The box that I received containing my first shipment of Deadzone items was second in size only to my Zombicide Kickstarter package. What I mean by that is simply...holy crap more stuff. As I've mentioned previously I'm a fan of Mantic Games, even if their resin-plastic model material isn't fabulous to clean up.
After spending several hours (far too long really), sorting out all the contents for Deadzone I was able to get all of the items into the base game box barring the scenery sprues. Those I sorted, labeled with sticky notes and wrapped with an elastic band each. I clipped all the connectors from the sprues and dropped those into a bag for later use. I know that I could have primed the connectors on the sprues first, but it didn't seem to be worth the effort. The shipping box barely survived mailing so I cracked it down and threw it out. Less wasted space, but the scenery will need to be stored in something eventually.
Out of curiosity I clipped all the stuff off one of the accessory sprues. It takes up a lot less space this way. Two of the pieces here did need glued together: the lamp post (technically three pieces), and the square crate. I don't think I'll clip any more stuff off the sprue until I prime them all. It'll be much faster with a spray can than my airbrush.
There were some stretch reward scenery bonuses (air scrubbers and heat exchangers?) that I received, and I bought the Antenociti scenery packages as well. This stuff is all resin and will take some time to get sorted. Between all of this stuff and the Sedition Wars scenery pack from last year, I'm set for building pretty much any sci-fi table imaginable!
With all of the clerical work done I decided to start putting the Enforcer figures together.
Pros:
- Good mix of figures and weaponry
- Cool sci-fi trooper / armour design
- Dynamic poses (with a little work)
- Sentry Guns!
Cons:
- Could be a few less parts
- Detail is a little soft
- Basic 5 troopers a little picky to construct
Maybe I'm just used to the casting quality and material Mantic uses now, but I really didn't find cleaning up these figures all that bad. Yes they have mould lines, yes you need to cut them off with a knife rather than scrape or file, and yes the bases are a little different. One of the integrated bases (on the rocket launcher dude) was way too big to fit into the cutout on the base and required a large amount of trimming. Otherwise it was a standard exercise in trimming off the mould lines and gluing them together.
One of the main selling points of Deadzone for me, was actually the Enforcer faction. I know a lot of people out there find them to be rather generic sci-fi troopers, but I very much like their design. I think they're close enough to the Vanguard from Sedition Wars that they could almost be mixed in as elite troops, and you could certainly proxy a full army of space marines in 40k with the two. They are a little larger though, so you might not mix them in as regulars but they could serve as terminators or devastators nicely enough I think.
I have already got plans for a white armour scheme for the SW Vanguard figures. I plan on using small splashes of red, green and blue to split them up into squads. As a fan of the Mantic studio scheme for the Enforcers, I will be using yellow splashes on them to do the same. While it's unlikely that I'll be adding them together in games, they'll probably all be displayed together.
I'm not sure when I'll get around to painting these. I've already constructed the Plague miniatures, and I'd like to build some scenery first so that I can do a few run-throughs of the Deadzone rules. So many games, so many figures, so few people I can talk into playing...
--Transmission End--
After spending several hours (far too long really), sorting out all the contents for Deadzone I was able to get all of the items into the base game box barring the scenery sprues. Those I sorted, labeled with sticky notes and wrapped with an elastic band each. I clipped all the connectors from the sprues and dropped those into a bag for later use. I know that I could have primed the connectors on the sprues first, but it didn't seem to be worth the effort. The shipping box barely survived mailing so I cracked it down and threw it out. Less wasted space, but the scenery will need to be stored in something eventually.
Out of curiosity I clipped all the stuff off one of the accessory sprues. It takes up a lot less space this way. Two of the pieces here did need glued together: the lamp post (technically three pieces), and the square crate. I don't think I'll clip any more stuff off the sprue until I prime them all. It'll be much faster with a spray can than my airbrush.
There were some stretch reward scenery bonuses (air scrubbers and heat exchangers?) that I received, and I bought the Antenociti scenery packages as well. This stuff is all resin and will take some time to get sorted. Between all of this stuff and the Sedition Wars scenery pack from last year, I'm set for building pretty much any sci-fi table imaginable!
With all of the clerical work done I decided to start putting the Enforcer figures together.
Pros:
- Good mix of figures and weaponry
- Cool sci-fi trooper / armour design
- Dynamic poses (with a little work)
- Sentry Guns!
Cons:
- Could be a few less parts
- Detail is a little soft
- Basic 5 troopers a little picky to construct
Maybe I'm just used to the casting quality and material Mantic uses now, but I really didn't find cleaning up these figures all that bad. Yes they have mould lines, yes you need to cut them off with a knife rather than scrape or file, and yes the bases are a little different. One of the integrated bases (on the rocket launcher dude) was way too big to fit into the cutout on the base and required a large amount of trimming. Otherwise it was a standard exercise in trimming off the mould lines and gluing them together.
One of the main selling points of Deadzone for me, was actually the Enforcer faction. I know a lot of people out there find them to be rather generic sci-fi troopers, but I very much like their design. I think they're close enough to the Vanguard from Sedition Wars that they could almost be mixed in as elite troops, and you could certainly proxy a full army of space marines in 40k with the two. They are a little larger though, so you might not mix them in as regulars but they could serve as terminators or devastators nicely enough I think.
I have already got plans for a white armour scheme for the SW Vanguard figures. I plan on using small splashes of red, green and blue to split them up into squads. As a fan of the Mantic studio scheme for the Enforcers, I will be using yellow splashes on them to do the same. While it's unlikely that I'll be adding them together in games, they'll probably all be displayed together.
I'm not sure when I'll get around to painting these. I've already constructed the Plague miniatures, and I'd like to build some scenery first so that I can do a few run-throughs of the Deadzone rules. So many games, so many figures, so few people I can talk into playing...
--Transmission End--
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