Tactics - Resistance

This is the Tactics Page for Resistance and is written for V1.2 (May 2021).

Why Play Resistance

• You appreciate the underdog
• You live in a swamp, a cave or underground
• You think hovercrafts are awesome
• You want to fight alien occupation with duct tape and rust
• Your favourite film is Mad Max
• You consider a bus filled with C4 to be legitimate military hardware

Resistance have the most units and viable playstyles of any faction in DZC. You have an enormous roster of units that are variously fragile, undergunned, slow or short-ranged, but combine together to cover each other's weaknesses. They don't have an inherent faction skew but in broad strokes:

• Resistance units are generally tough, either because they have thick armour or because they are dirt cheap. Units with the Resilient rule and/or and multiple DP are very common.
• Resistance guns tend to suffer from short ranges and low E values relative to their peers. They often require volume of fire and/or Focus to break armour.
• Resistance possess very strong alpha strikes with long deployed threat ranges, sudden emergence of units, or front-loading shots for short-term gains.
• Units are drawn from 2 pools; the EAA (Old military hardware) and civilian equipment used in non-standard roles.
  • EAA units have high armour and lots of DP for their class. They are typically covered in a variety of guns but have low Move values relative to their peers.
  • Civilian units tend to be fast, cheap and made of paper. They are inflexible and designed for a single role. Civilian units do not have Countermeasures and are vulnerable to long-range shooting.
• Transports are heavily armed and armoured but have a smaller capacity than other factions. As a result they take up a larger proportion of your force and tend to contribute more directly to the fight than simply moving their contents.
• Resistance have an exceptional range of infantry and transport options. You have numerous excellent units to support your armoured elements, dig out garrisons and retrieve objectives. Infantry form a major part of the faction and players are advised to get comfortable with running large numbers of them in a variety of transports.

Special Abilities

• Hovercraft: Resistance have access to hovercraft-based vehicles which offer a number of useful abilities:
  • All hovercraft ignore the Aerial Advantage rule, allowing them to move on to the board from the first turn as though they were aircraft.
  • When disembarking from a hovercraft transport their contents suffer a reduced penalty to accuracy and are able to fire at aircraft on the same turn.
  • In terms of stats, hovercraft are treated as skimmers with more DP and lower E than usual. They have exceptionally high movement and are reasonably well-armed.

Hovercraft transports are iconic to the Resistance and significantly change the way that some units can be used. They are not true aircraft and so don't have to land to deploy units, allowing you to reach well up the board when you disembark. They are tough enough to be immune to many AA guns, requiring AT guns to overwhelm their DP and E bonuses. They provide their contents with a relatively durable ride, a long threat range, and the ability to drop and pop effectively, making them excellent for enabling alpha strikes even against faster enemies. Your fighty Hovercrafts, the Circe and Hydra, benefit from a generous Move and M&F and don't incur wasted costs from transportation or loss of firepower following a disembark.

• Breaching Drills: Resistance are also able to utilise drilling machines to deploy from underground tunnels:
  • Drills always begin the game in Reserve and can be placed on the board from Turn 2 onwards. They can be placed anywhere they can physically fit.
  • A unit carrying an objective can re-enter a Drill and remove it from the board instantly, rather than running the gauntlet back to your own board edge.
  • Drills have low transport capacities and can only carry smaller models. However, they will always give you the first shot.
  • Drills are Rare and you are limited in how many you can take.
  • In previous rules, Drills imposed a +1 penalty to Accuracy for disembarking units. It is worth noting that this is no longer true.

Drills provide an excellent capability for landing alpha strikes and for extracting objectives. They are very resilient for your points but ideally you will be in and out before the enemy can respond, at which point the Drill has already done its part. Drills provide an excellent tool for suddenly dumping a volley of rockets into something your opponent thought was safe and then yeeting his home objectives back underground.

Having access to ground-based transports gives Resistance the unique option of playing with minimal or even zero aircraft present, potentially leaving your opponent's AA guns forced into an anti-vehicle role. This unpredictability and flexibility in deployment allows for an enormous range of unit combinations and potential list styles that other factions simply cannot replicate.

Unit Analysis

• Command:
  • M3 Alexander: Big chungus tank with a fucking massive gun, 5DP at Armour 15 and Move 2". The Alexander is the Resistance's OG Command option and by far the most expensive option. With E12 Dev-3 he provides the single best answer to superheavy armour in the entire army. However he is also very expensive and this only gets worse when you pay for his basically-mandatory transport. The Alexander is there for players who want their Commander to be big, tough, dominating the field and costing several hundred points.
  • Pizzaro Class Walker: Mecha T-Rex with industrial claws for hands. Previously the hands-down best Command option, the Pizzaro has had it's firepower crippled since 1.2 and is now simply 'very good'. Infiltrate is a unique advantage on a Commander as it basically guarantees you Initiative in Turn 1 as well as more Command Cards. It's deceptively tough with a delicious combination of armour and evasion, lightning fast with Infiltrate and high Move, and cheap because you don't need a transport. The Commander of choice for players who want their Commander sneaking upfield, pulling tanks apart in melee and in the form of a robot dinosaur.
  • Hydra Relay Hovercraft: If you've bought the Resistance Starter Army, this is your first Commander. Extremely cheap and very zippy but very little firepower for itself. It has the ability to mark a target for destruction but this is insurance to ensure your shots hit rather than a serious damage boost. Similar to the Pizzaro, the Hydra does not need to pay for a transport. The Hydra is the budget option for a Commander who costs as little as possible, stays away from the fight, and operates in a support role rather than a direct fighter.

• Standard:
  • Rocket Technical: At 10pts per model, the Rocket Technical has the distinction of being one of the cheapest models in the game and completely impossible to fight off without Area attacks. A mediocre E7 rocket becomes much more dangerous when they outnumber you 4:1 and can Focus up faster than you can kill them. Extremely spammable and very good at engaging armoured units who left their templates at home. Can be deployed via Hovercraft or Drill and excel at alpha strikes.
  • AA Gun Wagon: Standard slots are mandatory, AA guns are effectively mandatory, so getting AA guns in your Standard slots is just efficient. Bizarrely durable with 2DP and Resilient, lots of E6 shots for the price, and able to disembark and shoot AA in the same turn for a nice alpha. Limited to deploying via Hovercraft.
  • Circe Attack Hovercraft: What are you doing in the Standard slot? The Circe is a very specialist piece of kit packing E11 Dev-2 with a long range and the ability to move and shoot. It also carries a flame weapon for hunting infantry who thought they were safe. The Circe is surprisingly cheap with a minimum size of 1 and no transport requirements, and it makes an excellent hunter of your opponent's armour. As it relies heavily on landing that single shot, it benefits heavily from having a Hydra in support.

• Troops:
  • Resistance Fighters: For a long time these were the only Troop available and formed a large part of every Resistance list. They are essentially Legionaries that swap the dedicated rocket guy to give everyone a one-use rocket attack, allowing you to front-load your shots into a single attack. This is yet another tool to enable alpha strikes and makes them a legitimate threat to enemy armour and aircraft. They have an enormous range of transport options available by land or air but their role is to dig in to a garrison and pull out objectives rather than try fighting.
  • Resistance Veterans: Pay a small points premium for 2+ Accuracy and your choice of 3 upgrades; tank-cracking Plasma Rifles, melee-monster Marine Force Recon, or unbreakable Kalium Volunteers. You have the flexibility to choose your upgrade depending on your opponent; Plasma for UCM and PHR, or MFR for a Strikehawk objective extractor. Kalium is the most limited option by a fair margin and mostly serves to protect you from your transports blowing up. Veterans have similar flexibility to Fighters regarding transports but you will typically want to put MFR in Swifthawks while Plasma Rifles want to stay in a Bus or fly to a garrison.

• Heavy:
  • Hannibal Tank: The Hannibal is a Standard Tank masquerading as a Heavy and is more comparable to a Saber or Ares. They make a solid frontline brawler with Armour 15 and 2DP, and pack reasonable firepower for the cost. You can choose to swap the Punisher Cannon for a Hi-Ex Hammer Cannon, gaining E11 for +10pts and a loss of range. It is a strong option and well worth taking if you have the points free. One of the major limitations of the Hannibal is it's dependence on a Lifthawk for transportation which effectively doubles the cost of the squad. The Hannibal is a solid workhorse but occupies an uncomfortable mid-ground between the stronger Napoleon and the more mobile Circe.
  • Napoleon Heavy Tank: Superheavy tank absolutely dripping with bullets. The absurd rate of fire obviously makes it a monster at eating infantry, but it can also Focus it's shots for a surprisingly excellent anti-tank or demolition unit. The previous comment about requiring a Lifthawk remains true but this will absolutely dominate whatever fight you drop it into.
  • Thunderstorm Heavy Hovercraft: An odd hybrid of transport, commander and tank-buster all in one massive package. The Thunderstorm packs a ridiculous 4 E12 guns while also transporting a full Command/Standard Group and projecting a Command radius. It pays for all of this and so you might find yourself caught between options and you need to make use of both its firepower and transport capacity to justify. Consider it as a 100pt Leviathan gun upgrade. It's worth pointing out how absurdly massive the model is and be aware that you might not be able to physically fit through some parts of the board.

• Exotic:
  • Berserker Assault Troops: Extremely dangerous building-clearers. Berserkers want to wait for your opponent to find an objective before disembarking through the window, immediately killing all the occupants and claiming the objective for yourself. Compared to MFR they are cheaper and stronger, but rubbish at finding objectives themselves and can't choose to fulfil another role. These boys really want a Swifthawk and even a small squad can happily wipe out an entire garrison in one activation.
  • Freeriders: Move 12 and E+4 cements this unit as the premier Resistance objective nabber. They are extremely mobile and function perfectly well without a transport, while being largely untouchable with shooting. They are extremely vulnerable inside a garrison but their role is to grab something isolated and immediately head for extraction. You can put them into a Breaching Drill to reach far-away objectives or you can fill it with other units and use it as an escape route, but having at least one Drill nearby is highly recommended. Once the objective is secured they can play at popping skimmers with an auto-hitting E9 drive-by per base. Note that as of v1.2, they are no longer Scouts and so cannot spot for artillery or project a Command radius.
  • Attack ATVs:
  • Flame Wagon: What are you doing in the Exotic slot?

• Support:
  • Storm Artillery Wagon:
  • Remote Bomb Bus:
  • Constantine CM Tank:
  • Zhukov AA Tank:
  • Cyclone Attack Copter:
  • Barrel Bomber:
  • Strikehawk Tiltrotor:

• Scout:
  • Sappers:
  • Scout ATVs:
  • Resistance Columbus Battlewalker:
  • AA Gun Technical: Gun Technicals provide a source of dirt-cheap DP and extremely cost-effective AA. Point-for-point they will outshoot Gun Wagons at the cost of being shorter range, while trading Resilient for weight of bodies. As a Scout unit they can be taken in a Command Group at which point you will not need to buy them a transport, circumventing their greatest weakness.

• Auxiliary & Transports:
  • NT-1 Kraken:
  • NT-4 Leviathan:
  • AT-77 Lifthawk:
  • Battle Bus:
  • MT-90 Jackson:
  • Skulltaker Assault Transport:
  • Hellhog:
  • Model 109 Breaching Drill:
  • Model 209 Bertha Breaching Drill:
  • Swifthawk Tilt-Jet:
  • Tempest Interceptor:

Building an Army

The best starting point, by far, is to pick up the Resistance Starter Army. The box contains 980pts of models at a rock-bottom price and provides a solid basis to learn the army and build out from. While you may end up replacing some of the models later on, the box provides enough solid choices that you will typically always be using part of it. Good options for your first expansions include:

• Freeriders in a 109 Breaching Drill (205pts): Freeriders are a key unit for the Resistance and make an excellent swap for some of your Fighters. Using them with a Drill is a game-winning combination and you can learn all about the different deployment options available.
• Veterans and Battle Buses/Swifthawks (220pts): Veterans are great for players wanting some more lethality from their infantry and their inherent versatility makes them excellent choices for experimenting. They work very nice with Plasma Rifles and a Bus (commandeering one of your Krakens) or as MFR in a Swifthawk.
• Cyclone Attack Copters (160pts): Cyclones are decent gunships who are able to project a lot of firepower with excellent reach while remaining safe from retaliation. They can be built as either direct-fire gunships or as an indirect artillery piece and are a great choice for players who enjoy air superiority.
• Circe Attack Hovercrafts (70pts each): As an alternative Standard choice, Circes provide high speed, long range and strong firepower. They will allow you to enjoy units without needing a transportation tax as well as providing a solid anti-armour cannon and work exceptionally well with your Commander's Hydra.

Tactics

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Counter-Tactics

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Common Playstyles

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