Revisiting Deathzap 2: The Battle of Sarath

Posted on by Wargamingpastor

Not too much hobby progress this week as I’ve been out of action with another nasty cold, but I did manage to get a game in this afternoon.

In the district of Sarath forces from League of Zandor hold out against an incoming wave of Mortan’s Men bolstered by mutants from the Exiled Tribes. Lone Battle Master Kazan Xod of the League only has a platoon of Conquerors and a platoon of Invaders at his disposal. Splicer Avex on the other hand was able to bring a squad of Mortan’s personal Butchers, a squad of gibbering Afflicted and a Fleshfreak. Who will emerge victorious?

So I’ve been itching to get back to Deathzap, and for some reason Deathzap 2 came to mind. So after tinkering heavily with the points system I put together two forces and set up a simple board:

It’s always fun re-approaching a rule set you wrote a few years back, it almost like playing a game written by someone else.

The objectives I rolled were:

Push – Gain 2 victory points for having any non-panicked units in your opponents deployment zone at the end of the game.

Intel – Place 4 counters randomly, and you get 1 victory point per counter you have the most figures within 3” of at the end of the game.

Turn 1 and the screaming Fleshfreak barrels forwards.
That is until Kazan gets a lucky shot off and enrages it, sending it into the closest squad some poor Exiled Pariahs, who are beaten to a bloody pulp.
At the end of Turn 1 Mortan’s right flank had basically dissolved, but they were faring better on the left.
Turn 2 and the Butchers collided with a Conqueror squad, the Fleshfreak was almost in too.
End of turn 3, and I could start to see some difficult puzzles emerging. Both flanks still seemed up for grabs, above is the right.
Here’s the left. At this point Battle Master Kazan had the tough choice of deciding which direction to turn! With a limited number of his men remaining he knew either flank could fall if the enemy got lucky.
Having to speed thing up as the time for dinner approached I stopped snapping pictures, but here’s where things ended. At the top centre of the image you can see two of Mortan’s Cultists battling a single Conqueror for an objective scoring it for Mortan. Slightly down from there and further left two Conquerors hold a different objective scoring it for Zandor. Down again and to the far left Battle Master Kazan has successfully infiltrated Mortan’s deployment zone scoring two more points, leaving Zandor on 3 total. Towards the bottom and far right the Fleshfreak has equalled Kazan’s feat, and to the left Splicer Avex holds another objective scoring Mortan 4 in total.

So Mortan’s Men came out on top. I think on reflection I can see why Deathzap 2 kept me going through the Oltra Campaign, it’s basically a stripped down version of 40k and a decent amount of fun. The old combo of roll to hit, roll to wound, make saves is used in so many games for a reason.

So why did I write Deathzap 3 and not stick with 2? I think 2 just took a little too long to play through a game (the one above took most of my afternoon) and in its current state lacks any real personality for the various forces. Reading through the rules again I can see various areas to work on simplify and improve. Maybe it’s time for Deathzap 2.1?

5 thoughts on “Revisiting Deathzap 2: The Battle of Sarath”

  1. I know that several times I’ve evolved rule sets and realised that the evolution has somehow lost what I was looking for.
    I suggest you put Deathzap 3 to one side and work on Deathzap 2.1 🙂

  2. I think in actuality I’m on Deathzap 6 right now. Deathzap 3 is a definite favourite, but Deathzap 2 has all that 40k style rolling that gets my guts all fuzzy with nostalgia.

  3. Nothing wrong with that. 🙂 Could you put a finger on the elements that do this, and separate them from the elements that slow things down? They might not necessarily be the same, but once you’ve analysed it you’ll be in a better place to work out what to reintroduce into Deathzap 7 and 8 🙂

  4. Hah! I bet the dude who drove his orange Porsche? into the crater wishes he had bought a Range Rover instead 🙂

    My rule of thumb is that If I am not using a rule that I have written into the rules because it is too knife and forky, then I ditch it., no matter how proud I am at its novelty or cleverness.

    Regards, Chris.

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