Deadzone: Plague figures constructed

Over the family day weekend I was able to get some time to myself to catch up on some TV. I've been using my Sunday (well, in this case it was actually Monday) evenings to plunk down and do some multi-tasking. Next up for construction were the Plague figures for Deadzone.

The basic box game comes with eleven plague figures total:

- 1x stage 1A
- 3x stage 2A
- 4x stage 3A
- 1x stage 3A with heavy machine gun, and
- 2x stage 3D "hellhounds"

With the Kickstarter level that I pledged at I got some bonus troopers as well:

- 4x stage 3A
- 2x stage 3A with heavy machine gun

I do wish that a few of the bonus figures had been hellhounds, or even an extra stage 2A instead just to add some more variety. Here are a the hellhounds and some knife-waving stage 3As.

With the bonus figures I essentially ended up with triplets of three different figures. Since the main bodies are one piece, and the arms are keyed to a specific body, it's a little tough to modify them very much without some work. I ended up doing some arm and head swaps (a sharp hobby knife was my friend here). As well, I did some hot water repositioning of one set of bodies to vary them up just a little bit. See below for all the sets of triplets. Considering that there are only three different figure designs total here I think they turned out very nicely.

The stage 2As went together smoothly although I was concerned about attaching the jumping guy to the barricade. Pleasantly the super glue I'm using creates a very strong bond with the resin-plastic material of these figures. I'm pretty sure he'll stay attached through regular gaming and transport. I do wish I'd worked out a little more dynamic jumping pose, but it'll suffice I guess. I have to say that these three figures were probably the easiest Plague models to clean up and construct. If I were to acquire another set of them however, they might prove to be a challenge to re-position easily into different stances.

As with most of the Mantic Games figures there were some spots where it crossed highly detailed areas. On the other hand they seem to improving in their casting process. Additionally, I'm getting a lot faster at cleaning up my models for construction. The worst spot ended up being across the right palm of my stage 1A figure. There is a deep line crossing through (not flashing) that I should have done some putty work to cover up. After priming however it's hardly noticeable. Hopefully that will remain true during the painting stage.

At the moment the plague models outnumber my Enforcers by a good margin, but I think that'd be true in the game as well. The Enforcer basic troopers appear to cost a fair bit more than the standard plague trooper.

One can never have too many gribbly monster dudes, and since the second survey is still open for the campaign backers I added a plague booster bundle. I'm also slated to receive a resin 1A figure in my second shipment, and the booster bundle would add several more troopers, another set of 2As, a plague teraton, more hounds and some worm creature things.

I received the Rebs booster bundle with my first shipment, and the Enforcers will be getting lots more troops in the second because I already ordered theirs. I added the Asterians bundle (since the bundles are buy-one-get-one-free!) and that only leaves the Marauders out. I'm not terribly enamoured with the Marauders at the moment and I have plenty of 40k Orks anyway. They'll be easy enough to swap in as reinforcements should I decide I need them.

I'm not sad that I skipped out on the Forge Fathers entirely. I've seen some very well painted figures online, and I do like my Dreadball team but I'd rather buy the fantasy Dwarfs from Mantic over their sci-fi ones. I'm sure there are other folks in my area who will have a Forge Father army for me to destroy, er...I mean play against.