Deadzone - The Plague - Part 1

 

The leaders, a stage 3 'General' and the mighty Stage 1

I got a lot of plague with my deadzone package, more than any other faction, with two starter sets, two boosters and a specialist booster and I've finished painting the first batch of them which are on show here today.

Stage 2's

 

Like most of the other deadzone models these are made out of mantics sprue-less resin plastic, and these are some of the best minis I've seen made in the medium.  They've been a lot of fun to paint as well.  I've eschewed the pink scheme of the official models for this green scheme instead so that they will fit in with my alpha legion army for 40K, where I plan too use the stage 3's as cultists and the stage 2's as spawn.  One unexpected consequence of this is they all look a little bit like the hulk....

 

Hellhounds

 

Stage 3 Specialists

 
We've found the plague to be one of the two most effective factions (along with the enforcers) in the game, and whilst they are of course mainly combaty, good use of suppression fire and/or grenades can be essential to getting the most out of your combat beasts.  The swarms (which I've not yet finished painting) seem to be the most efficient of the bigger models, but stage 2's and teratons have been good too.  I've not quite managed to work out the stage ones yet though, potentially lethal in combat, but so slow it's difficult for them to get anywhere and actually get a chance to harm anyone.

Stage 3 Mortar team

 

Stage 3 troopers

 

 

Stage 2 Teraton and Dr Simmonds

Army Focus - Warhammer High Elf Army

The Army - click to enlarge

Sometimes it takes a while to finish a post, the words won't quite come, or I get distracted by something else, but none of my other posts have taken quite as long as this one to finish.  This post has been in draft form for the last two years, just waiting for me to finish painting my last unit of sea-guard so I could post it up, but finally I've finished the final unit and today I present my High Elf army for Warhammer fantasy.

The Heroes that normally lead my force

 

As with most projects this started with a flurry of activity before the inevitable decline in interest, the start of this army was the release of the Island of Blood starter set for 8th edition warhammer, and the figures from this set form the core of the army.  This army has also been assembled on the cheap, it's built around two lots of Island of blood elves (minus the second griffon rider) and a bunch of the original 4th plastics I've had since I first started with warhammer, with a few extras mostly from ebay.  The back ranks of my two seaguard units are the old plastic spearmen with plastic quivers stuck on the back, I think they look fine when the army is all ranked up, even if they are a bit short.

The Mighty Dragon Princes

 

An ancient sea-elf bolt thrower

 

The new plastic high elves are fantastic models, but boy do they have a lot of details, which is partly responsible for me taking so long to finish this project.  I've gone for a much darker scheme than most high elf armies as well, eschewing the traditional white robes for blue, but still keeping the white trim.  I'm not a fan of overly bright elf armies, to my mind all elves are a bit dark.

The old 3rd ed archers given a new lick of paint and life

I've had a lot of fun playing with this army as well, mostly at the 1000pts and 1500pts levels, the army can put out a scary amount of arrows which can devastate lightly armoured troops, and provides some excellent punch particularly from the swordmasters of hoeth.  The army is very vulnerable though and you have to play carefully otherwise your low toughness, lightly armoured troops will easily fall.  This combination makes for a great play experience.

Swordmasters and mages

As always with these posts I'll finish with a look at the future of this collection.  Well actually it's finished for the moment, everything's painted and I have a balanced army painted to a standard I'm more than happy with.  Who am I kidding I hope to add another 5 dragon princes, a lord on a dragon and one of those new flying chariots at some point, but as usual I have no idea when.

The Seaguard

Army Focus - Star Wars Miniatures Seperatists

the collection - click to enlarge

 

Welcome to the fourth instalment in my series showcasing my star wars miniatures collection (links to Imperials Rebels Republic).  This time showing the last of the four major factions, the CIS, more comanly known as the seperatists.  I've left these till last as they're undoubtedly my least favourite of the four, and due to that this collection is a but smaller than the other three.

The speratists force is all about the droids.  In star wars miniatures droids don't normally get the benefit of commander effects, but these ones do and the right combination can turn them from being useless into a very powerful and deadly force.  There's a big variety in the droids you can field as well, from the humble 4pt battle droid all the way upto vulture and tank droids.

It's not just droids thought, you also get a couple of sith lord options, a couple of mean bounty hunters and various forms of General Grevious (a cyborg, not a droid) with which to lead your force.

Deadzone - Enforcer Faction Starter Set & Chovar Psychic

 

 

The Captain flanked by two assault enforcers

The first models from my mighty deadzone package have been finished and today we are looking mainly at the enforcers.  The enforcers are one of the two factions included in the basic set, and as such most players are going to end up with some, luckily I think they're great.

Enforcers with assault rifles

Half of these enforcers were actually designed for warpath as there's been a delay in the deadzone specific ones, which of course means that I've loads more enforcers due in the second package from the kickstarter, including some rather nifty looking ones with shotguns and riot shields.

Sniper, Heavy Laser Burst and Missile Launcher

 

I had a bit of a dilemma over the choice of colour scheme as I painted a unit of enforcers a while ago for my Imperial Guard army.  I really like the example scheme mantic came up with for all the photos in the book, but in the end I decided to paint these in the same scheme as my original batch.  I'm considering re-basing the originals now to match these.

The engineer deploys his sentry guns

Gamewise we've found the enforcers very powerful so far.  They don't get a lot of models but each is flexible, powerful and tough.  I don't think they're inherently more powerful than the other factions, but they are more forgiving and seem to have a gentler learning curve,

Mercenary Recon Unit N32-19 and his floaty friend

 

 

I've also painted this Chovar Psychic mercenary.  I've not used him yet, but his rules indicate he has the potential to be a powerful support piece.  He's an interesting model, I'm assuming he uses his psychic powers to float around as he seems to lack any other means of supporting his body.  One thing the deadzone book is missing is a proper background section with details like that.

Happy New Year 2014 & 2013 Highlights

Happy New Year everybody!

As is tradition at this time of year lets start with looking back at those pesky resolutions I set this time last year and see how I did.

1.  Finish the damned high elf unit

Oh so close, 20 out of 25 painted and the last 5 75% done, that's very nearly a completed high elf army, which should be featuring on this blog soon.


2.  Paint all the models from my Hobbit boxed set.

Yep, all completed some time ago, a great set with a lot of great models.


3.  Paint all the models from the dreadball kickstarter and actually play a bunch of games.

Only around half painted, but we have played quite a bit.


4.  Don't buy any models between new year and easter (clearly silly, but another attempt to reduce the queue).

Not even close!


So this years resolutions:

Actually I'm not setting any for next year, it looks like it's going to be a complicated year and I'm not sure how it's going to pan out.  I would like to see all the deadzone stuff painted though, but we will see.


For a bit of a change I am instituting an awards ceremony for my blog, alas no prizes or statuettes for anyone, it's  just a bit of fun.  This is going to mainly look at my collection and gaming over the last year.

Favorite Project finished in the last 12 months.

Without doubt painting all the models from the Hobbit: escape from goblin town boxed set.  Great book, great film, great models.

Most Popular Post

The post written this year that generated the most interest was by far this look at my Imperial collection for star wars miniatures.  This was a bit of a surprise for me as star wars miniatures is a dead game, but the force is obviously still strong with this one (sorry!).

 

 

 Best Wargame

A tricky on this, the game I've played most of this year has been 40K, but whilst we've had some good games it's not really generated any true excitement.  The winner is deadzone, which even though recently arrived has got my gaming group excited about a game in a way I've not seen in ages.  We've a lot more to explore with this and I'm really looking forward to it.

 

 

Best Card/Board Game

 

Another close one, with dreadball nearly making it a double for Mantic games, but actually I'm giving the award to this little dinosaur fighting card game that I love.

 

 

 

Favourite new miniatures

 

The toughest and ultimately most important category.  And the winner is this Victorian adventurers and explorers from wargames foundry.  I never quite got around to finishing off the rules for the dinosaur hunting project I had planned, but these are fantastic miniatures nonetheless.

Best Trip

As always I've been out and about to many places this year including a few, like Pembroke and Pendennis castle, that I never quite got around to writing about.  The best day trip this year was undoubtedly to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.  There is just so much awesome stuff there and it completely filled a day.

 

Best Wargames Company 

 

And finally what was my favourite company of the year?  Well despite some great stuff coming out of GW, like the Hobbit minis, and the new Space Marine codex, plus all the new expanded digital offerings ultimately the prices mean I've had to go elsewhere for a lot of my hobby fix, as great as most GW products are, I don't think a lot of them have value for money (for me anyway).  

 

The winner is therefore predictably Mantic games, the minis aren't as good as GWs, but for the value for money is much much higher.  Dreadball and Deadzone are both fantastic games and Kickstarters are great entertainment.  Then you have things like the crazy Christmas box.  Overall mantic are just more fun.

 

That's all folks, thanks for reading, and feel free to disagree in the comments!

From the Painting Table 9

I've managed to get a little bit of painting in over the winter break and actually managed to finish off a couple of projects that I present below.

First is the Thranduil from GW's new The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug range.  He wasn't cheap or to be honest good value, but he is very nice.

This is a squad of Mantic Games corporation troopers, these have a dual role in my collection.  They actually come from the project Pandora boardgame I got cheap a while back, but will also be seeing service in my Imperial Guard army for 40K.

And finally this Loka earth rook which came from this years mantic crazy Christmas box.  I like this guy a lot and am quite tempted to get a set of the pieces now.

Mantic Crazy Christmas Box 2013

Another year and another random box of assorted goodies from mantic for a cheap price, a mere £20.  As it's still avaliable as I write this I thought some of you might like to see what the box contains.  Well at least what my box contains as mantic do say contents will very. 

This seems to have been put together as a sort of 'sampler' of mantics range with a bit of everything thrown in, so broken down by game system we have:

Kings of War:
- 10 x elf bowmen
- 10 x human spearmen/swordsmen
- 3 x ogres

Warpath:
- 5 x forgefather stormrage veterans
- 2 x marauders

Dreadball
- dozer, giant
- helder, MVP

Deadzone
- sorak
- yindi

Loka
- earth elemental

And I also got a copy of mantic journal 4 which includes a mantic point. 

The only thing to note is that no bases are included, but I have plenty of spares kicking around so it's no issue to me.

 

That's 35 mins for £20, really not a bad deal.  I don't have much use for the elves, but everything else will be useful, I'm particulary chuffed with the deadzone minis and the ogres.

Treebeard Some Call Me......

The release of the extended DVD version of the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey a couple of weeks ago has inspired me to paint a few models off my pile of Lord of the rings figures, the star of which is the mighty ent treebeard, but I've painted a few smaller characters as well.

The DVD was worth waiting for rather than getting the standard edition earlier in the year.  The extra scenes themselves are OK, but I can see why they got cut from the theatrical release.  The extra features are however fantastic and I've sat through and enjoyed around 8 hours worth of the documentaries plus the full length directors commentary.  I'll defiantly be getting the extended versions of the other films.

The first miniature releases for the desolation of Smaug are out now as well, the elf rangers look fantastic and I'm planning on getting some at some point (although not straight away as I have all those deadzone models to paint).

 

Treebeard

 

 

 

The sons of Elrond, Elladan & Elrohir.

 

Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, a high elf spearman and Grima Wormtongue.

 

Gorbag & Shagrat.

Deadzone Arrives

The first batch of stuff from the Deadzone kickstarter has arrived, actually it arrived over a week ago and it's taken me that long to glue it all together.  The first thing was the sheer size of the box, which was massive!  I think it's the biggest box of minis I've ever got delivered at one time.

Lets get straight to the minis, at this point I received plague, enforcer, marauder and rebs starters, along with plague, marauder and rebs booster sets and a selection of mercs.  Overall I'm very pleased with them, some great sculpts, even the marauders that I wasn't keen on look better in the flesh, the rebs and plague steal the show though and I can't wait to paint them up.  Some of the minis still suffer from mantic's mould line problem, but it wasn't too hard to fix, and some of them come in many, many, small pieces, the merc 'wrath' was a particular pain.  I needed a lot of super-glue to stick it all together.  I had a couple of 'warped' minis as well, but a quick dip in nearly boiling easily fixed the problem, so give that a go if you get any similar models from mantic.

The rulebook is full colour and in the same format as the dreadball one, not read all the rules yet, but production quality seems good and it's all very pretty.  The other star of the set is however the 2' x 2' gaming mat, which is frankly fantastic.  The material feels and looks good, doesn't crease, and has an appropriate, and nicely generic piece of artwork.

The scenary is a bit of a mixed bag, although I'm happy with it overall.  I got a lot more than I was expecting, and the tiles themselves are great and there's a lot you can do with them.  The connectors are a bit of a let down, they don't hold the tiles together properly and building even medium sized structures is a complete pain, however luckily there is an easy solution.  I've started gluing the pieces together, whilst this means I won't be able to rebuild the kits every time I play, it also means I won't have too which for me at least is a definite bonus.  I'll probably get some more of mantic's terrain at some point, and it's good, I just don't think it's endlessly rebuildable like they claim.

unfortunately this is a mantic kickstarter package, and that means it's missing a couple of bits, this time I only got 6 dice not 10, and I got an extra reb human and a missing a Sorak, not the end of the world and hopefully mantic will sort this out for me as they have with the issuses with my dreadball pledge (eventually).

The only real issues with this kickstarter stuff is that I'm starting to feel a little bit overwhelmed with all the stuff I have, the painting queue is massive, and I've not yet had time to fully explore all of dreadball yet and now I have this and a small mars attack pledge to work on as well.  It's a good problem to have.

 

Overall deadzone has turned out to be fantastic value for money, I can't believe how much stuff I've got and all the stuff that's still to come (asterians, forge fathers, more enforcers and sci-fi zombies).  I'd better stop here and go get painting........