8,8,8,8... I Win?; learning to play Deadzone

A change from the last few days of Epic, I made time tonight to play a little Deadzone, using some of my recently painted models and terrain. The first game I played months ago was more of less 'normal', with large forces, missions, equipment etc, and trying to get a grip on the whole system at once meant we messed up quite a few rules. Since I barely remembered how to play, it seemed to make sense to start simple this time, and play a few games with small forces and just the basics.
We matched up two Enforcers against three Plague Gen 3s, one with HMG. On paper the forces were about equal points, but the first practice game showed that the Enforcers were pretty hard to hurt, with their good armour and accuracy, and I comfortably killed the plague.
For the second game, we switched sides, and I took control of the plague. As expected, things started off badly for me, but then crazy random luck took over and hilarity ensued...

Here's the board set up at the start of the game, nothing fancy:

Enforcers went first, and by the end of the first turn, things were looking bad, with my HMG suppressed to death thanks to some good rolls, my other gen 3s advanced up the field failing at shooting:

Next turn I managed to get one of my wounded Gen 3s into combat, only to fail my melee attacks and in turn get curbstomped by an angry Enforcer coming to help his buddy. At this point the game was effectively over, I had one Gen3 left facing two unhurt enforcers. My dude decided the last this left was to go down fighting, and sprinted next to the Enforcers before blazing away. Predictably, I missed most of the shots and only scored one hit. Game over, right? Then this happened...

Both Enforcers crapped themselves and dove for cover. Hilarious, but it didn't leave me much better off. I decided to charge in anyway, and my heroic Gen 3 managed to wound one of the Enforcers, before both sides traded attacks back and forth for multiple rounds - the Enforcers rolling terribly but my Gen 3 unable to score enough hits to actually break their armour. I was pretty sure I'd eventually go down, until this happened...

Scratch one Enforcer...
The remaining wounded super soldier decided to retreat and actually do what he's good at and shoot me to death. Plague Rambo was having none of that, and clambered up the building after him, catching him and tearing him apart after the Enforcer again rolled awfully for his armour:

This left the Plague gen3, amazingly, as the last man standing. I think I'm going to have to give him a nice paintjob after those heroics!

The games were great fun, and I think we got a good grounding in the basics. Next time we'll add some more troops and keep slowly introducing features.

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos