Oh my, I was excited about the panic room! Biotechvore with an armory? Count me in! And when we finally started deploying, I realized that the plague here is nearly non-existent. Four-inch creep on the first turn literally doesn't affect the table at all (at least if you don't specifically try to set the scenery to make it matter), so you can have your ARO pieces just sit on the edge of your deployment until the end of turn two, and in my experience, they probably won't survive that long anyway if you go second. And then you have antennas to mitigate the impact of the plague even further. They are destroyable, sure, but it still must be pretty common to have some of them hidden from most of the table unless you specifically bear them in mind when placing scenery, so it's really tricky to take the lucky ones down. The room itself... Well, it certainly plays a little differently with open doors and no demolition shenanigans. Can't say I love it, but whatever. Confused deployment, on the other hand, I like, results in some pretty fun list building and deployment decisions. So to sum up, after the first game it feels like the plague aspect is more of a flavor than a substantial mechanic of the mission. Really generous creep speed and distance, safe spots and a huge mandatory LoS block in the middle of the table make it really easy to completely disregard biotechvore until the last turn if ever. Scenery layout seems extremely important here, but, honestly, I can't think of any configuration that allows to play around threatening antennas, stopping the opponent from leaving the danger area and not leave the table a shooting gallery. Plain armory would have been an obvious winner in my book If not for the confused deployment. What do others think about it?
Did you play with a 8" deployment zone? I'm surprised you find a 4" zone a generous space to deploy your entire army safely? Remember also that the 4" comes from the sides as well. Might be a table thing where you have waaaaay too much cover in the DZ that a 4" sweet spot is irrelevant because you have so much space to hide? My impressions was it was a good version of biotechvore. You're not obligated to move your entire army, but you will need to make little adjustment moves which is an order tax, or leave models to die. The zone creeping from the side can also catch out flanking troops. Overall, its not overbearing but encourages constant mobility and discourages pieces which just want to set up camp and overwatch. I like the way scoring is done with both domination and essential personnel, as well as army points being a relevant amount of points, so if you take the room at too much expense or take attrition from the zone, you're not likely to a net a win. Its unfortunate the types of units that count as it severely limits some factions. Which would be my main complaint. Overall, a relatively interesting mission. Will play it a few more times.
I had the chance to played it now and I also have to say, the pleague is not a big thread. If you deploy on the edge of your DZ you can chill out the first turn, then you have to move. On thing to watch is, that you can get in danger, when you make flank-attacks. We played 300 pts and so had the 8" DZ. I would like the pleague to move more aggressiv in the first step, to force you out of the DZ or camp on the antennas. From the scoring side, I felt it was not very benefitting to hold it the first two rounds. If your opponents storm into the room in T3 (and therefore kill all whats inside) he is on a small victory allready. We had a draw, me holding two rounds and have a CO, my opponent get in the last turn and had more army kills.
