It’s been a crazy busy week but right before hell broke loose, I was able to get in my first session of Dropzone Commander for my game challenge and was able to hit a little Santorini at the end.

Funtastic Games is about the only place in town that is hosting anything Dropzone related and last weekend they had their monthly Dropzone Commander get together.  My friend and I stopped by and threw down a quick 700 skirmish game.

We decided to try a new scenario that featured a focal point in the center and two objectives on nearby tall buildings. We also decided to mix up the terrain and have the center dominated by low undergrowth to surround the focal point, in this case a nearly intact high yield orbital ordnance that both sides were desperate to claim.

I truck out to the center as fast as I can with my Hovercraft forces and Lifthawk but I soon realize I’m severely outclassed in activations (my 3 battlegroups to his 5) and speed (my 16″ lifthawk vs his two 30″ quick troop carriers).

His Hunters get the drop on my choppers even though I won initiative (sneaky scourge devils).  Luckily, I somehow only lose the one chopper.  I end up taking out one of the hunters in reprisal but it won’t be enough.  With this small of a force, this was to be my dedicated Anti-Armor unit.

I focus on the left tower for objectives hoping my right flank can mess with the scourge occupiers in the right tower long enough for my last infantry group to get in there and make a stand.  This tower was a slaughterfest.  My infantry dominated at 2:1 and the dice showed.  We wiped the scourge threat with barely any casualties.

The victory was short-lived as the last hunter gunned down my Chopper.  The nerfed Freerider biker squads were now playing tertiary role as anti-armor and actually weren’t doing too bad against the weak-armored scourge armor units. My Attack ATVs were peppering the right tower with chem ‘nades to piss off the scourge occupiers but it wasn’t enough.

My troops raided the tower full of chem gas and tried to stop the scourge but got slaughtered with even odds 1:1 then, in a bit of irony, the chem gas finished them off.  If it could have went the other way, I might have had a chance.

The last bit of control I had to desperately pull something off was to drop the scourge Overseer.  I got it down to 1 last damage point and even though those scourge tanks lit up my hovercraft, I survived with two Gun Wagons left and enough movement to get a bead on the Overseer again.  My luck held and I won initiative to try to take out the main command piece of the scourge force but dice failed hard and I couldn’t finish the Overseer off.

The clean up was quick, efficient, and brutal. The last hunter that I could never seem to kill dropped my Lifthawk, the scourge tanks wiped my Gun Wagons and the only thing I had left were my Left Tower heroes who, for the life of them, could not even find the objective.  Too much partying and celebrating their lopsided victory to notice that we also apparently lost the war.   Maybe humanity just isn’t ready to reclaim the surface.  Ah well, there’s always next month…

Later that day, we ran over to a little game party and threw down some Santorini.  I chose Hypnos while my opponent took Hermes.  This was an interesting match up with Hypnos’ power to force the opponent to always be on the same height before ascending making it very hard for the Hermes player to get much traction.  Hermes was able to run all over the map and easily thwart my attempts to build out towers out of sight but eventually I found the trick.  If you wall off Hermes, he can’t run around as fast and that sealed my victory.

In other news, I’ve been working a little bit on this bright idea for the Batman Minis Game:

….more on that to come.

And finally, this big monstrosity dropped on my doorstep:

…definitely more to come on that bad boy.