First Game Last Night: Brief Recap and Questions

By Eldil, in Dust Tactics

Hey everybody:

I apologize if I'm asking questions that are clearly covered in the rules somewhere. I've read the rules through a couple of times, but sometimes I have trouble getting things into my head.

So my lady friend and I played the first scenario from Blue Thunder last night. Since she can speak German, she chose the axis powers, running with the Recon Grenadiers, the Laser Grenadiers, and Luther (she found the concept of "self repair" very alluring). I ran the Combat Rangers, Recon Rangers, and Hot Dog.

She consistently won initiative, and before long she had charged with Luther and crushed half of my Recon Ranger Squad. I counter-attacked with Hot Dog, and only then did I read the flamethrower rules and realize that I had an automatic 1 out of 3 chance of killing her bot in a single hit (I was not successful).

I took a gamble and set up my Combat Rangers to do some good damage if I won initiative, but she won again, and her laser Grenadiers sliced through my squad. I still managed to counter-attack, but at close range, my Hot Dog couldn't survive a second attack from Luther, and was destroyed.

At that point, I realized I had already lost, because I didn't have a single unit in play that could touch Luther's armor (I had made a poor decision and killed my bazooka in order to preserve my UGL-carrying troops.

We still played the rest of the game out; it didn't take long for Luther to wipe my remaining troops out of existence.

So here are my questions:

1. How do special weapons (specifically flamethrower) interact with cover? Basically, if the flamethrower always has a 1 in 3 chance to kill each unit, it hits, does cover affect this (force a reroll)?

2. I'm fairly certain my Combat Rangers can fire their M1 ARs and UGLs at the same time. My question is this: is each figure carrying a UGL limited to firing one grenade per attack? I wound up in the situation where I only had two figures carrying UGLs left in play, but I hadn't fired any of my 4 grenades yet. Can those two figures each shoot 2 grenades (for a total of four) in a single attack, or are they limited to one per attack?

3. Is there any reason NOT to glue that 50 cal MG on top of my allied walkers? It's such a fragile, fidgety piece, and all of the models of walkers have it (except Steel Rain, who gets his own top piece). Same question for the MG 44 on the axis walkers.

I'll add any other questions I can think of later. Thanks for reading!

Eldil said:

Hey everybody:

I apologize if I'm asking questions that are clearly covered in the rules somewhere. I've read the rules through a couple of times, but sometimes I have trouble getting things into my head.

So my lady friend and I played the first scenario from Blue Thunder last night. Since she can speak German, she chose the axis powers, running with the Recon Grenadiers, the Laser Grenadiers, and Luther (she found the concept of "self repair" very alluring). I ran the Combat Rangers, Recon Rangers, and Hot Dog.

She consistently won initiative, and before long she had charged with Luther and crushed half of my Recon Ranger Squad. I counter-attacked with Hot Dog, and only then did I read the flamethrower rules and realize that I had an automatic 1 out of 3 chance of killing her bot in a single hit (I was not successful).

I took a gamble and set up my Combat Rangers to do some good damage if I won initiative, but she won again, and her laser Grenadiers sliced through my squad. I still managed to counter-attack, but at close range, my Hot Dog couldn't survive a second attack from Luther, and was destroyed.

At that point, I realized I had already lost, because I didn't have a single unit in play that could touch Luther's armor (I had made a poor decision and killed my bazooka in order to preserve my UGL-carrying troops.

We still played the rest of the game out; it didn't take long for Luther to wipe my remaining troops out of existence.

So here are my questions:

1. How do special weapons (specifically flamethrower) interact with cover? Basically, if the flamethrower always has a 1 in 3 chance to kill each unit, it hits, does cover affect this (force a reroll)?

2. I'm fairly certain my Combat Rangers can fire their M1 ARs and UGLs at the same time. My question is this: is each figure carrying a UGL limited to firing one grenade per attack? I wound up in the situation where I only had two figures carrying UGLs left in play, but I hadn't fired any of my 4 grenades yet. Can those two figures each shoot 2 grenades (for a total of four) in a single attack, or are they limited to one per attack?

3. Is there any reason NOT to glue that 50 cal MG on top of my allied walkers? It's such a fragile, fidgety piece, and all of the models of walkers have it (except Steel Rain, who gets his own top piece). Same question for the MG 44 on the axis walkers.

I'll add any other questions I can think of later. Thanks for reading!

1) Whats your definition of unit, some believe its a single model and some where it defines a squad? Flamers ignore any cover bonus, so roll a dice + to the number of target models, each 'hit' removes a model. Against vehicles, there is no cover save and if you hit they cause 4 wounds and so wil destroy any walker with 4 wounds or less. Hot Dog is even more powerful but the same rules apply.

2) All models can fire all of their weapons in a turn. UGL's have limited ammo, 1 soldier can fire 1 grenade a turn so with your 2 men left, both could fire their rifles and both fire 1 grenade each.

3) No reason at all.

Yes, you can only fire as many limited ammo weapons per turn (UGLs, Panzerfausts, Demo Charges) as you have men remaining in your squad. So with 2 men and 4 UGLs left, you could fire 2 this round, and 2 on another round. NOTE: You didn't need to sacrifice your bazooka to retain the ability to fire UGLs. Limited Ammo weapons are shared among the entire squad, including the bazooka man (doesn't make an awful lot of sense, but that's how these simple rules work).

Flamethrowers, like Napalm Throwers, UGLs and Joe's Grenade Launcher, completely ignore all cover.

Thanks to both of you for your answers!

Also, I remembered another question:

4) Does cover effect range 1 attacks? (Specifically, the Luther's Kampfzange?)

Eldil said:

4) Does cover effect range 1 attacks? (Specifically, the Luther's Kampfzange?)

Yes it does. However it does NOT affect range C attacks (previously range 1 close combat attacks), namely Knife and Knife & Grenade.

Whats the big difference between range 1 and range C ?

Range 1 attacks have no difference whatsoever from Range 2, Range 3, Range 4, whatever (other than the fact that, well, it's Range 1).

Rance C attacks ue the Close Combat rules.

- It's the last attack to be resolved in the turn, after all the casualties from other attacks have been removed.

- It ignores cover.

- The enemy is allowed to simultaneously retaliate with its own Range C weapons.