Dropzone Commander; UCM let the reconquest begin....

[The Voivod]

The brave men and women of the UCM armed forces are being prepared to take back the colonies from the clutches of Daeothar's vile Scourge.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=66807.msg808230#msg808230

So, while I had my models some time before he did, he managed to paint his troops a lot sooner then me.
As you can read in his thread, I managed to convince him to split some starter sets and bought mine at Crisis.
I went for the UCM.

The Ucm would be the second favorite DZC army for me. I'd much prefered the posthuman republic with it's wonderfull walkers.
It's a close second however, and got a lot more atractive due to splitting two starter sets and getting things way more cheaply.

I do like how they look. There's a wonderfull 'no nonsense' feel about the vehicles.

Against the Scourge, I do feel I have some disadvantages I haven't really found my way around yet.
Though they are far more heavily armored then scourge tanks, scourge has very high powered weapons that does a great deal to negate this advantage. Scourge is also protected by their speed, making them far harder to hit and easier to manouver.
I do have one advantage and I feel that that is what I need to use to be victorious: My long range weapons.
And I think it will help as well to get decent, complete army instead of this small beginners force.

For the paint scheme, My plan was a light camo green with bone camo scheme, trying to emulate some sort of tundra camo. After aplying the first splotches of bone however I found this was way to busy for such small surfaces, especially in such contrasting colours.
So I stuck with the Camo green. Maybe a very dark blue or grey tones would have made more sense, since most games will be played in a city enviroment, but I wanted the army to be a bit more striking then that.

One thing I like about DZC is the terrain. Fathersday yielded me the Cityscape box. Foldable buildings and groundtiles. You can see the in the pictures below. I probably wouldn't have gone for the game at all if it had meant making an entire city in 10mm scale just for this game. This way I get all the terrain I need with minimal effort and it takes very little room to store. My only concern is, with all the folding, how long it might last. Time will tell.

On to the pictures.
The dropships, I love the look of these things. I was planning to magnatize the tanks so I could hang them underneath, but it was A, to much hassle, B, forced me to either make the turrets removable or have very limited position for them and a visible magnet, C the flightstand is in the way for the 3 tank carrier.



Sabre main battle tank, the work horse. Long range, accurate (as long as the scourge stops moving) and high power weapon.


Rapier AA tank, due to its high rate of fire, accuracy vs skimmers and scourges low armour, these are actually very usefull against scourge tanks as well. That makes for a very versatile tank.



Bear APC. They remind me of the APC from Aliens, which is a good thing.



Legionaire squads. I find these somewhat underperforming compared to scourge, having shorter range, less firepower and lower morale then scourge warriors. Still they have a indespensable role in the army. They might be reinforced by some pretorian special forces in the future. I'm very happy withe the asphalt effect. I used silver sand (as it's known here), the stuff for the floor of a birdcage, seeved through one of the missus old panty hoses.


The first strike force in a group shot. I enjoyed the change of scale, which really askes for a different approach in painting them and can't wait to add to them

[zizi666]

Cool PJ's, but why would you magnetize? I thought these were designed to fit in the dropships?

[The Voivod]

Thanks.

Well, to be honest that was a bit of a dissapointment to me. I'd read several source that tanks would fit underneath the dropships, but I've met sever limitations on that. The scourge vehicles fit their dropsships without any magnets, no problem.
UCM at least runs into problem on the battle tanks. APC would fit without much troubles, but not without magnets. Tanks will run into trouble with their turrets and the center position is taken by the flightstand.

[YPU]

As far as I know the tanks are designed to fit under the dropship only with the turret in the lowest position. Even when compromised the whole "actually should fit" principle still has some charm.

[Engel]

Ohh shiny 

Looks great.

[Daeothar]

Great work there mate! 

Can't wait to trash them again. You might have gotten in a win last time, but that was only because mine were painted and yours were not. Now the odds are even again!

Seriously though; great brush work, and I really dig the bases you went with for the infantry stands; they perfectly fit the urban theme.

As far as I know the tanks are designed to fit under the dropship only with the turret in the lowest position. Even when compromised the whole "actually should fit" principle still has some charm.

Klopt. But what the Voivod states holds true regrettably; the units would fit underneath, if there was no flightstand in the way. As it is, you'd need to magnetize all the vehicles (on the top I might add) and the bottom of the transports, and then you'd need to devise another way to base the transports. My idea would be to use bent metal wire to hold the transport up through the jet exhausts  or the back of the hull for instance.

As for the vehicle turrets; it looked to me as if those really needed to be taken off from the tanks (APCs are fine as is), especially if you would want the barrels to be elevated. Of course, you could use the same magnet in the top of the tank used for hanging them fromt he dropships, to hold the turrets once the tanks are deployed.

But that sure is a lot of work more than I had to use for my Scourge. Call them CD-racks all you want; they're easy on the magnets and the man-hours...