Now don't panic [DBS vs. ISS]

 

After two serious losses in the Quadratekämpfer-tournament, there was no space left for any kind of ambition, especially with Panic Room as the last mission. What got me motivated again was my opponent thi time: 8-bit, one of our german podcast-hosts and someone I was eager to play against for some time now. While I built a more or less silly list for this mission, 8-bit tried to get in touch with ISS during the tournament. Our pairing maybe said all about this attempt so far.

PanicSquad
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GROUP 1  10  
 BRAWLER (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 27)
 DRUZE (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Pitcher, D-Charges ( ) / Viral Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 30)
 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MULTI Rifle(+1B), Chain-colt / Heavy Pistol, DA CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 35)
 VALERYA GROMOZ (Hacker) Combi Rifle, Zapper, Pitcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 21)
 ARSLAN (Lieutenant) MULTI Rifle, Light Shotgun / Viral Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 36)
 FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)
 BULLETEER Spitfire / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1 | 23)
 DRUZE (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Pitcher, D-Charges ( ) / Viral Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 28)
 DRUZE (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Pitcher, D-Charges ( ) / Viral Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 28)
 PEACEMAKER Spitfire / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1 | 26)
   AUXBOT_3 Heavy Flamethrower / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 4)

GROUP 23  
 KAMEEL  (Hacker, EVO Hacking Device)  ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 15)
 PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 15)
 FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)

 5 SWC | 298 Points
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Well, for the moment I don't really know how to approach this mission. We played this game before we had the last IGIL-round, so the Starmada-list was a bit more thought out, based on the experiences of this game. My thoughts behind here were to avoid being hacked to death or templated to death in the room. So the KHDs, advacing in a duo-link this time, should block the room in impersonation-state and when it is time, Arslan and Wolfgang, ideally with the HD still alive, storm the room and dodge whatever warband is chainrifling into the room. The Bulleteer and maybe the Pathfinder should open up the passage for the important units here.

 
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GROUP 1  10  
 DEVA (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Flash Pulse / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 24)
 DEVA (Multispectral Visor L2) Spitfire, Nanopulser ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1 | 33)
 ADIL (Specialist Operative, Veteran) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 32)
 SÙ-JIÀN Spitfire, Light Flamethrower, Panzerfaust / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 54)
 KǍNRÈN (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Chain-colt ( ) / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0.5 | 28)
 KǍNRÈN (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Chain-colt ( ) / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon. (0 | 26)
 CELESTIAL GUARD (Lieutenant) Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)
 CELESTIAL GUARD Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)
 MAJOR LUNAH VIRAL Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 29)
 BOUNTY HUNTER Submachine Gun, Akrylat-Kanone / Breaker Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 12)

GROUP 25  / 3
 KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5)
 KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5)
 CELESTIAL GUARD Monitor Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 13)
 KUANG SHI Chain Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 5)
 CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)

 5 SWC | 299 Points
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Without knowing ISS very well, the approach was exactly what I had imagined: A bunch of throw-away warbands in form of Kuang Shis to clear the room and annoy whatever there will be, two Kanrens to do the digital work and a flexible haris, which first shoot things down, then enters the room and scores the points. Some redundancy is added by the Sujian and Lunah, both potent killers and valuable for the mission.

This round we got the one Icestorm-map with all the tweeks and twerks this terrain has in TTS and in real life. Once I got wiped out by Karolis and a Tikbalang here, since TAGs really enjoy this terrain. There are some nice firelanes on the right and in this version the denser left side got more open, so that something deployed savely on a roof has a quite big impact. This map too was not designed for the reduced DZ, making deployment quite messy.

I loose the Lt-roll and get to go second and deploy second in the south. Since I feel better with going second in this mission, that is quite nice.
One (or three) Kanren infiltrates right in front of the room, while an other one is deployed on the left, next to the Kuanghsi-link and a camo-marker. The haris-team starts in the center and all the other stuff is deployed more or less hidden on the right.
Most of my eggs go on the right side: Bulleteer, Fugazi and core-link. The left side is secured by the Pathfinder and the other Fugazi, while my KHDs for some reason start together on a central rooftop. Due to the unfitting deployment, most of my stuff starts quite near to my table-edge.
As reserve, a Su-Jian starts on the left and my Peacemaker fails his deployment and also starts in my table-edge in the center.

ISS 1: With two regular orders removed from group one, the haris under smoke advances on the right. The MSV Deva tries to engage my MSR but is shot down. So the Su-JIan takes over, rocketing itself on the high building on the left and transforming into his shooty-form. The Kanrens and Kuangshi advance.

DBS 1: To disable the transformer, the Peacemaker is sent out and in the far too long progress the Su-Jian recieves a wound but takes out the Auxbot and somehow the Fugazi, which tried to support his robot-friend. With the mission in mind, the core-team advances. A panzerfaust-shot pastes the Brawler, leaving me in suboptimal conditions. Now Arslan himself takes over the situation but fails every dodge and barely manages to enter the room alive. At least I score two points but lose my Bulleteer to the zone.

ISS 2: The Kuangshis use my scattered defense on the right and round that flank. One kills Gromoz and scoring Extreme Prejudice on her. One Kanren first shoots down Arslan, then clearing the Peacemaker. With a cat-like jump towards the ground, the Su-Jian kills my Kameel. To get more points into the room, the remaining of the haris-team join the Kanren there.

DBS 2: First the Pathfinder dies while trying to get rid of a Kuangshi, then Wolfgang takes over. Thanks to a surrendered situation, I lose my HD and one wound from Wolfgang to the Kuanghsi, as Wolfgang manages to enter the room but not to tear the Deva into pieces in CC. The plague kills both KHDs and 8-bit scores two points.

ISS 3: Adil and his friends execute Wolfgang in CC and close the room from the inside, leaving me with nothing to do.

So this game ends like all the others recently: I loose 7-2 with only one Fugazi remaining. Of course, my list was not optimal, but with how the dice went, a far better list would not have made a big impact, I guess. The Su-Jian tanked so many shots and killing everything in return, while most of the stuff on my side wore paper-armor and iron-gloves to avoid any successfull dodging-attempt. In the end my choice of deployment kicked off a catastrophic snowball-effect, since I maneuvered myself into a bad starting-position, from where I could not rescue three regular orders and valuable pieces. If I could get my KHDs into the game, things may have changed, but so they were trapped on the roof, overwatched by the Su-Jian, while the plague advanced.
If it was mostly my performance, my opponents skill or the dice rolled - I reached the last place of the tournament. Nevertheless I am still a big fan of my DBS-REMtasy-list and DBS in general.

Grabbing some supplies

Initially I wanted to give the double-TAG list a second try, but while I thought about the Anaconda a lot on Sunday, I dismissed that. After deductions, the Anaconda consumes much more of your potential, that it is able to add and reaches beyond my willigness.

Yesterdays game was against ISS in supplies. Supplies is a mission, I am a little bit afraid of, since two fast specialists in turn one can loose you the game or make it quite hard to re-enter the game. To deal with this, I chose my older favourite list with two Hunzakuts and Saito Togan. Just to make things as easy as possible.

Druze Bayram Security
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GROUP 1 7 1
HUNZAKUT (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
DRUZE HMG, Chain-colt / Viral Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 29)
DRUZE (X Visor) Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (E/M and Nimbus) / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 27)
DRUZE Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Pitcher, D-Charges / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)
BRAWLER (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 28)
BRAWLER Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
BRAWLER Heavy Rocket Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 18)
FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

GROUP 2 6 1
HUNZAKUT (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
SAITO TOGAN Combi Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, EXP CCW, Knife. (0 | 39)
KAMEEL Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25)
FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
PATHFINDER DRONBOT Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)
BRAWLER Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Submachine Gun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 17)
KAMEEL (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

6 SWC | 300 Points

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The Hunzakuts were supposed to grab the supply-boxes, while Saito should fetch a lost one back if necessary. Everything else is mostly for distraction, orders and AROs. At least it was planned for this. The HMG was supposed as the big gun in back-up, if things get serious.

Imperial Service
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10
BÀO TROOP (X Visor, Multispectral Visor L2) Combi Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
BÀO TROOP (Multispectral Visor L2, Biometric Visor L2) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23)
BÀO TROOP (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 29)
BÀO TROOP (Biometric Visor L2) Boarding Shotgun, Contender / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22)
PHEASANT IMPERIAL AGENT (Multispectral Visor L1, Marksmanship LX) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 32)
CELESTIAL GUARD (Kuang Shi Control Device) Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 13)
CELESTIAL GUARD (Kuang Shi Control Device) Combi Rifle + Light Smoke Grenade Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 13)
HSIEN MULTI Rifle, Nanopulser / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 57)
HSIEN Lieutenant HMG, Nanopulser / Pistol, AP CCW. (2 | 61)
KǍNRÈN Boarding Shotgun, Chain-colt / Pistol, Monofilament CC Weapon, Knife. (0 | 25)

6 SWC | 302 Points

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I suppose that this list was designed to counter-play our Bakunin/Aleph-player, so there was a link full of MSV2, backed up with two Hsiens. But since we draw our opponents by random in our group of four, he got me instead. In addition to this, he had misread the mission and forgot, that there are specialists needed to open the crates. Nevertheless, he wanted to try this. There must be an error in the list, maybe one Bao was equipped differently and what kind of Kanren or other Holo-unit was present is unknown to me until now.

I tried to pre-define a table in my free-time and that is the first result from this. Most of the things were played as high as S2 (all the crates, the lying truck,...) and buildings without roof with infinite height. The legs of the fallen down silos should be lower than S2, but that is hard to predict and leads to misunderstandings. For the future, this and the height of some crates should be played differently.

I won the Lt-roll and decided to deploy second in the south, mostly because I feared to win the game in turn one, if my Hunzakuts would take the boxes somewhere in my DZ without any trouble (sounds quite arrogant, but was necessary, since it was the first game in a while for my opponent and the list was very bad for this mission).

The link with all the Baos deployed on the left side with some pieces out to ARO (I guess there were a few LoFs unseen). Among them was a Celestial Guard with grenade launcher. While a second smoke-launcher Guard was acompanied by a Multirifle-Hsien on the far right, an other Hsien-Guard duo took the center.

My link went into the central house with HRL and MSR out to ARO. Fugazis went on the flanks, all other REMs in the backline and the AHD on the right behind the building. One Hunzakut on each flank into a house, Saito as marker behind the central fallen silo (since we have no idea how to use hidden deployment in vassal).

We both forgot to have a reserve.

ISS 1: Against overclocked REMs, everything advanced. The link shuffled a bit into better positions and both Hsiens advanced near the center line. The HMG tried to engage my link behind the truck and after several orders, my MSR stunned him succesfully. That burned so many orders that the turn was over.

Druze 1: Since there was too much trouble around the crates, I postponed the run for the boxes and switched to my back-up gun. The HMG started and shot two Baos and the left Celestial Guard in the progress to get LoF to the Hsien. I overlooked a LoF here, too, so my HRL got shot unopposed due to bad placement. My right Fugazi stunned the HMG-Hsien, before I forced him into total cover with my HMG. My right Hunzakut placed a repeater near the other Hsien to have better ARO-options.

ISS 2: The Bao MSR failed to kill my MSR and the Agent was killed by him in ARO. Under smoke from the right Celestial Guard, the Hsien HMG tried to shoot down my link but was stopped by a critical stun-shot of my MSR.

Druze 2: The left Hunzakut shot down the Bao MSR and grabbed the box. On the right, the other Hunzakut needed only one shot to slay the HMG-Hsien in his back-arc, but needed several tries to get down the Celestial Guard with his LSG. We called it here, since there was nothing more to do or to gain for him after this losses.

I won 6-0 with a bad feeling, since a bad match-up was salted with crits and bad dice for my opponent. The Hsien getting stunned so often and then killed by a rifle...uff. We discussed, that some commitment to the Multi-Hsien in turn 1 would have been a lesser risk with better angles to attack. He would have been able to get my HRL first, then killing the MSR in good range with shock-ammo. The HMG set into suppressive fire in the midfield would have denied me the total access to the objectives and with my natural fear of HIs at the moment, the game would have been completly different.

One thing I learned during the game is the use of flash-pulses in active turn. A Hsien is a much lesser thread, if it can't shoot back. Of course, the Fugazi was on a risk here, but a suprising Hunzakut could do it easily. Or a boosted Fugazi...There are so many options for this, what could be a work-around for the missing smoke. This will be tested in the future and is a nice hope for even better results.

After that game and my experiences with this list, I would conclude to have a good archetype and recommendation for all new Druze-players to get in touch with this sector. There are many Druze-unique things available, nearly every tool accessable and something to play with and to further invest for every playstile. But that is mainly my feeling, so I would be interested in your thoughts about this?