Reach Out and Touch Base

Hawk have delivered unto us the first of the new sets of infantry. From the Ivory tower of that wonderful place to have an HQ, Croydon.

Check them out, I've also come up with some thoughts of my own.

First up the UCM Mortars:

These guys are a very interesting unit. At first glance these guys aren't great. But if you think about what these guys represent they become rather interesting. They are a form of future proofing, Dave has in the past few months said that he wants the infantry game of DZC to become more important than just CQB and objective hunting counters.

So bearing that in mind the Concussion round is a way of helping the UCM counter infantry that come to the walls. By pushing the infantry back inside you have a way of opening up buildings that you couldn't get into previously with infantry lining the walls. Tagteaming these chaps in an infantry battlegroup with a unit of Legionnaires to push an opponents squad back inside to open up for your guys to get in would be quite useful.

Onto the upcoming new infantry. If they are going to be as important and as useful on the field as your average field then they need to be hardhitting and survivable. As dug in infantry can be very hard to shift this leaves you with three options;

1. Dedicate shots to the infantry in order to shift them, irritating as this takes shots away from other field units. 
2. CQB the guys out which is an often used one currently especially if its an objective building.
3. Or Demo the building one which a couple of factions really excel in for obvious reasons.

Now the UCM have another option; stop them firing entirely.
Considering this unit can do this from basically anywhere on the board that makes them really great. They may be a little more expensive at 36pts than a basic legionnaire base but oh well.

Heres another thought with these guys, as they can only be transported by Bear maybe you could pair them up a full unit of three legionnaire bases in Bear and Condor and have a great little objective tag team. For example turn 1 drop off the mortars behind a building (outside of the important 1"), then pick their Bear back up then use that now empty Bear as an objective carrier while your big unit searches. You dont lose much movement for this action and you have a cool little support unit helping your dudes out. Without losing any infantry to the dreaded reserve roll lottery.

All in all I dont think this unit will be setting the world on fire any time soon but its always nice to have more tools in the box.

Onto the other unit released in this update.

The Immortal Longreach Team:

Now heres a conundrum, at first glance these guys are lovely models for sure. Also from one squad thats 10 shape charge shots at E7 which is great. Mega(Maths)Mike ran the numbers for me and 10 shots of E7 with Shape charge are better than 2 E11 shots at taking out A10 so thats great. Plus taking out infantry by ignoring soft cover from miles away makes total sense. However, there is a but, a big jiggling BUT.

They can't split fire.

Think about that for a second, dont worry I'll carry on in a sec.
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Ok these guys are five chaps taking out targets with impunity, it makes sense for them to concentrate fire on something big like a Jaguar or Caiman or Tarantula. But what if I want to shoot down some Yari? (Yes, alright, I have it in for the Shaltari) Or Prowlers, or Technicals, or Wolverines. Its at that point that five shape charge shots becomes a lot less useful when they can only aim at one target.  So the weight of fire that PHR rather desperately need isn't delivered by these guys.

Especially when they are six points more than Immortals for a CQB that is 0.5 lower than Immortals.

Added to that they have to line the walls to shoot making them expose themselves to your opponent in order to get their shots. Being squishy infantry even with E+1 countermeasures is not fun when faced against the futuristic weaponry the factions can bring. (Microwave emmissions boiling your brain in its pan make anyone else shudder?)

Thats not to say this unit is useless, far from it. Stick them in a building give them the Forward Air Controllers and they will happily snipe off a tank a turn while searching for an objective and calling in the air support from your Athena if you bought one to the table.

That said I have a horrible feeling that you won't see this unit on the table that often. I've already made some suggestions on how to improve this unit while staying within their points limit to the Hawk team but I'm sure they'll come up with something better if the community really wants this unit improved.

Not that that stopped me buying a blister of each of these units at the UK Games Expo last week lol.

Anyway what do you guys think about these units? Yay or Nay? If so give us your reasons in the comments below. Thanks for reading.