Blasts of gunfire rang out overhead, forcing Pvt Perkins to hug the dirt. The Marauder’s guns were primitive compared to his trusty Accutek, but lethal nonetheless.
“Enjoying yourself, son?” Major-General Kennedy said with a laconic drawl, lighting a cigar. The two men were behind a half-ruined habtainer, pinned down and isolated. Perkins had no idea how the man could be so calm, but then again, that was why he was being paid the big bucks and Perkins didn’t even get stock options.
“Sir, yes sir!” Perkins shot back, hurriedly trying to clear the depleted power pack from his rifle. “Always need more lead in my diet, sir!”
“That’s the spirit kid,” Kennedy replied, as he tucked his lighter away and pulled out a commlink. “Hey, want to see something cool?”
Kennedy thumbed the trigger on the commlink. “Brass to Eagle-five. We’re having a party here and could use some fireworks. Deliver to these co-ordinates, 62,1,17.50, by 108,27,25.31.”
“Roger brass,” came the tinny reply. “Eagle-five, on our way.”
Perkins heard a high-pitched whine from overhead as the military drone swooped in close, its twin rotors angling to bring the sleek craft to a momentary stop. The Marauders ceased firing at Perkins’ position and turned their guns on the machine, but too late – the missile it carried was away, exploding amongst them in a blaze of fire, sending the Orcs flying.
“On your feet grunt!” Mjr-Gen Kennedy said, his cigar clenched between his teeth as the man drew his sword and stood up. “Time to earn our keep!”

Hello, Deadzone fanatics!

Since the release of Deadzone gamers around the world have embraced the second edition, and as dedicated gamers ourselves the Deadzone Rules Committee has been wowed by the response.

When the Warpath Kickstarter unlocked the GCPS Marines sprues, we couldn’t wait to develop the faction for Deadzone. Since the first wave of Warpath shipping will include these models, now seems like the perfect time to release the beta rules for the GCPS Marines in Deadzone.

It’s a Sentient’s Life in the GCPS Marines!

The list is meant to represent any one of a number of armed forces within the GCPS, from a Corporation’s standing security force caught in a Deadzone, a mercenary company of “force application specialists” sent in to retrieve sensitive assets from inside the Containment Protocol, or a pacification force employed to try and contain a situation before the Council of Seven catches wind of what’s going on.

The playtest will run in two waves: this initial release, in which we will ask you to put the list through its paces. Please try your hardest to make terrible, broken, over-powered lists with it; we need to know if there are any combinations of units or items that would make the game un-fun for someone on the other side of the table.

After a week we’ll incorporate any needed changes, then put the second list out for another wave of consultation. Below are some insights into the design behind the list and the questions we would like you to focus your feedback on:

Design Goal and Feel

With this list, we wanted to create a force that evokes the feeling of modern armed forces, especially as depicted in techno-thrillers of the Tom Clancy/Andy McNab sort. What the GCPS lacks in terms of assault ability, they more than make up for in having the right tools for any combat scenario: Whether you need the mobile precision offered by the Accutek LR-45 DMR (Designated Marksman’s Rifle) or simply need to blow up every alien in the room with the crew-served Missile Launcher, the GCPS have you covered.

• Do you think that this list ‘feels’ like a modern, professional military force?

Leaders

Currently, your choice of leaders will be between the Corporation Major-General or the Corporation Sergeant.
The Major-General gives you access to the Drone Strike Army Special, calling in air support from HQ when needed. This is currently set at Indirect (2) – at the moment we want this ability to be more about moving enemy models, and we’re worried that setting it at Indirect (3) will result in players desperately re-rolling their command dice to get 5 free mortar shots a turn.

• Does this Army Special hit the sweet spot of being useful, without being broken or annoying for the opponent?

The Corporation Sergeant brings back a mechanic a lot of players have asked for: Overwatch. This rule is meant to give the basic Trooper an option to respond to melee attacks, granting a Shoot action with a Rapid Fire weapon in exchange for a Command dice.

• Is this Army Special useful, fun and an attractive choice compared to the other options?
  Major Loren Chard is also given a profile, and in time will receive a dedicated Elite Army List. For the moment try using her in a variety of lists and let us know how that goes.

New Units

Most of these are self-explanatory, although there are a few we would like specific feedback on.

• Corporation Recruit: Apart from opening up ‘cheap unlocks’ for Specialist slots, does this unit have a place in the list?
• Rangers: One thing I am worried about with this unit is the prospect of getting weapons that effect a whole cube (Flamers, grenades) dangerously close to the opponent’s deployment zone. Do we need to further restrict Aerial Deployment to give the opponent room to spread out after the first activation?
• Heavy Weapons Squad: Warpath treats squads with heavy, mounted weapons as a single unit, and Deadzone needs to do the same to ensure compatibility with the model range. Is the Weapons Team rule intuitive, easy to use and understand?

New Items

Two new items are introduced with this list: Commlinks and Tripmines.Commlinks are intended to let models act as spotters for Indirect or Grenade weapons, letting a player mark a cube and eliminate the risk of the attack scattering off-target, but not to let you target an otherwise invalid target.

• Is the rules text clear and easy to use?

Tripmines came about out of a desire to open up more options for Engineers, and to give players an incentive to train a model as an Engineer in campaign play. Leveraging the ‘packed/deployed’ rules for Sentry Guns, Tripmines as written assume that there will be a model to represent them, although they should work using a counter instead.

At the same time the rule doesn’t currently give strike teams without an Engineer an option for dealing with them aside from throwing a model at it who will hopefully survive the blast (or is disposable enough that it doesn’t matter if they survive or not). I’m worried that if Tripmines can be shot then they become little more than an annoyance, and not worth taking.

• Do the Tripmine rules add a fun element to the game, or are they more frustrating than fun?

Get Involved!

So how do you get involved? Play some games and tell us about them! Feel free to proxy models if you don’t have any sci-fi humans – basically anything roughly 25-30mm scale will do.

We’ll be monitoring the Deadzone Fanatics Facebook Group the comments of this post, and the Mantic Forum. Also, feel free to email battle reports or actual play feedback to Arthur here.

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