With this weeks restocks were two new units for Dropzone Commander. The UCM Claymore and the Shaltari Khopesh. Let’s take a look at their stats and see how to use them.
First of all let’s look at the UCM Claymore. This is an alternate for the UCM Broadsword which is a powerful heavy tank. The Claymore is great against scenery and infantry.
As we see it shares the basic profile with the Broadsword with 4 damage points and 15 armour, your enemy is going to need some big guns to get this removed from the table.
Where is differs from the Broadsword is in it’s own armament. The Claymore is armed with two weapons, the Demolitions Cannon and the Super Gatling gun.
The Demolitions Cannon has two fire modes, High Explosive and Fragmentation. The High Explosive round is an Energy 11 Devastator-5 (Scenery) weapon. The UCM don’t have a lot of anti-scenery weaponry, after all, they are trying to reclaim the buildings not annihilate them. However at this stage of the Reconquest they’ve seen that sometimes some buildings are beyond saving. The Claymore can make very short work of reducing these buildings to rubble with it’s High Explosive rounds.
The Fragmentation round is designed to remove massed infantry quickly and with extreme prejudice. An Energy 7 Area attack will remove even the most stubborn infantry from the battlefield. Backed up by the Super Gatling Gun, an Energy 6, 4 Shot machine gun, infantry in the open is ripped apart.
As for tactics for the Claymore, it’s not a subtle, tactical machine, but a 90 point wrecking ball. They can be taken in squads of 1 to 3, if you really want to reduce the board to ruins take a squad of 3 and watch buildings collapse. Then slaughter the infantry left out in the open without the buildings to hide in. It’s a refreshingly simple unit in a game where tactical planning is key.
The second unit released this week is the Shaltari Khopesh. This an alternate form of the Warspear. It keeps the flexibility of the Warspear, along with it’s speed and agility, but replaces the anti-armour Gauss Cannon with a Heavy Bio-Atomiser, an anti-infantry flame weapon.
The potential an Energy 5 Flame weapon has on a fast flyer is immense. Within it’s first activation, the Khopesh can fly to the other end of the board and flame troops within a building with it’s own maximum movement of 48″ movement and the weapons 12″ range, giving a lethal 20″- 60″ threat range. Of course at this speed hitting infantry in buildings isn’t easy, even for the advanced targeting systems of the Shaltari, so with accuracy 4 you should hit with 3 of the 6 shots you have from the Flame weapon. Take 2 of these and that’s often one base of infantry removed.
Obviously this ability to cause so much damage to infantry searching for objectives, so early doesn’t come cheap, and at 70 points it’s more expensive than the Warspear, but keep in mind the Khopesh still has it’s very strong anti-air potential the Khopesh is worth every point.
As for tactics with the Khopesh, set it up so it theatens a building close to the enemy with an objective, if the enemy get’s in their early, you can use your Khopesh to cause them some damage early on. Or they may decide not to go for that objective early, worried of your ability to flame the building. In this case you still have your powerful anti-air weapons to harass enemy dropships. And with the Shaltaris ability to get around the board quickly. It won’t be long before that objective is yours.
The new units are on the Web-Builder now. And are available to purchase from our store now too!