Deadzone - The Rebs

I've finished painting the third faction for Deadzone now, the Rebs, who are an alliance of rebels (but definitely not the rebel alliance) of various species who have rebelled against corporation rule.

This means you have a big mix of different models all with widely varying abilities, The Rebs are the faction of the specialist, pretty much everyone is good at what he/she does, but not very good at anything else.  You have to really concentrate on the mission whilst playing the game, it can be difficult to win with the Rebs, but I find it more rewarding when you do.  It also means you have a big variety of interesting minis a well, and although there are obvious influences from serenity/firefly, star wars and star trek amongst others they do tie together nicely into their own unique faction.  I've tried to tie my minis together as a faction by using a palate of browns and greys (unashamedly inspired by firefly) for the cloths and armour.  This also results in them looking a bit dark, dingy and grubby which I think suits the whole Rebel thing.

Rebel Commanders

 

There are two leaders available to the Rebs, these lovely ladies and a Yndij sergeant, I find myself using these most often as they combine reasonable leadership with a reasonable sniping ability.  I've painted them with different hair colour as well just for a bit of variety.

Kraaw warriors and Judwan Medics

 

Two specialists, the flexible Kraaw (glide and one of those pesky blast weapons) and the Judwan medic, which so far I've found overpriced.  The Judwan are pacifists and won't attack at all, and I normally find that once someone gets injured it's rare you have a chance to heal them before they get killed.

Survey Drones

Yndij

Rebel Human Troopers

 

The grunts of the reb force, not very good, but at least they are cheap.  The drones and Yndij at least have their uses, anyone know how to pronounce Yndij?

Grogans with Onslaught Cannons & Desolators

 

Grogans carry the heavy weapons for the Rebs, the blaze away onslaught cannons and the anti-armour desolators.  They're not the best shots, but usefully can move and shoot and hence aim and shoot.  So far I've found the blaze away option to be the best of the two, but that might change when the light vehicles appear in the game in the summer.

Rebel Soraks

 

These are reminiscent of a certain pod racing alien and armed with an interesting blast weapon that rarely does any damage, but is infuriating to play against. 

Teraton Brawlers

To teraton or not to teraton that is normally the question when selecting a Reb force.  Teratons are nasty scary teleporting combat beasts, but they are expensive and I think ultimately slightly overpriced.  But having said that very little else in the Reb force will last long in combat with just about anything.  They are also simply fantastic minis.

Zee Scavengers

TK-Zero Weapons Team

 

I had a bit of an accident when building these, if you look closely at the sphyr loader on the left, you'll see his head is different from the one on the right.  That's because I managed to loose his head on the floor somewhere after what seemed like hours of fruitless searching I gave up and used a spare head from the dreadball asterians, luckily I didn't loose the 'hammerhead' part so in the end I don't think he looks too bad, honest.....

Dreadball Conversions

 

These last three minis were of course designed for deadzone, but I have inducted them into my rebel warband.  The Zee MVP Riller (in the middle) came with my deadzone package for the rescue the MVP scenario in the Nexus PSi campaiagn, I figured he could satnd in for a normal Zee as well.  The other two were also dreadball MVP's that came in the mantic crazy Christmas box, but as I already have copies of both for dreadball I have added guns and given them a grey paint scheme and they now take to the battlefield as a teraton brawler and a human trooper.

PSC Stuart Jalopy Conversions for Flames of War

In my post on my recent acquisitions for flames of war I showed off my new platoon of Stuarts from the plastic soldier company and highlighted the insane amount of spare parts that came with the kit and I asked for some suggestions of how to use them.  Luckily Red Dog came to my aid and suggested I tried to make some Jalopies out of them.  I have to confess that I'd never heard of a 'Jalopy' at this point, but after a quick bit of research I discovered what he was on about, turretless Stuarts found in some late war British lists (I've even found a list they feature in amongst the many I've downloaded from battlefront over the last couple of years), it seemed like I might just be able to make it work and decided to give it a go.

The first step was easy, stick the tracks to the chassis, but this highlighted the essential problem, whilst most of the parts to create a new tank were there, certain crucial bits were missing.  There was no bottom fronts, backs or bottoms.  The fronts were built from the spare ammo carriers from the late production model tipped upside down, the backs were just a bit of thick card decorated with stowage, and well who needs bottoms anyway.

I affixed another piece of thick card under where the turret should be and then added spare tank commanders and machine guns that I had left over from the Open Fire boxed set.  All that was missing then were the hull mounted machine guns which I created simply with a small section of stiff wire with a dash of liquid green stuff to cover the joint.

I know that these aren't perfect, but I'm really rather pleased with myself for creating what are essentially four free tanks!  Thanks again to Red Dog for such a great idea.  On a final note does anybody know what 'Jalopy' means?  Its seems like an odd name.

Some Conversions

So today I'm showing some conversions I did.

First off a Chaos Terminator Lord.

This is based on the Abbadon body that I got in a job lot off ebay.  It was missing its head and sword arm, a simple search through my bitz box and hey presto what I think is a good result. 

Next we have my Blood Knights

I had a totally differnet motivation for converting this unit, unlike the chaos lord who was a 'conversion of opputunity' this was planned as a money saving exercise.  They're based on plastic Bretonnian Knights with the simple addition of one of the vampire counts metal sheild packs and lance arms from the old hybrid chaos knight models (just to make them look a bit more menacing and give them a bulkier look).  The standard come from the plastic zombie sprue with another sheild attached.  I like to imagine my vampire lord has corrupted a group of bretonnian knights, one day I'd like to try and make some bretonnian themed black knights to go with them.