Enforcers: Building your first Strike Teams

The Enforcers are the iron fist of the Council of Seven, the stern right hand that keeps the thousands of worlds in the Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere in line. The threat of an Enforcer deployment is enough to make even the largest Corporations to accede to the harshest Council edict, and they are the only GCPS military force with the training, equipment, and unwavering discipline necessary to enforce a Containment Protocol.

They live only for their mission, and for the Council. This commitment leaves them perfectly suited for Deadzones, where civilian lives are, by necessity, written off to keep the Council's dirty secret – that the universe is not under humanity's control. Hidden behind the neon glow and glamour of Corporate life, is a cosmos brimming with threats to life, sanity, and more importantly, the bottom line. The Enforcers may be monsters, but they are the Council's inhuman monsters; and in this universe, it takes monsters to keep humanity safe.

For the player, the Enforcers offer the chance to play a small, elite group of soldiers that may be frequently outnumbered but are never outgunned. Your enemies will be driven back by a withering hail of heavy laser fire, picked off from afar with pinpoint accuracy, or ambushed from the flanks in desperate hand-to-hand combat.

The Enforcer Starter Set gives you plenty of models to build a variety of Strike Teams with options for every situation. This article will present two Strike Teams that you can build.

Building your strike team

When building a list for a game, the player needs to ask themselves two questions: What are my faction's strengths and weaknesses? How do I use these to achieve my objectives and win the game?

One of the great strengths of the Enforcers is having access to hardy generalists and devastating specialists. The basic Enforcer trooper has an excellent 4+ Survive stat, and against most attacks, Armour 1 will often see you unharmed.

Your Pathfinders exchange Armour 1 for Tag rifles and Scout; a combination of coordinated fire and quick, tactical movement will find you quickly accumulating Victory Points while your opponent is barely moving out of their deployment zone.

For your first few games of Deadzone, we recommend playing the Patrol mission. In this mission, you will earn VP for killing enemy models and holding objectives. As Enforcers tend to be expensive, points-wise, compared to the other factions, you will usually be fielding less models than your opponent, which can make contesting objectives difficult. You will need to quickly advance up the field and place your troops to control your opponent's access to the objectives through suppressive fire.

With this in mind, you should build your first Strike Teams to play to your faction's strengths. Here are two sample Strike Teams to try out, each with a different focus, so you can find the playstyle that best suits you.

Strike Team Aleph-4:

Strike Team Aleph-4 is built for a shock offensive. The Sergeant's Mobile Infantry ability gives you the ability to rapidly re-position your troops to adapt to changing battlefield circumstances; the Enforcer with Burst Laser allows you to pin your enemies and set them up for an assault from the Assault Enforcer, and the two Enforcers will let you contest or control objectives with their formidable defenses.

Pathfinder Team PT-204

Pathfinder Team PT-204, by contrast, is more of an infiltration force. They will need to use their Tag Rifles to focus fire on key enemy models, and the Pathfinder Sergeant's Target Acquisition ability will mean that you won't need to spend valuable model actions on target designation. The Pathfinder's Scout ability means that they will be able to rapidly take commanding position on the field, and the Smoke Grenades will be useful in shielding their advance from the guns of the enemy.

In our next article we will look at more detailed tactics for each of these Strike Teams.

All of the models featured above can be found in both the Enforcer Faction Starter and the Deadzone Starter Set. Pre-order yours now!