My wife and I have been playing through the scenarios; we started with the Operation Blue Thunder Campaign, and last night finished off the Victory Bridge campaign. The way we do it is that I paint a unit for each side, and then we play the scenario using only painted units, including the newly painted ones.

The latest units I painted were the command squads, I wouldn't normally add them into a 130 pt game, but I figured it wouldn't put me at a disadvantage if we both did it, and it would be fun to teach my wife the new command squad rules. In the end, the command squad won me the game very quickly.

My Allied force consisted of the command squad, the Hammers with Rhino attached, the Gunners, and Blackhawk. My wife played with the Axis command squad, the observer squad, the laser grenadiers with Sigrid attached, and Lothar. I was playing as the attacker - our goal was to get points by killing the other's units, but I could get extra points (unit AP *2 by getting a unit to the other side of the board.)

She won initiative on round one and told me to go first. I moved in Rhino & The Hammers (I still think that sounds like the name of some 80s rock band) to the far side of the building closest to my end of the table. We each then alternating putting our units onto the battlefield, but when I brought in my command squad, I attempted to use them to reactivate my Rhino squad. I succeeded, and moved them 4 more spaces, putting them into the building on my opponent's side of the board.

On round 2, I won initiative. My Hammer/Rhino unit was only 4 spaces away from the other side of the map. I moved them to the other end and they came off the board. This immediately gained me 96 points (their AP cost times 2). I only had 82 points of troops left, leaving it impossible for my opponent to win the game. We still played it out for fun, but I had won the game at the beginning of round 2 - the fastest game I've ever played.

Anyway, just thought that was interesting, and kind of fun actually - it was a surprise to me that the command squad actually were worth their point value in a match with so few units, but they certainly won me the game where it would have been much more difficult without them. Getting a lucky roll on their activation didn't hurt either. :-)

You shouldn't have been able to get to the opposite deployment zone at the beginning of the 2nd round.

We have 12 squares from your deployment zone to the enemy's deployment zone. You deploy in square 1, then perform a Move 2 action that takes you to square 3. Then you get reactivated and move twice, for another 4 squares, which lands you in square 7. At the 2nd round you move twice again, another 4 squares, which only takes you to square 11. You'd need to get reactivated again to reach the 12th square.

Plus, your wife really should have tried some Reactive Fire on you.

Wait - so a move 2 unit can't deploy through the deployment square and still keep on moving? I thought it could still do do more movement if its movement was more than 1... hmm...

Aha - you're right! It took some searching, but I finally found the rule. Thanks!

Oh well, we were still playing with mutually agreed upon rules, even if we were using an unintentional house variant. :-)

I'll make sure to play it right in the future though - thanks!

Deployment is an action that puts you in the 1st square, you can't do anything else with that 1st action. With your second action you can make a Move and use Fast or something, but the first action is just deployment, for every unit.

Glad to be of help.

Loophole Master said:

You're right, she should have. We've never played with that rule though. I've brought i tup once or twice, but we still don't have any units with special reactive fire abilities, so nobody has ever used it.

However, I don't think it would have made a difference, as there was only one point in time where I was within LOS, and at that time I was in a building in hard cover, so I'm sure I could have survived a single non-sustained attack.

On a different note, instead of using the poster maps, we used cardboard tiles, and the buildings were made out of the Cerberus building pieces, and it made for a much prettier game!

You're right, a single unsustained attack would be very unlikely to wipe out your squad with hero. Though if you had been playing the deployment correctly, then it certainly would put her in a good position to eliminate them before you could reactivate them or move them the following turn.

Yeah, she would have had more opportunity then for sure, and could have blocked the door with a walker, if she had thought of it. Although I'm starting to think that it would be pretty easy any way about it to get the hammers (or Grim Reapers) to the other side of the map, even without the help of a command squad. Put them in the building and they are hard to kill, and they have many routes to start heading toward the finish line. I think this mission is a lot easier for the Allies as attackers than it would be for Axis as attackers.

Of course, the squad she had was the laser grenadiers with Sigrid, and she rolls amazingly with lasers - she regularly gets twice as many hits as she has dice when she uses them. It's kind of ridiculous.

Maybe it's better to play this mission with more AP, then. Cause if a single squad with hero can get you more than enough points to decide the match, the mission becomes very fragile.

Loophole Master said:

I agree. I know we didn't play things 100% right, but the mission still felt a bit broken because of that. I feel like with a lot of the "reach the target" missions, having Command Squad + Jumping Move 2 unit can, especially with a lucky roll or two, make them pretty much unstoppable. The NCO squad, which I believe can double a unit's movement without even having to make a roll, will I think break some of these missions quite a bit.

Of course, if you use the guy with Heroic Attack, you would have been invulnerable on the 11th square for a turn and won anyway - I hate that guy.

Major Mishap said:

Haha, yes. I totally would have used him, but alas, he's not painted yet so he isn't getting into the games with my wife and myself just yet. :-)

Hey, stop badmouthing poor Ozz!

But yeah, Ozz with his Move 2, Jump and Heroic Attack is a real menace in those "reach this square" missions.

The real question is where did you meet a woman who would play Dust Tactics with you and how did you get her to marry you?

mgentile7 said:

Once I started painting them, I was able to get her interested in playing the game. She likes the game though, because of the cool pieces and because it plays quite fast. She generally does not want to play a game that lasts more than an hour, so Dust Tactics fits the bill perfectly. Dust Tactics has become my favourite wargame more because it's easy to find people who will play rather than because of its gameplay. I'm actually on the design team for Academy Games and have helped rules design for the Conflict of Heroes wargames - they're amazing games but much harder to find opponents because the games tend to take longer and have a lot more rules.

Last night I accomplished a similar victory again with the beach landing scenario in Operation Cyclone.

It took 3 turns instead of 2, but it went pretty similarly. I brought in mostly fast and move 2 units (Hammers, Hell Boys, BBQ Squad), and my wife brought in the Ludwig. On Turn 2, I brought in Steel Rain and killed the Ludwig with one shot, and continued moving my troops up. For turn 2, she brought in some infantry. On Turn 3, she brought in Lothar, but it was not positioned right in the gap closest to my Hammers. With my command squad I was able to get my hammers to move twice to get to the far end. Because this early in the game the defender doesn't have many squads, I was able to wait until she had activated all her units to make my move.

It was a pretty easy win, and I think the defender would have a tough time defending against it. This time, my wife has asked for time to research some tactics and then have a rematch, so we'll see if she can stop the Hammers / Command Squad combo next week when we play again. I would think this mission would be MUCH harder for the Axis to win (with their slower units) on the offensive than it is for the Allies.

Well, first of all, it was a mistake to start with the Ludwig against the infantry-only 1st wave. She'd be better of starting with the Luther or Heinrich.

Yeah, I think it will be to easy for the Allies to win with M2 models.

Loophole Master said:

True. It would not have made a difference though. She did not have an opportunity to fire at me in Round 1, and I won initiative and destroyed the mech as my first action in Round 2. Having Black Ops and winning initative in both rounds also helped a lot.

Loophole Master said:

I do agree though that the defender should stick to primarily using anti-infantry. It's a lot easier to get infantry to the other end of the map than it is to get mechs across. I think the big problem for the Axis in this mission is that their units deploy at a very slow rate, so it would not be until several rounds in that the defender would be able to out-activate the attacker, something that is important in this kind of scenario.