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mj12games.com/forum → Defiance → close combat armies
i was wondering if the army customizer allows for armies that are much more oriented on close combat, because I want to try and convert korolan over to this system, and it's kind of the deciding factor in me getting this.
hehe thanks!
The Army Customiser has several Genre Customisations to help get the right "feel" for certain strongly-themed armies, like Bugs and techno-fantasy barbarian types.
Even without that, it's easy enough to create a strongly close-combat oriented army, possibly less so to make it as effective or flexible as a more generalised army. However, if you make some sprint-capable individuals, give them a field save and a Terror (or any other Close Defence Weapon) template, and charge them at the enemy, they can certainly do some damage. Particularly if they are size 3 as it makes the chargees more likely to break. I imagine flying troops would be another good way to close the distance fast.
Although Defiance isn't specifically tailored to having ultra powerful close combat hero linebreakers, it can be done, and they can break a Regular squad in very short order. They might need better ranged support than they had in VOID, but that's simply a matter of increasing the power of the various ranged troops- the Koralon have those guys with staves and the mutated humans who spit spines, right? Increase their rate of fire or give them a bigger template weapon, and bingo!
Not to mention you could crib Defiance's genre-specific Teleport rules for use with a Koralon army conversion. The VOID version of the slugs do a lot of teleport/gate tricks which make their close combat orientation more effective.
i was wondering if the army customizer allows for armies that are much more oriented on close combat
Close combat armies can easily be made using the Customizer. The important difference between Defiance and many other sci-fi skirmish games is the fact that VG is a bit more "realistic" about the power of ranged weaponry and the usefulness of suppression fire. In other words, if you just charge forward and hope for good die rolls, it won't be too hard for your opponent to mow you down in short order.
With some thought put into movement, field saves, sneaking and hiding, specific tactical advantages and judicious use of close defense weapons, however, an army of "thoughtful chargers" can be quite effective.
-Demian
This in fact was one of the subjects that came up at a demo I gave earlier today...
I do think (the others in our group aren't convinced) that a very hth oriented army would be doable in DVG. That said, I think it will be very difficult to get to close combat without suffering massive casualties, especially in a standard "wipe them all out" game where the opponent basically can just stand back and shoot.
The likelihood of facing considerable losses conspires with the fact that, point for point, your close combat frames won't be any cheaper than the opponent's frames (more likely quite the opposite). The enemy off course will be paying for those high feed rate and cone weapons to mow down you army so he'll likely end up paying more per actually fielded trooper. But still your close combat army won't most likely have an overwhelming advantage of numbers it might enjoy in other games.
So you have to be carefull indeed and perhaps a bit lucky as well to pull a victory against a wary opponent with a "shooty" force. I personally have little call to really set my mind to trying as it's common knowledge in this town that my troops always suck at close combat, regardless of the odds :roll:
The likelihood of facing considerable losses conspires with the fact that, point for point, your close combat frames won't be any cheaper than the opponent's frames (more likely quite the opposite).
On a frame per frame basis, this is generally true, but, due to statistical issues not worth getting into at this time, close combat armies will be able to offset their opponent's points spent on ranged weaponry by keeping their infantry AR's around zero (-1 to +2). Two quick reasons for this are:
-heavy armor tends to be maximized if you advance slowly from cover to cover, in which case it will make the odds on may shots drop off of the linear curve pretty quickly. If you charge straight at someone, however, the enemy's stationary bonus will often offset your armor.
-weak armor is terrible against suppression fire or AOE, two of the main tactics against close combat or "swarm" armies.
Another somewhat statistical point is that it will generally be worth spending the points to get a high reflex and multiple HTH dice. This will maximize your offnese to defense ratio. Also, it will allow relatively few close combat specialists to take out a fairly large enemy unit that has not spent such points.
Finally, tactical advantages can be taken that allow you to get the most tournament bang for the buck when using a close combat army.
In the end, close combat armies will still only be viable if they have some way to circumvent being forced to run into fire lanes. This means investing some points in indirect support fire, flight ability, or a few troops with ranged capability. If you look at most CC armies out there (40K, WZ, even SST), this tends to be the case for all of them.
-Demian
whose favorite Defiance force is the Meraxilla, which are likely the most point-for-point CC heavy of the army lists.
at a demo I gave earlier today...
Ooh, tell us more about the demo.
Maybe a separate topic, with battle report? 
Or just a few thoughts would be great.
I'm thinking some basic sprinters, fliers, or jumpers with suicide/poison CDW.
TO expand a little on Demian's point: A high reflex frame will get to hit first and be more capable in traversing certain terrain. A frame with multiple attacks will be able to trade some of them to close with its next victim after a successful kill, or attack several enemies in HTH at once, as well as being a better bet for scoring a kill each and every time it makes it into combat with an enemy frame.
mj12games.com/forum → Defiance → close combat armies
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