After painting up my Marine Force Recon group for Dropzone Commander, I thought I’d be all set for our next Winter Campaign game but at the last minute, I decided to switch gears and go back to playing the Feral side of Resistance and play with the Skulltaker and Berserkers I painted up a while back.
This build (now at 1,600 points) would need another unpainted group of minis, my Occupation Veteran infantry. So here it was again, furiously painting up a set of minis right before a game.
At least 10mm is quick. Not a lot of need for detail and even when they kind of look like garbage, a dark wash tends to bring it all in line.
With that set, I created my list and headed over to Funtastic Games to hit the Winter Campaign, Game 3.
Eventually the Force Builder will get updated to correct that Berserkers error. Also, from winning the first two matches, I had an extra 20 points to spend on a future match so I used it on this one. It basically let me add another stand of Attack ATVs.
This list was inundated with infantry. It had at least one of each infantry type I could take: Resistance Fighters, Occupation Veterans, and Berserkers, along with a variety of wheeled infantry like the Freeriders and Attack ATVs. All this would be nice because we were playing a Focal Point scenario: Bunker Assault from Reconquest Phase 1.
My opponent this time was the other Resistance player and so we had a nice civil war game set up with his Allied Resistance facing off against my Feral Resistance. Due to the maps being choked with debris and tight buildings, I can never get any use out of my Thunderstorm hovercraft but ironically, we played on this super open, debris-less map and it would have been perfect for it.
My opponent wasn’t sporting a Thunderstorm but did have the command-less cousin, the big Leviathan and he loaded it down with tons of anti-aircraft guns and Gunwagons. That thing was going to be a bitch with all the flyers I had in my list.
Speaking of aircraft, we did add another environmental effect to this scenario: Storms. On a 3+ at the start of each round, a violent storm rips through the playfield and all aircraft must roll two dice when they activate. If they roll snake-eyes (1-1), the craft is destroyed by the storm.
Things started off well enough and we had the storm hit us on round 1. We started bringing in our aircraft and nothing was affected until my opponent brought in his main infantry transport and it had horrible luck and was obliterated by the storm. The resulting explosion destroyed two of the three APCs he had. Luckily enough, his infantry survived the APC explosions. A pretty bad blow as his list was really light on infantry, the rest of them being made up of underground Freerider motorcycles that had to wait on the underground breach drill to surface and provide a path up.
The rest of the round was quite on the Storm front with no other weather casualties. I brought most of my units into the center with my battle buses and Typhoon attack helicopters taking my right side to flank.
My opponent didn’t want to put out too far but did send his pair of Typhoons around the opposite side. Apparently we were taught at the same battle school.
Round two saw the Storm effect completely dissipate and my opponent’s breach drill arrives on the scene. I win initiative and send my Typhoons over and they completely obliterate the drill. I had some really hot dice and my opponent called out the damage and said the drill was destroyed at the time but at the end of match, he reviewed the stats on the drill and we may have got the armor vs weapons wrong and it may have actually survived my initial attack. Regardless, as the photo shows, we done destroyed the sucker.
This was horrible news for those Allied Resistance fighters as all those Freerider cycles were stuck in the underground tunnel with no way to get into the fight.
My opponent couldn’t let my Typhoons sit there blowing things up so he disgorged a ton of Gunwagon anti-air trucks and they took down one Typhoon and left the other with one health remaining.
I dropped out my Hannibal Main Battle Tanks and my Comander Alexander and they started ripping apart those Gunwagon trucks and used their big guns to start chipping away at the Leviathan hovercraft.
At the start of Round 3, I won initiative again and had my Battle Bus troops ready so I swung them out and around and had they launch everything at the rest of the Gunwagon trucks to wipe them out. The Battle Buses are fun because infantry can fire out the firing ports using their weapons. When those weapons are a ton of RPGs and overclocked Scourge laser rifles, those buses can start laying down some serious firepower. Mounted on top of the buses are also so Anti-Air guns of their own to help keep the enemy aircraft away as well. Their only downside is the lack of countermeasures (meaning they can be shot at from across the map) and they are slow.
I had my Freeriders get into the main central building for protection and a nice striking platform and the Berserkers went inside as well in case my red Skulltaker gets shot down as well.
My opponent inches his Typhoons into striking distance and I can feel any minute, he’s going to go full bore and launch all that anti-armor force into my main ground forces.
Still in the early part of round 3, we can see that the main battleline for this game is along that main diagonal across the center of the shot. My armor is cutting through the middle and right side while his armor and heavy hitters are coming through on my left.
My opponent launches his contingent of flame wagons and melts my Berserkers down to two lonely guys. Those guys really don’t like fire. I’ll start calling them my ‘Hounds. The other set of flame wagons pull a big whiff on the other building and don’t kill any of my Freeriders. It was a pretty dismal roll with nothing by 1s and 2s showing on 12 dice. Brutal.
I work on the Leviathan hovercraft a bit more and bring it down to 3 health left. My opponent decides to start his main assault and brings his Cyclone Helicopters sneakily along the large two central buildings where my anti-air Gunwagons can’t get a shot. They then unload all their limited heavy missiles into my Command Alexander tank sitting under the middle bridge. In another string of bad luck, all missiles either miss or fail to deal damage. He also set up a nice barrage of missiles to launch at my Gunwagons in the back. Being indirect fire weapons, the front flame wagons spot for the Cyclones and even with the penalty, he lands the template weapon right on top of them. These are always tough little trucks but Energy 10 template weapon against an armor 6 truck is no contest. Rolls of 2+ damage them and 4+ destroys them. My opponent rolls all 1s.
At this point, my opponent is pretty frustrated and decides to concede the match. It was a pretty crappy situation and the awful dice rolls just made the game no fun for him to continue on. We talked for a bit as I hoped that maybe taking a little break would bring him back but it didn’t really help. We limped through a few little “what-if” turns but it was obvious it wasn’t making anything better so we called it and I started putting stuff away as he also didn’t think he could win even if the dice turned around.
It would have been nice to see it play out as I think his frustration was making him pessimistic on his chances but I did believe I would pull out a win. Just for fun I went through a little “what-if” of my own.
So at the end of last activation before the concession, his Cyclones (1), had whiffed on my Alexander (2) and my Gunwagons (3). My retaliation would have been swift from my infantry in the building (4), their ground APC (4), and their aerial transport Lifthawk (4).
The abusive overclocked lasers from my Occupation Vets would have had a pretty high chance at removing his big Leviathan (his last main anti-air threat), while the Resistance fighters launch their deluge of RPGs at the Flame Wagons. The remaining Flame wagons would then have been targeted by the Lifthawk and APCs. Given average rolls, this likely would have removed 4 of the 6 trucks. If I was really lucky the last shot from my Lifthawk’s AA gun would have downed the closest Cyclone. Highly unlikely even though the rolls weren’t difficult. I had been shooting at that dumb chopper all game and only managed a measly one damage.
My opponent ran through this “what-if” a little bit as his next move would have been to run his Typhoons (5) in close to shoot at my Alex (2). His “what-if” rolls were whiffs again (further solidifying his want to not play anymore). My Gunwagons (3) could have reaction-fired at them but they wouldn’t take the penalty to do so unless he came at them instead of my Alex. They would have just gone next activation and focused on one Typhoon to bring it down, then spread out so that no more template barrages could catch them all in one attack.
I’m pretty confident that by the end of this round, it would have been clear that he wouldn’t have enough units to contest enough focal points to win the game but my dice were running pretty poor at times too so who knows. I was granted the win and so we’ll just hope for more interesting games next time when we conclude the Winter Campaign with a massive 2,000 point battle. It will be the largest Dropzone Game I’ve played by a big margin and I’m already looking at what I should put together so I can make sure my units are all painted and accounted for.
As a bonus for winning, the host at printed out some bunker buildings for the scenario and the winners of each game got a set so I got to bring home some swag.
I’ll probably do some work on them to clean them up and paint but I’d been wanting some bunkers so this was a nice surprise and a cool bit of gaming swag.
