Dust Tactics Starter Review: The Allies

Welcome Soldier, some of you have volunteered and some of you didn't but all of you will eventually realize what 's at stakes after seeing our enemies.
Thankfully, we'll vanquish the vermin SSU trying to take a hold in California and Alaska while liberating Europe from the Axis tyranny as it is only a matter of time before they fall before the strength of the Allied Warmachine!

Now grab your boots and your rifle, because we're going to review your entrypoint into the meatgrinder that WWII has become: The Allied Taskforce.

The Allied Taskforce has many elements to it:

-A Double-Sided Map: so you and your troops don't get lost and get to the fighting. The map complements that of an enemy Taskforce/Kampfgrupp/Battlegroup to make a full map for the fighting to happen.

-Three Tiles: They can represent Quonset Hut/Impassable Structure, a Forest/Rubbles and Objectives/Weapon Crates, know the lay of the land and use terrain to your advantage.

-A Tank Trap to reduce enemy walkers' mobility.

-A Nice Manual: Every soldier needs one! Read it carefuly as it explains how to use the men, weapons and equipment under your command.

-A Hero: In this Taskforce, you'll have the help from Bazooka Joe: a Special Ops specialist who's also good at cutting enemy goons when the fighting gets thick.

-A Squad of Grim Reapers: Every Allied Colonel has these guys in their arsenal, bringing good mobility and dual machine-guns, they ensure you keep the sky clear of planes while bringing tremendous anti-infantry firepower.

-A Squad of Bot Hunters: its a Ranger Heavy Weapon Squad, a team of five guys who know how to use Bazookas and under-barrel grenade launchers. They will be a great thorn in your opponent's feet as they can deal with both infantry and ground vehicles effectively.

-A Pounder: everyday  the Allied factories are churning more and more of this technological marvel to help our war effort and you'll see firsthand on the battlefield that the Pounder has been worth every trouble transporting it and maintaining it. Packing a punch against both enemy walkers and soldiers, this walker is also able to move and relocate quickly on the battlefield and our engineers went through the trouble of fitting the weapon on a turret for a higher firing arc and flexibility, an advantage many opponents underestimate and many more young Allied commanders fail to understand.

NOTE: Our engineers being so creative, you can retrofit the Pounder into a short-barreled Mickey by removing its canon (you won't have the card for it in the starter), the Mickey is a highly mobile infantry-shredding monster. One of my favorite walker in the world despite lacking anti-tank capability.

-Cards for your units: So you can remember what they do during the heat of battle. They are laminated and units have little blank squares so you can keep track of ammunition levels even when under enemy fire.

Last but not least, you get 12 dice...to play with in your landing craft while awaiting deployment. They are a little smaller than the original dice given by high command to previous commanders but they know have more symbols on them.

So? Satisfied? I know I was when I got assigned my first Taskforce, as an Allied Commander and former enemy...yeah don't ask...I can say the Allied Taskforce looks like the most balanced amongst the three blocs' Taskforce/Kampfgrupp/Battlegroup: It has very good anti-infantry (Bazooka Joe, Grim Reapers, Bot Hunters and to some extent the Pounder), very good anti-tank (Bot Hunters and Pounder) and even very-good anti-air (Grim Reapers). All units you'll want times and again even when high command will give you funds to support more troops.

With these men under your command, expect to win many victories.
Now go get your things, you are deployed tomorrow in Operation April Storm.

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NOTE 2: Wow! Like Francois who bought the Axis Kampfgrupp, I'm highly satisfied with my Allied Starter: for the price (50$ retail) you get an extremely good deal: 10miniatures (with one being a vehicle), 12 dice, a Tank Trap (I love these!) and the quality of the Cards and Rule Manual is excellent!
I must admit I was not too keen that Tactics, Warfare and the whole world of Dust would see changes in rules and publisher but Battlefront still surprises me with how they handle Dust, I give them and Dust Studio a 10/10 for this starter, one of the best deal on the market!!

To give you an idea of starters from other games so you can compare:

-Warmachine: 49.99$ (Plastic models)
 -3 to 5 models.
-A Quickstart rulesheet

-Mercs: 65$ (Metal models)

-6 models with very nice sculpts

-Nice Laminated Cards

-6 Dice

-Malifaux: 45-50$ (Plastic models)
-5-6 highly detailed plastic models
-Nice Laminated Stats and Upgrade Cards

-Warhammer Dark Vengeance: 99$(US) to 119$(CAN) (this 20$ difference is outrageous!!)

-48 models (28 Chaos, 20 Dark Angels)
-Full Mini Rulebook (the reason why most people chose to buy this box)
-Dice + Scenarios
=The problem: 2 factions in the same box: you need a friend or someone interested to halve the cost of this box...and if you do, one of the two doesnt get a rulebook.

Each of these starters has pro and cons and I think Dust Studio and Battlefront did one of the better starter value-wise as it is quite a good deal and can stand the comparison to these starters.
One thing you also can't see in this starter comparison is the rule system behind each though: while Malifaux Starters are 80% of an army, the 40k and Warmachine Starters aren't so much, etc...(This Allied Dust Starter is roughly 1/3 of the points needed for a Warfare game).

Yup thats it for the comparison, if you want me to compare more details or have comments....Well leave some comments below!
Thanks for reading!