Why You should Plegde On The Deadzone Kickstarter.......

Essentially because I have and the more of you that do the more freebies I get!  But seriously this is looking like a great deal for what you get with a lot of cool stuff.  Lets have a closer look.

Deadzone is mantic games latest game that is being launched on kickstarter, much like dreadball was, and like dreadball is written by the genius that is Jake Thornton.  Although it shares some basic mechainics with dreadball and is set in the same warpath universe, this is an elite skirmish game.  Something I've been wanting to add to my collection since the winter when it's too cold to play on my large table in the garage.  We tried a home-brew system, but well I'm no rules designer and this looks simple and elagant, but full of possibilities.

If you're going to pledge you should really be looking at the $150 (note thats dollars not pounds) strike team level which gets you the rules, a board, a bunch of scenary, 4 complete factions (plus a 5th one of your choice free!)  and some special chracaters (and hopefully soon some zombies).

Just on the amount of stuff you get it's good value, but I think the real value in this set is the versitily of it and the different ways it can all be used.  The core way of playing is as a standard skirmish battle game one on one trying to kill each other.  Fine.  Great.  But it's much more than that it also has a Mordheim/Necromunda style campaign system, which as we all know are a lot of fun.  It also come with the nexus-psi campaign which is a narritive camapaign using set models and objectives, currently 7 scenarios, although that might rise further yet if more poeple plegde, thats more scenarios than came in dwarf kings hold:dead rising which was a scenario driven game...  And thats not all, solo rules are in the works so you can blow up some.....

you'll get 5 zombies for free but 20 more for an extra $15 is hard to resist

Zombies!  Another great addition to the game is the shambling zombies that will attack all factions even the plague they are 'related' too.  Which means of course you have to fight the 'enviroment' as well as your opponent.  All in all thats a lot of value and gameplay variety from one set.

 

But I'm not finished.. all the models and scenary can also be used for sci-fi wargames!  The scenary will obviously easily translate and you can never have enough scenary  it's rather cool stuff as well thats deisgned to be assembled in many different ways.  The models will all have rules for warpath and I'm going to slot most of them into my 40K armies as well.  I already use enforcers in my imperial guard, the plague are going to make great mutated cultists and the bigger ones chaos spawn.  The rebs will make a fanatastic alt Imperial gaurd squad as well (probaly veterans) and although the marauders are orcs I'm tempted to use thoose ripper suits with guns as obliterators. 



Look at everything you get so far! 5 sci-fi zombies to be added soon as well and a whole week to go!

Pledge now!

40K - Imperial Guard Reinforcements

A whole bunch of new stuff for my 40K Imperial Guard detactment today.  Starting with this chimera APC.  This came second hand off ebay, and needed a bit of work to make it bearable (thats what I get for being a cheapskate), but it's come through in the end I think (even if I still don't like the dozer blade), and will proove very useful.

Next we have a squad of 6 ratling snipers, very useful and very characterful models, this is the third time I've painted this squad and I'm finally happy with it.

Next a catachan captain, this has always been one of my favorite models ever since it first came out.

Next we have a random ebay purchase.  Mantic have never said as much but these enforcers are clearly their take on space marines, jolly nice they are too, in fact when put next to a space marine the enforcers realistic proportions make the space marines look cartoony and a bit silly.  These won't be joining my space marine army but I'm planning to use them as count as storm troopers for the Imperial Guard. I might see if I can pick up another 5 cheap off ebay as well to complete the squad.

The detail on these is really great, they're made from mantic's plastic-resin material, which I'm afraid I'm going off of.  Sticking them together was a giant pain, and they lack the options a hard plastic sprue would provide.

And finally not technically Imperial Guard, but we have this rogue trader era Inquisitor, who I feel would make a nice 'counts as' for a HQ choice.

The Hobbit - Hunter Orcs

Just a quicky today, a few pics of my newly painted hunter orcs from GW's Hobbit range.  Not a lot else to say really, comments as always welcome...

Dreadball - Season 2 Arrives

 

I have only 3 models left to paint from my Dreadball season 1 shipment and what do you know season 2 shows up on the doorstep!  This time we have the season 2 book, 4 new teams (robots, female corp, judwan and Z'zor), some new MVP's and the pack of 4 coaches.  The book is of the same style and format as the first one, and contains a mismash of bits as well as rules for all the new models.

 

The models are much better this time round, both in sculpting, conception and production.  One thing that didn't sit well with me with season one was the reliance on fantasy sterotypes for what is supposed to be a science fiction game, thankfully all of the new teams move away from that and add a nice bit of extra complexity.

 

 

 

It's not all sweetless and light though, I've got two problems with my package (as the picture above shows).  The first is a headless 'bonus' female corp guard, this is actually only a small disapointment as the female corp are my least favorite team and I'm unlikely to run them in a league and still have enough for a starting team for one off games.  The second issuse is with the Z'zor team which came with 3 guards and 4 jacks, and as a starting team has 5 jacks and only 1 guard, which means a third gaurd can never be used and you don't get enough jacks to even start playing with them!  Well I've e-mailed mantic and await to see how they deal with these issuses.

 

Below are a few examples of the 50+ models that have been added to the painting queue! 

 

Warpath - Fate Of The Forge Star

 

A look at a random ebay purchase today, this time the warpath starter set fate of the forgestar by mantic games.  I've been buying stuff from mantic ever since they first appeared, and have generally been happy with what I've bought, this is my first foray into warpath though.

Apart from the models the set includes a rules booklet, which have the basic warpath rules on and some green dice.  The dice are great actually and it was nice to get a few of a different colour rather than just another bunch of white ones.  The rules booklet is less good, it's a bit to basic for a large scale battle game and just doesn't seem to provide that fun a game.  One thing lacking is any instructions for assembling the models, I've been doing this for a long time and had no issuses, but this is supposed to be a starter set and I can imgine a beginner being very confused what they're supposed to do with the giant pile of sprues. 

The main part of the box is of course the plastic models, you get 40 orx marauders and 15 forgefathers (only 10 forgefathers in later versions).  I like the style of the orxs quite a lot and although I've moaned about the plastic forgefathers in the past I like them a bit more now that I've actaully seen them in person.  The only problem really with these is the lack of variety, they come on either 2 or 3 man sprues, which leads to few options for making the guys look different from each other.

The set also contains a few 'premium' models made out of mantics 'restic' material. A squad of 5 forgefather stormrage veterans, a forgefather artillery piece and an orx trike.  The stormrage veterans are the highlight of the set and really rather nice.  The restic doesn't work so well for the two vehicles, the moulding seemed to be slightly warped and sticking them together was a real pain, these really should have been in hard plastic.

 

So now I've got these guys do I have a plan? Well of course I do, the forgefathers will be painted up in the same scheme as my squats and be used as counts as imperial guard to ally with my space marines, the cannon thing will then be used as a counts as thunderfire cannon.  The orx I'm going to paint with normal human flesh tones and use them as mutated chaos cultists for my alpha legion army.  I'm not 100% sure that it's going to come off but I'm going to give it a go.  I haven't thought of anything to do with the trike yet, it might go off to ebay to raise a couple of quid, or possibly get turned into a wreck for a terrain piece... suggestions welcomed.

 

 

Overall a bargin for £20, not so sure if I'd recomend it at full retail price though.  Compared to the Dark Vengeance boxed set this comes off poorly and feels like the budget set it is, still if you can get it at the price I did it's cheaper than a single space marine tactical squad!  I'm not going to start playing warpath though, these are definatly going into my 40K armies.