Star Saga: Reinforcements

 The Star Saga Character & Mission creator expansion not only comes with information and cards to write your own missions, but also six new mercenaries to play with.

As with all the other Mercenaries these can also be used in Deadzone and some are tied to specific factions. 

Kizai is a support merc with a heal similar to Kira but not quite as good and an interesting ability which allows it to move a target model extra squares. Kizai's Feat heal has a larger range than Kira's and doesn't require a role, so it is more reliable.

Orion is in the same vein as Capt. Erika, a straight up ranged damage dealer. Rolling 4 defence dice and having no wounded state does make Orion tougher than the Capt. though. he does pay for that by being more expensive and only rolling 2 melee dice.

As a Teraton, Kur Keela is linked to the Reb faction and can be fielded in a Reb strike team. He has a teleport ability which is the same as Deadzone and what he lacks in shooting & melee he makes up for in tech and mobility.

Hund is another Reb faction merc and in common with other Rin he is a ranged specialist who makes use of his four arms to use multiple weapons. He always gets two attacks each turn which is no doubt handy for cleaning out minions. He also gets an upgraded Pew Pew Pew (Capt. Erik feat) in that he can fire three times and then take a move as well.

Shade is a Marauder who likes to get up close and personal, he can also be taken in a Marauder Strike Team for Deadzone. His critical hit special is nice but I'm not so sure about his feat, becoming crippled means he loses out on 10xp on any mission he uses the feat, also he cannot move once he has popped it.

Last up is Kr-Om3 a multi-stance defence robot. His ability to add extra defence dice onto adjacent mercenaries and lay down a decent ranged attack makes him an interesting support choice.

That's all the models for Star Saga painted up for the moment and ready to be deployed into a mission. We seem to have a good balanced team at present in our Sunday afternoon games so I'm not sure if any of these would muscle themselves into contention.

Deadzone: The Final Rebs

The great thing about skirmish games is that having small forces means you can get to the 'completed a project' satisfaction stage much more quickly than a full scale army.
So despite some slight envy from seeing other people having lots of time to hobby due to Covid-19 whilst I am still soldiering away at work I have completed the Rebs.
For the Rebs I wanted to add more of the Sphyr than I got in the force boxes as they look rather cool being fish-men and they are also a strong shooting option for the Rebs. In order to do this I purchased the Sphyr Dreadball team to convert. Dreadball is set in the same universe as Deadzone but and features a large range of different races, the models are a little smaller but not so much as to cause any problems.

Sphyr Leader

The Rebel Cell Leader has different options depending on the race of the Leader and the Sphyr comes with a 4+ Shoot instead of the normal 5+. The trade-off for this is a 6+ Fight stat, but if you are able to use the leaders splat dice to swap a stat over you can instead being fighting on a very nice 4+, this makes for a good all round leader.

The other bonus is that the Mata Magma Lance which the Leader and Specialist Lancer both come with gives a really nice AP2 (Armour Pierce 2) which is a good cheap source of AP for the team. The Lancers again Shoot on 4+ making them more reliable than your normal 5+ shooters. To represent the Magma Lance's I have used some bow-casters from Zinge Industries, they do a great range of  steampunk weapons which I also used on the Marauders.

Sphyr Hunter

The Hunter is the Troop choice for the Sphyr and whilst being almost twice the cost of the normal Reb Trooper they do pack a punch with their AP1 harpoon and better Fight & Save stats (5+ rather than 6+). They are also better equipped for close combat so if the enemy does get in close they stand a much better chance of winning.
The other good thing about them is they get a good range of weapon choices including my favorite the Flamer, so I had to make one of those up with an old resin Flamer I found in my bits box.

Sphyr Flamer

To complete all the models I had for the Rebs I also had two extra from the Dreadball range, a ref-bot and a seemingly unarmed octopus/Sphyr hybrid. I'm not exactly sure what they could be used as but the Rebs do have an unarmed Medic option so they could probably be fielded as that.

So that's all of them done, a good size force with lots of the options. The Rebs, rather like the Marauders, have the options to build either melee or shooting focused (or a balanced approach) and a good sprinkling of AP to deal with some of the tougher factions around.

The Whole Reb Team

My next focus is hopefully going to be back into the world of historical gaming with Clash of Spears, though it looks like the models I had on order may be stuck in a warehouse under lock down so I may be delayed on that one.

Deadzone: More Rebs

This week I've been pushing on with the Rebs for Deadzone and have completed the bulk of the models now. The first grouping has a decided simian feel to it with both Alpha Simians and the monkey like Yndij. The Alpha Simians come with a leader called Shayo but unfortunately he is rather over priced and doesn't have a good army special ability so he is only likely to be fielded as a normal Alpha.

The Yndij Commander (with rifle raised) is one of the cheaper command options available to the Rebs and comes with a very handy army special which allows you to hide models after they have been activated, that could work very well with high damage but low survive-ability models like snipers. The Yndij can also be recruited as troops and come with the Scout special so they can get an extra move at the start of the game.

 The Alpha Simian Brawler is a more straight-forward melee specialist, with a good speed of 2-3 (walk-run) and a decent AP (armour pierce) attack. Being Tough means they ignore the first wound that gets past any armour and saves and with a health of 3 they will take a lot of punishment.

The next group includes two Grogan who carry heavy weapons for the Rebs, the left hand Grogan has the Onslaught Cannon which is useful for suppressing a square and the right hand the Desolator anti-armour weapon. Weapons with the Suppression rule Pin any models in the same square as the target no matter if they hit or not. Being Pinned means the models is knocked down making it an easier target in melee and also meaning it needs to stand up before it can act.

The middle model is a mercenary who can be recruited by the Rebs called Sgt. Umunsar, he also comes with the Onslaught Cannon and a single use rocket barrage which is a handy indirect attack. 
I believe he may also be a used in Star Saga so I need to have a look for a card for him.

The next group is the mighty Teraton and the not so mighty Survey Drone. The Drone has no weapons but is hard to kill and reasonably fast at 2-3. It can be used to flip supply caches and capture objectives as well as adding a dice to another models melee if in the same square.

The Teraton is another melee specialist who also comes with some close range one use area of effect weapons to use on the way in. Her biggest trick is the Teleport special rule which allows the model to ignore blocking terrain and move up to 3 squares, she can then engage in melee if ending up in a square with at least one enemy. So she would be great at getting to enemy models your opponent is trying to hide away behind terrain and could cause a nasty surprise to an unwary enemy.

The last group are the Sorak's who are a reptilian race who seem to propel themselves via handstands rather than with the normal leg method. They come in trooper and specialist varieties with the specialist being melee orientated and wielding two swords. The models do look a bit odd but have a certain charm.

The Sorak trooper comes with the blaster weapon which does no direct damage but it does have the ability to throw all the models in the targeted square potentially causing damage by hitting walls or falling down and then Pin them.

So for a cheap price you have a decent tool to mess about with your enemy and break up any groups they may be forming.

So that's all of them for this week, next up will be the Sphyr group who I am currently working on. These are aquatic based life-forms and I have a fair few of them to complete, but once done that will be all the Rebs finished.

Deadzone: Rebs

The Rebs faction in Deadzone is made up of those peoples who are trying to throw off the control of the Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere (GCPS). As such they tend to be a mixture of races and their equipment is whatever can be bought, stolen or recovered from the battlefield.

I've made some excellent progress this week on the Rebs aided by a week on leave and also by the choice of a very simple paint scheme. I've based the Rebs in the same way as the Marauders I already have so they are ready to play on the red planet gaming mat I have.

I won't go into the stats for the Rebs this week but I do need to look at how to best create a strike team for them. The do have good ranged and melee options so rather like the Marauders they can be used to build a list skewed to one of those or a balanced list.

One thing they do have is access to very cheap Troops at only 7 points so you can pay off the Troop tax to unlock more expensive Specialists or Vehicles very cheaply.

You can also recruit a variety of Troopers with race specials to add to the strike team which gives a wide range of different weapons making the Troop choices of the Rebs among the most flexible of any faction.

Go Rebs!