Right now its looking to me that defensive Axis builds are favored, especially with the current ruling on Damage Resilient applying to all attacks and the presence of Range U units with Advanced Reactive Fire. Not sure how great the Allied mobility is when you're running into a meatgrinder/wall.

On the advance I think that the Axis are still favored due to not only the hardiness of their units, but the prevalence of the Assault ability on their heroes which, albeit briefly, counteracts the relatively low speed of the Axis infantry.

I'm thinking that maybe the Allied heavy walkers with their transport ability will help with the advance (and I imagine they'll block LOS per normal for vehicles, so you could march up quite a few units behind them), but I'm still not sure about how to handle entrenched Axis infantry with the Damage Resilient Ability. Ignoring cover isn't a problem at Range 3 or closer (Phasers, UGLs, Flame Weapons), but then you still need to deal with Damage Resilient, no matter what you're attacking with.

Thoughts?

Each "army" in a game should have its own shtick or shticks that may or may not be related. It is critical that a game design tries to keep each "army" distinct so they have at least "feel" different and not go robbing one army because it would look cool in another army. This does not mean that different armies are forbidden from using similar mechanics.

One speculative example from 40K; the Space Wolves don't have veteran sergeants to lead squads, instead you buy a "Wolf Guard" squad as a whole and then pass the individuals out to squads to act as the NCO leading them with the same effect as each squad having a veteran NCO. The Black Templar, who need an update, could use a "veteran NCO" type of character in their troop squads but have no real justification for them. However, using the exact same mechanic from the Space Wolves, a squad of BT Sword Brethren could be bought and then individuals handed down to the troop squads as "veterans". The justification is different, so it has a different "feel", even though the simulation mechanic is the same. For SW, it is the personal retinue of the leader being parceled out to lead grunts, for the BT, it is an elite warrior (possibly older and a bit "slower" for elite work OR simply having enough comrades to split off tactically) who is leading a "band of brothers" who are mutually loyal to each other, enjoy working together and mesh well on the battlefield.

DT appears to be set up around four core factions: Axis, Allies, Sino-soviet, Aliens. Many wargames deal with four areas of values: Mobility, Firepower, Close Assault and "Dirty Tricks". Mobility is the ability to outmaneuver an opponent. Firepower is gunning them down from range. Close Assault (which does NOT mean hand to hand necessarily, BBQ/Hellboys are an example of Close Assault as well as Apes/Zombies) is short range butchery. "Dirty Tricks" is using something other than the other three factors to be a threat against other armies and the "Dirty Trick" might be a small & expensive force that can take more damage, be harder to hit, move faster, shoot straighter and assault harder than any of the other factions (although I'd only allow two of move/shoot/assault to be generally better and leave the third glaringly worse than average).

Other factors are durability of units and cost of units.

So, what do we have? (speaking in general terms, there are exceptions)

Allies: with rocket squads & Jump appear to be set up as a Mobility army with a decent taste of Close Assault. They have the Phaser nifty trick. A lot of their units seem to be more specialized between anti-infantry (AI) and anti-tank (AT) so you need pairs to get AI + AT.

Axis: More of a Firepower based army with more balance between AI and AT tasks in its units. Laser nifty trick. One edge I think the Axis should retain is long range mastery. The Germans had the best optics industry in the world at this time and one of the things that made them so deadly was superior optics meant superior effective long range firepower. It would also help offset the

Sino-soviet: No clue yet, but I'd go with cheaper units with slightly inferior quality to achieve the "quantity is a quality all its own" and make this the Close Assault army. The hardest part IMO to simulate in a small scale game like DT is the lack of command & control that was the true weakness of the Soviets in WW2. The T34 was and is a great tank, especially in the T34/85 variant. Well designed, well armored, well gunned and horribly led. The same should apply to their walkers, but the way it is simulated will cause shrieking one way or the other. They could be cheap and flimsy with low firepower so a lot could be fielded, even though it may actually be a "superior" design, but this would simulate the inability to coordinate well. They could be dependent on a command squad to work efficiently (say, without a command squad/vehicle they have to roll when activated similar in the way of superior reactive fire), but you could buy a bunch of walkers/squads so that it would balance out some. On the infantry side, a cheap, pure rifle infantry squad, a more expensive HW squad and a still more expensive close assault squad.

Vrill (alien): (Note for fun. search Vril, I think Sig. Parente might have read a 140 year old SF book). Heavily armed and armored? Or possibly very fast and lightly armed & armored? Something of both? Remember that there can be multiple shticks in a list, so both could be worked with. Probably more energy weapons or "aircraft" or skimmer tanks. This is the "Dirty Tricks" army.

Subfactions: The "Sino" side of the house could depend on even cheaper infantry, less well armed, but better with "C" weapons (everybody was kung fu fightin') than most. Maybe only using some kind of converted Japanese & American walkers (capture + aid). Possibly an entire list of units based around the human wave with some artillery.

The Japanese side would probably be heavily German influenced on walkers with their own tricks (faster but lighter armored or simply faster but more expensive). I could see lots of fast infantry with heavy close assault capability. The problem with both the Chinese and Japanese as distinct subfaction is that both would rely a lot more on human wave than either the Axis or the Allies. The Soviets also tend that way, but not to the extreme of the two Oriental countries.

Italians would be interesting, but I don't see a lot of point. They had good troops, decent equipment and bad leadership at the higher levels. They had a good navy that fought bravely and good aircraft designers. However, Italy was relatively a very poor country compared to UK, France and Germany.

French would probably be more interesting as French Foreign Legion troops. It would give them a different "feel" that could fit in well as possibly independent force.

What about the Brazilians? I remember someone from FFG saying that the main powers of the allies were the US, UK, France and Brazil.

Algesan said:

I understand all that, but my point was that right now the game appears to be shifted towards a defensive Axis army. Currently it looks to me that increased surviviability > increased speed. Now, if there was some sort of flanking/enfilade fire rule, then I can see being fast having a greater advantage, but right now it doesn't appear to matter a whole lot when your opponent can just turtle in.

It'll be interesting to see how things shift in local tournaments/games once people get the powerful Axis stuff from the revised core set. I could be wrong, maybe the Armor 3 Damage Resilient troops aren't > than the Speed 2 Armor 3 troops, but I have a sinking feeling, based off the raw statistics of it all, that the Axis will come out ahead.

asbestos said:

Ah, I was using your topic to get an editorial in, but more directly addressing your worry, it depends on terrain and scenario objectives. If the Axis has to advance to grab objectives, then they cannot turtle. Also, I'll note that when my mother was telling me over and over to "keep my head down", I asked her if I was to keep it down so long that Iraqis could drop a grenade on it. I've played a game where Axis tried to turtle and control fire lanes, it ended up in a bloodbath that I won by controlling the tempo. First off, Fast BBQ with Joe: Demo charges on a walker (dead), everything but the flamer on one squad (down to one), flamer on a second squad (got two) and then some Knife&Grenade work on the second squad to finish it. Yes, Joe & his BBQ boys died horribly, but the initial smash (set up by "Fast") gave the advantage firmly to me.

Put it another way, I can often position Allies so it takes a two square movement to get LOS so that, with Fast, I can pop out and shoot, but for the Axis, they cannot.

Bumping this now that more stuff is out.

As the results of various tournaments roll in, I'm noticing a lot of wins for Axis armies.

What I'm consistently noticing:

Snipers (which is a non-concern, both sides have these and both sides tend to bring them)

Lothar (in terms of its threat as an artillery piece, I'd say its superior to the Steel Rain)

Lara (of course)

Damage Resilient squads (pretty much negate the advantage of cover ignoring weapons), Zombies in particular for some reason.

Recon Grens (more versatile than their allied counter parts, thanks to the panzerfaust)

Anyone else seeing similar patterns?

The Lothar is a good artillery piece, but the Steel Rain is designed to give a one shot kill on most units with its 12 attack dice. A Sustained Attack will average significant damage against even the heavy walkers. With the heavy command squad's ability to give the Steel Rain a reload, it becomes much more dangerous. The Lothar can keep hitting with 6 dice, but needs to reload, so it's firing direct or every other turn with Artillery Strike. The Steel Rain is hitting once really hard (twice with the reload), and then positioning for its short range power.

I see the Steel Rain as working to pay for itself with a single rocket attack, and then add gravy to its points earned through the rest of the game. The Lothar has to work for multiple attacks to get through to pay for itself, which means exposing itself to return fire, or taking much longer using Artillery Strike, while hoping its observers are not eliminated while it reloads. Very different styles, but both can be effective.

Lara is a beast, with firepower by herself equally some squads, but she has to run alone, or with a three man unit, which makes her bonus damage points less effective, especially in a world of snipers. She is a significant threat, and quite possibly underpriced for her abilities, but she can be dealt with, and is not a game breaker.

Damage Resilient is nice, but as was noted earlier, the extra mobility of the Allied infantry can offset that advantage, especially in scenario driven missions compared to simple kill the enemy shootouts. Something else to consider is that Allied heavy infantry have weapons that ignore cover with the Red Devils phasers and Ozz's flamethrower, while the Axis heavy infantry don't. While the Hammers only fight close combat, they are rolling many more dice ignoring cover than their Axis opponents. Pairing Axis heavy infantry with Damage Resilient against someone who knows when to use Ozz's Heroic Attack will also not favor the Axis.

Damage Resilient is nice, but it is, again, not a game breaker, and simply something the Allies have to take into account.

Recon Grenadiers are a very nice unit, with much greater versatility than the Recon Boys. They have anti-tank capability, and the ability to engage heavy infantry in close combat. One point more may not completely cover their full capability compared to the Recon Boys, but again, it isn't a game breaking advantage. The Recon Boys have access to heroes like Johnny One Eye to bolster their capability by giving them unlimited UGL's, which the Recon Grenadiers don't. The Recon Grenadiers may be underpriced, but not by such a margin as to unbalance the game. They are not as capable as the Gunners at 20 points, though perhaps they could be better priced at two points higher. Two points for a single unit doesn't break the game, so I don't see reason for FFG to change their value if they've decided they are slightly underpriced.

All the range and firepower in the world doesn't help when the allies use high movement and fast units to stay out of LOS until they are ready to attack the targets of their choice. Most campaign maps have LOS blocking terrain and buildings.

I have found damage resilience to not be a huge factor as grim reapers, BBQ squads, Hellboy squads, and Hammerers can all outmanuever and then crush us, even more so if you include Ozz, Rhino.

Germans have 1 weapon that ignores cover except for melee so digging Allies ouf of buildings can be impossible.

Americans will win the initiative more often because of Joe.

I'm looking forward to the 3rd army coming out.

Just bought the game last night and tons of additional unit boxes. From a shopping standpoint there is too much similarity between armies. Not stat wise.

Everything one army has the other has their counterpart. I'd prefer to see a greater deviation. Maybe we are starting to see that in the expansions, such as axis zombies and gorillas.

When are we going to see the Dust Tactics version of the "Axis" Bell? To teleport troops in and such.

And maybe Axis motorbikes with sidecar or something.

Maybe an Allies motor team. And a team of Heavy machine gun crew.

Gimp said:

I'm not saying any of it is individually broken, this is just what I'm noticing when I see the lists of tournament winners.

I think it has more to do with learning curves than actual balance. Armies that use maneuver are traditionally harder to learn to play well than armies that use defensive capabilities. In the end, they are frequently just as powerful, but they take more effort to learn how to get the most out of them. Once you know how to use maneuver armies, they are frequently stronger, but it takes more effort to get there.

A lot of players I know also prefer the look of the Axis models, though I have no idea how prevalent that is overall. I like them both, though for different reasons. If more players play Axis, that will also impact tournament rankings due to sheer volume.

Gimp said:

Not to mention if too many axis players get used to playing their armies as a defensive force, they will not know how to adjust their tactics to accomplish a mission against another defensive axis player. Plus you will need to play a diverse army list. Too many players play games all of the time with ALL of their minis in every game. Games don't have to be big to be fun. And buy more than just enough minis.

I just wish Jump was a better skill.

Peacekeeper_b said:

But then Jump would have to cost more. It's nice most of the time, and then great for some missions.

I'd like to see flying rocket troops like they have in the comics, and hopefully we'll see that some time. For now, though, Jump isn't bad, it just isn't phenominal all of the time.

For any "get a unit to this spot and win" missions, jump is ridiculously powerful. For some missions I'd say the ability (combined with Move 2) practically breaks the scenario.

Gimp said:

Well ****. I never thought we would actually agree on something. +1

Don't worry, normal service will resume as soon as possible

Major Mishap said:

LOL, well I hope not too soon...

I can respect any opinion if it's well thought out. It doesn't have to agree with mine. My world view is not the only one that works, I only expect it to work for me.

Thinking about those different opinions is a good way to further refine and define your own.

Even if you decide to disagree with me, at least you'll get a civil argument out of me for the debate.

I have won a similar aount of games with both factions, and our tournament (8 players, 5 axis) was actually won by an Allied player (me!) with the runner up also being Allied. The axis are a little tougher and hit a little harder, but the allies have a number of skills that boost their ability to win many of the scenarios.