With the release of the Deadzone Beta rules there is lots and lots of talk about the Blaze away action, and its removal from the game.
From what I have read a lot of people feel that this is one of the best representations of Modern combat and advancing through urban locations.
The action used to work that if you could draw line of sight to the 3" x 3" cube that a model was in, then you could Blaze away at it.
The number of successes you scored would potentially force a models alert level from level 3 (the default) all the way down to level 1. And at level 1 or less you had to spend actions to remove the effect, in essence it would allow you to pin models down and move about without threat.
Some cards would allow people to get out of this faster, but at any point you could just choose to blaze away again.
My view on this rule was that it was powerful, too powerful. It didn't matter the faction I was using I would elect to Blaze Away at the enemy, forcing enough of them to be pinned / suppressed that I would then advance my Combat elements forward un-hindered.
It really came down to the faction that choose to do this first would win, especially if someone put three models in a cube, because then you could get three guys at once.
The mechanic has been changed that some weapons have this effect in addition to any damage shooting at them, and the effect is applied automatically and isn't something that you could avoid through good dice rolling.
I can see both sides of the argument, but not sure that this is the defining rule of Deadzone, it was simply a tactic that in my view was the go to tactic for any faction that could elect to Blaze Away, its success rate was so high that you were better doing this and then picking off the enemy at range or in combat one by one.
With its removal the game is much more about thinking about what and how to do, and playing as the Close Combat faction, I have lost the two Beta games, against an opponent I would normally beat hands down, one was a landslide (16-8 VPs in his favour), the second was a narrow narrow loss with 16-15 VPs), however both of use enjoyed the game a lot more as it was close and competitive, compared to the previous incarnation where one of us would run away with it, normally based off how many people we were willing to blaze away with in our opening turns.
What are your experiences of Deadzone v1 & the Beta? Do you miss blaze away, or not?
I really want to hear some other views, as I know this is just from my point of view at the moment, and I am not objectionable to Blaze Away coming back, but I think that despite peoples views that Blaze away generates tactics, my view is that if it is there everyones tactic is the same, which is just a tad too boring for me.
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