(Un)common Deathwalker army

[Elstree]

I've been pondering this for a while. It's a bit of a radical proposal, but I think it could potentially bring the Zettians and Deathwalkers out of the dustbin and back into circulation as a themed army every bit as cool as the Marro or Orcs.

1. Make the Zettians a common squad. (Who doesn't have at least 4 by now?)
2. Give the Zettians Deathwalker bonding. (Because both Zettians and Deathwalkers move at a snail's pace.)
3. Make all Deathwalkers common heroes. (Since they all only have one life anyway.)

I think this is a workable idea. My main question is, if you were to make these changes how much would you have to adjust the point values and to which units?

[justjohn]

Made these a while back:





Not exactly what you suggested, but pretty close.

I have made common versions of almost all the master set unique squads (if you're curious). You can see them here

[SilverBlade]

Originally Posted by Elstree

1. Make the Zettians a common squad. (Who doesn't have at least 4 by now?)
2. Give the Zettians Deathwalker bonding. (Because both Zettians and Deathwalkers move at a snail's pace.)
3. Make all Deathwalkers common heroes. (Since they all only have one life anyway.)

I adopted 2 house rules recently to address this:

1. Zettians only cost 50 pts as is (this has been advocated by several users in the forum)
2. Allow multiple drafting of unique squads (squads only) but tie each figure to its orignal card and activate cards not sets of figures.

These are pretty painless mods. I don't think I'm quite ready to draft multiple DWs yet, But I do like the bonding bit. I don't have a clue about a cost adjustment for that.

[AEIOU]

Allow multiple drafting of unique squads (squads only) but tie each figure to its orignal card and activate cards not sets of figures.

Interesting idea. It allows multiple uniques while maintaining the common's best features.

[Elstree]

Thanks, Justjohn. I hadn't seen those yet. My own preference is to keep the stats the same and just change the cost, but those look like perfectly playable units.

When I was researching this topic I came across a few suggestions regarding the Zets. The two most popular seemed to be leaving everything the same but dropping the cost to 50pts or making them common, adding a third to the squad and raising the cost to 90pts.

I didn't find any discussion of making all the Deathwalkers common heroes, though I know it had been mentioned on one of the earlier sites (HSHQ, I think). Anyway, I'm curious what people have to say about the whole package: common Zets with bonding and common DWs.

[dnutt99]

Personally I'm against common DW's,... no real good reason for it,... I just think they're fine as-is. It is funny you should mention this though. I was watching the short cartoons on the official site and in one of them Jandar's forces were battling at least 3 different DW 900's. I just thought that was a bit strange with them being "unique" and all.

About the Zettians. I like:
- adding a 3rd unit to the squad / raising the cost to 90 / keeping it unique
- keeping the squad at 2 / raising the cost to 80 / changing it to common

Unfortunately for me, my wife, (who I play with more than anyone), is against altering any of the cards in ANY way whatsoever. It took me a while to finally get her to accept the fact that Taelord has, (what is now known as), Stealth Flying. If it's not officially changed, then it's not happening.

I'm still kinda 50/50 on giving them DW Bonding. I love the idea and know of a handful of folks that would endorse/use the idea, but I don't find as many that would agree that Anubian Wolves should have Darklord Bonding to move Khosumet!

[SilverBlade]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

Interesting idea. It allows multiple uniques while maintaining the common's best features.

Hmmm. Well if the best feature of a common squad is that you may activate any figure on the map up to a full squad, then no not really. If the figures of a unique squad are tied to a specific card, then you could have 2 Zett squads both of them haveing taken one casualty leaving one in each squad and still only be able to activate 1 figure per turn marker. The best advantage of a common squad is that you may pick any figure from any card to activate.

[Skeletor]

I added one more Zetain to the squad and kept it unique and still worth 70 pts. I have play tested this a few times and seems to work well

I have been toying with the idea to giving 9000 1 more extra life but haven't tried it out yet

[1moreheroscaper]

A great notion you have, and one that I wish we could have more of an agreement on.

Deathwalker 9000 (or even 8000 and 7000) as common. Since they have 1 life, you don't really have to keep track of the wound markers. I am fine with it and have played with the idea for almost a year now.

The Zettians as common, I have liked this idea since WAVE 1 was released--as well as the Tarn Vikings (and sometimes the Izumi)

-If you give the Zettians bonding, then I say leave them and all DWs unique.

-If you make them common, don't change anything but their "unique" status.

Here is a common card I also made a little while back for the Zettians:
http://www.heroscapers.com/oldgaller...409&fullsize=1

Other Commonized Unique Master Set squads:
http://www.heroscapers.com/oldgaller....php?album=270

And one last comment related to Common-Uniques: Justjohn's post about Kozuke Samurai and a common option. Duplicate Unique Squads are also discussed here briefly.
http://heroscapers.com/community/showthread.php?t=5050

[King's Knight]

Originally Posted by Elstree

2. Give the Zettians Deathwalker bonding. (Because both Zettians and Deathwalkers move at a snail's pace.)

That seems like it could get kinda powerful, even there's only 2 of them, a range squad with bonding is iffy... especially with DW9K giving +2 range... a more balanced idea might be to either give them DW movement bonding, or instead-of type bonding... other then that, I like #1 and #3 has some potential...