitely hurt me. The final count put me on 1500-and-something points while Grey racked up 1700-and something meaning he beat me by 120 points. It was close, with most of that difference down to the bonus points he received for having a Legionnaire squad holding a building in my table half. If the Seraphim had fluffed its bombing run then I would have likely won. This was a fun and tense game, but something of a marathon. I think DzC does scale well for larger battles, but we found the extra 1000 points really makes a difference to the length of the game. This game took us nearly 4 hours, which was longer than we expected but that may in part have been due to our terrible shooting not removing units more quickly. It was fun to try something a bit different and ramping things up does let you use more of the toys, although you do sacrifice a bit of pace. I think the take home here is that while DzC can certainly do the 'mass battle' thing, it probably isn't the go-to game size. The next time we do a Battle sized game I'm thinking we might go with 2000 points. That is 500 more than the tournament standard but still low enough that you can't just take everything and it should keep the game from slowing down. I hope that was of interest to someone, otherwise I apologise for the wall of text! 
Ugleb fucked around with this message at 23:20 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 23:11
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The Sisko posted:Got my resistance starter set this week and yesterday I picked up the Alexander and some freeriders as well as the commander cards . I have to say I love the Alexander in every way from fluff to stats to the actual model itself. It's so godamn ridiculous and I look forward to playing it in some games. Any other models I should pick up? Put that together and get a feel for the game I'd say otherwise I'm going to tell you to go buy most of the stuff out there... 
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May 10, 2015 08:06
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The first batch of the new infantry has gone up for pre-order on Wayland games along with fluff descriptions. Interestingly the Ronin apparently don't come with bases so I guess that makes them almost small vehicles. I'm assuming that the Mortars will be indirect fire and that the Longreach Team will get the shaped charge rule and passive counter measures. http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/2177-dropzone-commander UCM - Legionnaire Mortar Teams The Colonial Legionnaire Corps commonly use infantry portable support weapon teams alongside the deployment of regular troops. Each legionary is trained to use these weapons and many hope for a rotation to support duty where they can cause destruction. The firepower gained is fair more than their assault rifles and despite losing their most effective tool in CQB engagements most troopers willingly make the exchange. The Standard Infantry Mortar is a versatile weapon that is most dangerous when used in groups where they are able to rain down unstoppable firepower. It requires a crew of 2 to operate and can fire explosive cluster round. Scourge - Eviscerators Although normal Scourge Destroyers are brutal and dreaded opponents, Eviscerators are truly terrifying. It is well known that Scourge parasites begin to lose their grip on their host when they reach and old age which can result in the insane remnants of the hosts wracked psyche coming forward. Using a destroyer as a host is even more dangerous, turning them into raging monsters with a desire to destroy every living thing around them. Shaltari - Ronin As the frontline assault troops of the Shaltari, their primary role is to strike first from unexpected places. Each of these individuals lives for nothing but war with an obsession that is all consuming. During battle they favour heavy war suits and towering constructs. Though too large to enter building, when armed with a pair of Gauss Carbines they are great to dart and weave their way through the battlefield and killing their foe. PHR - Immortal Longreach Team The Long reach Rifle is usually carried by a heavy weapon bearer among regular immortal teams. However, on some occasions, whole squads have been sighted armed with these rules. Individually they are dangerous, but collectively they are lethal to armoured units, where they are extremely accurate and have high velocity fire. These long reach teams are also anti-personnel snipers whenever they are called to a task, there their high powered weapons represent total overkill against the heaviest infantry armour.
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May 13, 2015 21:21
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I think UCM are the hardest faction to magnetise and require things like custom flight stands to make it work well. I haven't seen any examples of finished units that I can think of. 
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May 18, 2015 13:19
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Ugleb posted:I think UCM are the hardest faction to magnetise and require things like custom flight stands to make it work well. I haven't seen any examples of finished units that I can think of. And now I have! Great stuff there Bistromatic!
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May 19, 2015 10:19
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ijyt posted:Has Dropfleet Commander got a release date yet? This year perhaps? Me and a friend were about to buy some Firestorm Armada stuff for BFG proxies but after seeing the models for the UCM we decided to hold off. The tentative goal is out in time for Christmas, but might be early 2016. So something like 6-9 months from now. It sounds like they are mostly done on design and are getting the manufacturing lined up.
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May 21, 2015 07:18
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Yeah Falcons got much better recently so don't worry about that. If you haven't already, download the FFOR army builder, there's a link in the OP. It is great for visualising options with battlegroups.
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May 25, 2015 13:25
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Only observation I have atm is that people don't normally bother putting the Kodiak in a Condor. It's job is usually to be parked behind a building bringing down its indirect fire pile driver from space. That's not to say you can't do it, just that it is generally considered not worth it. If you have a few points spare then why not.
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May 25, 2015 17:45
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Bob Smith posted:I was misinformed then - when the people I was talking to about the game were explaining how to get started they said everything starts in a transport and you could only take units without aircraft if you were defending. Some scenarios require that all units start off the table 'in readiness' which means that everything moves onto the table in turn 1. For most things that means you will be flying them on in dropships but you can walk/drive units on under their own power IF they do not have a transport. If they do have a transport then they must fly on and deploy from it. Units like the PHR Nemesis (a massive type 4 walker) in particular are intended to walk on and sit in the back doing their thing. You would then pair them up with scout units which project your commanders sphere of influence further into the field while they hang back in relative safety. Indirect fire artillery are another good choice to walk on and again pair up with scouts to help direct their shooting. So basically I'm saying that not everything must be in a dropship and that you should look at scout units for synergy. Mmmm synergy.
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May 26, 2015 17:04
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BULBASAUR posted:Hawk owns. I bought some Helios tanks from ebay and one ended up having a nasty miscast on the turret. I contacted the seller and he told me "Just email them, they'll send you a replacement part for free. They did this for my army a few months ago." I find Hawk to be something of a double edged sword on this front. I have had to contact them about missing or miscast parts a couple of times now, but each time I have they send the part quickly and no questions asked. So I love them for their customer service but would rather not need to use it so much. I am giving them a certain amount of leeway as they are still a young company and most of this technical stuff seems to be issues with their earlier resin designs.
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May 28, 2015 16:32
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Arcturas posted:I've got a newbie rules question for you all. The rules on embarking and disembarking are confusing to me. You can embark and disembark in the same turn, but not embark, disembark, then embark again, yeah? I assume that's to stop you from shuttling APCs to pull infantry out of a building and then back onto the drop ship all at once? You want page 49 section 8) Transports Within Transports. You can perform two embark/disembark actions with each transport in a single turn. Your Dropship moves up to half of its full move to drop off the APC within 3" of itself. You can choose to land the dropship if you want, or to keep it in the air. As it says at the very top of page 49, landing & taking off again is considered part of the disembark action. Your APC has at this point performed one of its disembark actions to get itself on the ground. It may now perform a half move of its own and use its second disembark action to unload the infantry it is carrying, at which point it is done for the turn. If the infantry are being deployed within 1" of a building, then they may deploy directly inside of it. Going in reverse, the infantry could leave the building to board their APC within 1" of the building, which can then do a half move to return to within 3" of the dropship and embark. The dropship can then do a half move but the APC's will not be able to disembark again this turn as they have already performed two embark/disembark actions (loading the infantry then boarding the dropship). If you had an APC on the ground with troops inside at the beginning of the turn, then embark into its dropship which would do a half move, then the APC can disembark. The APC could do a half move either before boarding the dropship or once it disembarks but not both. It also won't be able to deploy the infantry this turn as it spent the whole time getting on and off the dropship. Hopefully I explained that clearly and correctly! Ugleb fucked around with this message at 21:23 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 21:21
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Arcturas posted:Ugleb, thanks! That helps a lot. And if a unit embarks or disembarks, it cannot shoot, regardless of whether it is the transporter or transportee, yeah? Correct, although the dropship itself can still shoot.
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May 31, 2015 23:16
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Herr Tog posted:So the game has had an update what is the new good video to teach me how to play? The updates are wide ranging tweaks to point costs and a handful of stats/abilities. Also the command card decks. The actual core mechanics are unchanged really so the old vids are still good. Maybe the biggest mechanics change is that commanders in aircraft can take focal points now.
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Jun 1, 2015 10:22
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MisterShine posted:I was more interested in the fact it could flat pack back down so I haven't made any changes to it This tbh!  I have heard of people mounting them onto thicker card for more rigidity though. I can see the appeal if you have the space to store it all.
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Jun 3, 2015 15:46
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Eviscerators are going to be horrific in CQB and a bitch to kill. Armour 4 and can never lose more than 1 DP to a hit? Nasty. I really like that they get penalties for objective searching and Intel rolls. They can't find objectives in the first turn of search and are more likely to set off a bomb when looking for Intel - and they cant find objectives that way either. Immortal longreach teams look good. 5 shots per base with shaped charge at 24", so 10 per squad! I really like that they are a troops choice rather than exotic, but are rare so probably won't replace regular immortals entirely. I see on the Hawk forums a lot of people think that we will start to see a meta shift towards more infantry, and they are probably right. Of course that also means that flamer units will become more relevant in turn, which is great!
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Jun 7, 2015 00:53
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BULBASAUR posted:Wow the Juno is such a piece of poo poo. The resin model has a giant rear end seam running down the middle right through tiny rear end details. I can't think of any other tanks that put the main seam right down the god drat centreline. The resin Juno is probably Hawk Wargames worst ever product for this reason. Casting shrinkage can mean that some people end up with one side of the tank longer than the other. As you say, buy plastic. On the other hand you are also right about the plastic infantry being inferior to the metal, they are the one weakness of an otherwise great set.
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Jun 15, 2015 13:09
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Joe_Richter posted:The infantry are so uniformly atrocious as well; I don't know how they managed to make all the plastic infantry bad considering they already had much better pewter sculpts. It's not a limitation of the plastic casting process with its necessary removal of undercuts, there's already multiple example of 6, 10 and 15mm plastic infantry out which are of much higher quality. Hawk Dave is sort of on record saying that he doesn't like doing people. The new wave of infantry coming out now (in metal) were designed at least partly by their in house artist who was hired last year. I forget his name right now. I'm guessing that when it came time to do the plastic infantry Dave struggled and decided to find someone to help him out next time.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:32
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You will want one or two more squads of infantry for objective grabbing most likely. That Desolator looks pretty cool, I like the tanks getting tossed about.
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Jun 16, 2015 22:25
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BULBASAUR posted:If it's going to lob shells at buildings or has a big old range and footprint, like the Hades, then you have the option to march it on. But its a trade off- you won't be nearly as good of a position, but it costs less. This. Whatever you drive/walk onto the field has to be able to do its job from the back of the board or have enough time to reach whatever you need it to reach. The Nemesis has been designed to do this. It's main gun has infinite range so it can be sat at the back sniping stuff or slowly plodding towards any focal points in your half of the board. The Ferrum or Kodiak are other good examples. You park them behind a building and launch drones across the table or call down orbital death. There is seldom an occasion where you want to put them anywhere near an enemy unit. Driving on your tanks is a riskier proposition as they are far less mobile without a dropship to rapidly redeploy them in the late game. You might find yourself committed to one flank and unable to react to a threat elsewhere. Scourge might be fast, but their range sucks.
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Jun 18, 2015 10:12
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Very nice! Well worth the effort. It can be surprising how much detail Hawk cram onto these things. Don't recall seeing a gold and green scheme yet, works well I think. I'm still working on my Nemesis, I'm not at your standard but taking my time. WIP shot:  Thinking I'll do some edge highlights on the grey, still need to pick out lenses then neaten up and varnish. Then I need to decide on what I'm doing with my Sirens and finish them up. Considering sculpting some chunky rubble in greenstuff for one squad. Ugleb fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 23:07
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Four new units up for pre-order and rules went up (officially) for Eviscerators and Ronin the other day. http://www.hawkwargames.com/collections/summer-releases No rules for the latest four but the fluff descriptions are interesting. I really wasn't expecting to see units packaged with their own dedicated transports! I'm thinking the Medusa will be both exotic and rare judging by the description. I'm hoping it might fill some sort of 'weight of fire' role giving PHR a unit to whittle down lighter more numerous enemy units. I'm not sure if the upper pods on the Triton X are engines or some kind of resupply unit. An user fast Triton might be cool.
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Jun 26, 2015 18:36
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And that is how this game inspired me to get back into wargaming for myself. Secondary objectives is a curious one, I guess you could write them into scenarios somehow but it might become overly complex. On the other hand it's easy to house rule and Hawk do encourage that sort of thing. You could probably house rule the armour facing by removing a point of armour on rear firing arcs or something. You will find that your games get faster as you become familiar with the rules and stats.
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Jun 27, 2015 16:35
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Ok, someone explain this to me because it isn't making sense. Looking at the experimental rules for the Immortal Longreach Team, their transport options say this: Transport -1x Triton A1, Strike Dropship (2 units each) or: 1x Juno A1/2 (2 units each). In addition, may share 1x Neptune Medium Dropship with any of the following: AM Rifle Team, Immortals Squad or Sirens Squad, providing they are both mounted in Juno A1/2 IFVs. Now 'AM Rifle Team' is referring to the Longreach Team themselves as Hawk switched names at some point, but its the sharing transport with Sirens that I can't figure out. Longreach teams are a basic troops choice, Sirens are exotic. How do you get the two into the same battlegroup and into Juno's? You can put Sirens into Angelos skimmers as a support choive, but that is as close as I get. What do we think, miss-print or is something changing here?
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Jun 27, 2015 17:36
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The plastic Juno's are vastly superior to resin. The Neptune's and Walkers are IMO comparable to resin but much cheaper. You also get lots of spare arms with the plastic that are easily magnetised giving you more flexibility. The Immortals are low detailed and frankly disappointing. You can however replace them with resin and still save yourself money overall. The good news is that once you have painted them and put them on the table they don't look that bad unless you lean in close. Honestly you should buy the plastic starter and just replace the Immortals later if they are bothering you. Edit - That sounds like a decent way to start expanding. Zeus and Odin are a good combination or can be used separately. The reason to take Janus is that they are cheap AA and have the scout ability to extend your commanders sphere of influence. I think Reconquest probably did make them a less default pick but then not many units in DzC are. Mercury's are great at helping infantry with objectives but they bring even less firepower (and no AA) to your army. Ugleb fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 19:10
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I would personally suck it up with the plastic infantry while you are buying other bits like the new snipers or Sirens and come back to upgrading them later.
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Jul 3, 2015 20:34
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If your dropship is in the air then only AA can shoot it. If it is landed then it counts as a regular ground unit. If you are making a deployment move then the taking off and landing is free and you can choose to end the move in either state. It is all considered paid for by the halved move distance. If you are doing a full move then you can choose to take off or land if you want by paying 2". If for some reason you want to do both then it's 4" in total. I dunno if it would have helped in your game but there is the 'to the deck' rule that let's your aircraft fly 2" above the table rather than 6". It can be useful for hiding behind buildings away from AA. The catch is that you risk crashing when you attempt it. Will have to check the destroyed in the air thing, I don't have that memorised tbh.
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Jul 9, 2015 10:19
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Devastating (and demolition) both double the amount of DP you are dealing. If you double up on your damage roll then devastator doubles it again so you could be dealing up to 4 DP in one hit. Another special ability to look out for particularly on PHR units is shaped charge. That allows you to always deal 1 DP if you roll a 6 to damage (not to hit) regardless of the targets armour value. Your immortals sniper rifles and Neptune's have this.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:31
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I have been giving thought to a new team name; OH GOD THE SKY IS FALLING! But I guess DropGoons is more optimistic. Also I won't have the excuses of this being my first tournament or going in with a scraped together army list. This time I have access to a much more fleshed out collection and more time to prepare, so I will be raising my aspirations beyond not coming last. Speaking of which I was just reading this blog post on Orbital Bombardment about building lists to use the minimum number of battlegroups and activations rather than the maximum (which is the conventional wisdom). It is an interesting read! http://dzcblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/can-less-activations-be-game-changer.html?m=1 His final point about PHR is interesting and on paper it sounds fairly compelling. If you are going to be the most predictable army in the game thanks to having the worst mobility, maybe you should stop trying to play everyone else's game and just try to own it! Where I think this probably comes unstuck is with fast movers and maybe infantry CQB. If your Athena(s) have to take their turn in the middle of the opponents activations (because you ran out) then there probably will be more AA left holding its reaction fire. What do we think?
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Jul 10, 2015 17:43
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PHR are also the faction that suffers most from poor deployment. They have to commit to a plan more than others anyway so reduced activation flexibility affects them less. In theory.
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Jul 13, 2015 07:22
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Yup the metal show model is the only thing out there right now. I'm looking forwards to see what they have at Invasion in September...
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Jul 14, 2015 07:25
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Ok I'm sat in front of an actual keyboard rather than my phone so here goes.frest posted:A few questions/observations: The Immortals made the resistance fighters look like complete chumps in CQB, and that's even with some spidermine assistance from the Jacksons. This was our first time rolling it out after reading it over a few times and I just want to make sure we did it right. So assuming all infantry are undamaged it looks like this. Immortals have 5 DP per base with a CQB of 1.5 and come in squads of two bases, so they get a total of 10 DP*1.5 for 15 dice. If you have a second squad in the CQB (say they are in Juno's sharing a Neptune and from the same battlegroup) then that squad also get 15 dice which you then combine for a total of 30. Your 6 bases of resistance fighters travelling in 3 Jacksons with a Lifthawk will have had to be three squads of two bases. They all belong to the same battlegroup but take damage and add their dice as squads. With the Spidermines you are looking at 5DP and CQB 1 per base plus D3 dice, so 10DP*1+D3 for 11 to 13 dice per squad. So 33 to 39 dice in total. Note that the Immortals CQB of 1.5 makes two bases worth three of the Resistance fighters. The spidermines are at first glance providing a clear edge and you would expect the Immortals to get spanked at this point. What you do next is take your combined dice pool and divide it up equally between each of your opponents bases (not battlegroups or squads, but the individual models). If you can't split it exactly then you decide which of your opponents bases receive the extra dice and they do the same in return. This means that you get a chance to put more damage onto the units you most want dead. The reason for splitting the dice up is so that each squad has a risk of taking damage based on its size. The more bases (people) in the squad, the more fire it draws. Once dice are allocated, pool the dice hitting bases belonging to the same squad and roll them together. There is a special table on the quick reference sheets and in the rulebook on page 34. The armour value of your opponents squad determines your target. Immortals have armour 3 so you need a 5+, while Resistance fighters only have armour 2 so the target is 4+. That obviously makes quite a difference to the outcome and compensates for the difference in quantity of dice being rolled. You may find yourself rolling a couple dozen dice per squad at this point if elite infantry is involved or if you heavily outnumber your opponent. While it won't affect your game yet, some infantry can have passive saves and/or dodge rolls that they make against successful hits. If they have both a passive save and dodge, they get to make both rolls and will probably refuse to die! Any hits that get through are applied to the most damaged base in the squad first until it is wiped out, then the remainder go on the next base and so on. Squads that are reduced to half their starting DP have to take a morale check which is rolled against their fortitude value. This does mean that it is possible to inflict more damage in a round but still be driven out of the building. Roll for each squad in turn, you will probably find it easier to make morale checks as you go rather than remembering which squads took hits in this round. frest posted:The way we played it, the Immortals ended up pulping the Resistance fighters 300 style, then camping out in the building with minimal casualties from vengeful Flame Wagons. They turned around and fired their Small Arms as an AA weapon at Lifthawks nearby. Can they also then fire their Sniper Rifle at a different target? They just chose an alternate mode for the assault rifle shots only? If a unit has two separate weapon entries then each weapon can be fired at a separate target. If they are alternate fire weapons (ALT-X) then you have to pick just one of them to use each turn. The Athena suffers from this, it has lots of weaponry but can only use one at a time as they are all ALT-1. Immortals however don't have this limitation so yes, you can use both their assault rigles (with the AA small arms option) and their longrifles in the same turn. frest posted:Can Infantry in a building leave and embark directly into a ground transport, the ground transport then immediately embarks into an aerial transport which moves half of its Mv value, then the ground transport disembarks from the aerial transports, and then the infantry disembark again into a new building? Basically just making sure we're doing these Russian nesting doll movements correct. Yeah that's fine. frest posted:Do buildings receive "cover" if the angle to shoot at them is extremely severe or blocked by other buildings? Basically we had a couple shots at buildings where only a small corner was visible to the unit, but we just treated it as a normal shot since buildings can't, you know, dodge or anything. Did we do that right? I'm not too sure how you would call this one to be honest. Other than always hitting buildings on a 2+ I don't know of a ruling on how much of the building must be visible. I haven't needed to be that picky about it yet. Hmm. My Longreach team (and some Janus) just turned up too! Looking forward to trying them out.
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Jul 18, 2015 00:31
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The rulebook says to split dice by base then group them by squad and roll as I read it when writing that. I may be wrong though as CQB has a habit of confusing people including me.
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Jul 18, 2015 23:02
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Double post.
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Jul 18, 2015 23:03
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Cool new thing detected from 4Ground, a 10mm power station. No idea what it costs but I do like it. http://www.beastsofwar.com/4ground/10mm-urban-power-plant-power-lines-coming-4ground/#comment-216442 It got me thinking about Invasion and what Hawk Dave was saying last time about trying to up their game with terrain a bit for tournaments. Wonder if we might see a bit more variety in the tables this time around?
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Jul 22, 2015 21:17
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frest posted:We played Recon last night and rolled like 5 separate 1s for Intel examination. I can't imagine doing this in a tournament environment, because for me it would be my entire side of the board 1s, and my opponent would be scuttling off with back-to-back 6s and objectives. Funnily enough, Recon gets a lot of stick from tournament regulars. The feeling seems to be that it can be too swingy and that a couple of bad rolls can kick you in the balls. There are some variants of it out there where people are trying to even it out a bit. I haven't played it enough to have much of an opinion tbh.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:00
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I feel the need to tell people that I don't stalk this thread 24/7, I just happen to have a relatively short set of bookmarks and specific interests on these forums. I do other things as well as post in here obsessively. frest posted:We actually ended up calling it without playing out the results of the final turns because there was no possible way for one side to even remotely catch up. IF we did it right (there will be a youtube eventually), then the process was one roll per player per piece of Intel. There were cases of one faction revealing +1 VP, and the other faction getting a booby trap from the same building, which while it makes narrative sense was kind of frustrating. I think you are doing this right, so long as you are removing the intel on a roll of 1 (booby trap) or a 6 (in which it is replaced with an objective marker). A 2-5 means that player 2 gets a chance to roll as well. Unless you blow up the building ofc. frest posted:Without a delaying motivation (like potentially needing to spend a number of turns searching for an Objective) CQB seemed kinda awkward to initiate, unless we were doing it wrong. If I'm understanding it, you need to basically bait the enemy infantry activation, then respond afterwards with your CQB specialist unit activation in the same turn and move into the building. Otherwise the other person will almost always have a chance to bail on the building after they reveal their Intel. Pretty much. If your troops move into an occupied building before your opponent has activated their own troops, then your opponent may move them out of the building before the CQB begins. Searching for objectives or intel will keep infantry in a building for at least a full turn so you should probably be trying to position your CQB specialists to get the drop on where your opponent is likely to go next rather than where they already are, which can be easier said than done. Otherwise just try to get to the shiny objects first I guess. frest posted:Still, the Long Reach team performed pretty well, and specifically acted as a large area denial psychological factor. Do their cloak's Evasion +! countermeasures work against Flame weapons? We decided that they did because the description of Evasion countermeasures is pretty short and to the point. If so, that would make them fairly resilient against Flame stuff at least as far as Infantry goes. I was less impressed by the Sirens, but the problem with them seems more a case of me being bad at planning ahead for their activation. In the most recent errata flame weapons were updated to ignore evasion countermeasures in the attempt to make flame units more relevant. So you used to be right! That is here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0159/4298/files/Rules_Update_to_1.1_Rulebook_2015.pdf?6811960816117305337
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Jul 23, 2015 21:37
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I frequently pay for not taking enough AA. Even when I think I took enough which probably means I'm putting it in the wrong places. If you are taking the Kodiak then definitely combine it with at least one scout unit. You need them to act as spotters for the indirect fire and to project sphere of influence. Archangels are maybe the fast mover you will get more use out of but that will vary with play style.
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Jul 25, 2015 16:56
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Safety Factor posted:New newsletter out: http://hawkwargames.cmail2.com/t/ViewEmail/j/1543B3AE7C353A75/F3AC56C86DECE729F990754F028F0E8F Righty, speculation time! The Legionnaire Flak teams along with the Mortar teams are going to give the UCM a rather nice looking 'backboard' option. Combine them with a Ferrum and/or Kodiak and you have indirect fire from the Mortars and Kodiak with scouts from the Ferrum for target spotting and (presumably) cheap AA from the Flak team to cover it all. You already see players assigning AA tanks to cover their Kodiak or Ferrum so the Flak teams should helpfully free up a few points there. You could even put them in Bears and share a Condor to redeploy late game towards focal points or whatever so there is quite a lot to explore there. The Scourge Vampires on the other hand may be a useful counter to the Ferrum and good for getting at stuff the enemy is trying to hide at the back. As the fluff suggests, they apparently won't take up a slot in your army list but added to dropships as an upgrade like you can do with Razorworms and Tormentors/Slayers. I can see these being attached to Harbingers and used to keep enemy AA like Starsprite drones off the dropship as it sails up the flank to drop something nasty in the rear. Four models per blister says to me that there might be a fair few of these parasitic manbats flying around soon. I think they're pretty cool. I was really hoping that Hawk would be posting rules for the previous set of announcements by now as I really want to know what the Medusa is going to be doing for the PHR! I think the Triton-X is going to have the machine guns only then some sort of rule to support the Medusa, but I can't decide what she will be good at. So onto the Valkyries I guess! Honestly I've got mixed feelings about the sculpts for these. The jetpacks are really chunky and the hood/helmets remind me of 40K and the Sisters of Battle. Dunno if that is a good thing or not tbh! Ruleswise, I'm thinking they'll get the evasion rule and possibly transition but maybe just a high move value. Maybe high enough that they could be taken without a dropship? I heard that they will be classed neither as troops or exotics, which makes me think they may be a scout or failing that they must be process of elimination be support. I doubt they would be another Razorworm style option because I dunno what they would be attached to other than an Angelos squad, and I'm not sure I see the point of that. Combat wise the submachine guns fluff kinda says CQB duty, but the failed-Sirens bit says they must be less good at it than Sirens themselves. Sirens are CQB 5 with 3 DP per base so roll 30 dice. Immortals are CQB 1.5 with 5 DP, so 15 dice. Valks are going to 5 second rate cyber ninjas per base so I guess we split the difference? CQB 2 would be 20 dice, making them clearly inferior to Sirens but a bit better than Immortals, or CQB 3 putting them at the same level as Praetorians I saw suggested somewhere. A high move value would make them more mobile than Immortals but with less ranged firepower, presumably they won't be getting any small arms AA options but I guess they might get something like the Siren's agility passive against falling masonry? Shaltari Samurai are tipped to get a close combat weapon which the fluff would support. They will probably get the alpha stroke rule like Ronin do, which isn't proving to be too popular I'm gathering. If Hawk change any of these experimental rules that will probably be the first on the chopping block. Like all thing Shaltari I have little to say here. And finally, a new Resistance unit, the first since the faction launched. Attack ATV's sound fun, and I like the renders. Freeriders are popular so I can see these turning up next to them. Will be interesting to see what else is on the way for Resistance. I think we are going to see a 1.2 rulebook coming out by the end of the year after this special edition has sold out and the next expansion book is released. By then a big chunk of the stats in the 1.1 book will need to be tweaked along with a few rules and descriptions. They might update the artwork a bit while they are at it I guess. The next round of releases will probably be the remaining Famous Commanders which I'm hoping are going to be more new scultps rather than tweaked variants of existing stuff.
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Jul 25, 2015 22:34
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limited edition rulebook