Exclusive October preview: Roger van Zant

We’re bringing you another preview, this time it’s one of the October releases – Roger Van Zant himself!

Back when the USAriadna Pack hit the shelves we were promised that we will be seeing a lot of the new sectorial troops among the releases. Van Zant continues in that trend. You can see how his standard edition looks like for the first time here, at Data Sphere.

The dossier

The persona and image of Van Zant are based on the Reign of Fire character of Denton Van Zan. A tough-as-nails soldier and commander, he leads his paratroopers to victory despite the odds not being in their favour. He knows no mercy, be it for his enemies or his allies, who fail to meet his expectations.

In the game, Van Zant is an amazing alpha/beta-strike unit – many people, even veteran players, forget that he can come from their Deployment edge and do not set up sentries to counter that. Basically, he is a Para-commando with a twist. If you see an opening that you can exploit, go for it. The fact that the profile now gained the V:Dogged skill means that he can brush off that unlucky crit and keep on going. It’s especially gratyfying if you keep Van Zant until turn two or three because at that point you have probably thinned the enemy ranks so that there’s even less ARO threat to him.

His Executive Order skill means that you can be more aggressive with your other offensive Lietuenants – if they die on your active turn while on a Rambo rampage, you just enter the board with Van Zant, on the same turn, in some safe spot and you avoid going into Loss of Lieutenant, as the LoL state is only counted at the beginning of your turn.

Although he is a little pricey, clocking in at close to 40 points, his special level of Airborne Deployment makes him a very handy tool to have in your arsenal. Many players avoided using the profile because of the older model. Well, now there’s no excuse. Get him and try him out! Be sure to tell us in the comments how it went!