I was a backer for the Deadzone miniatures game. I had no
previous experience with Mantic games other than seeing pictures of their
models online. The reasons I backed the Deadzone project is they had delivered
Dreadball by the date they promised on that kickstarter and I wanted the
terrain. I figured that even if the terrain did not work on its own at the
price they were asking for it I could use the panels to decorate foamcore or
cardboard buildings.
This post will be a first impression. I have spent some time
reading the rules as well as cleaning terrain and models. I have yet to
actually paint a model or play a game. These are my opinions on the product I
have received as of this writing and are subject to change as I familiarize
myself more with the game.
The Models
First thing I would like to cover is the models. The
infantry pieces are made of a substance some in the community like to call
restic. It is a resin plastic with different properties from those released by
Forge World or the GW Finecast line, yet is not polystyrene which is what most
people in the hobby tend to refer to as plastic even though both types of
material are in fact plastics. The pieces are pretty soft, but not as soft as
board game pieces one might find in a Fantasy Flight game for instance.
There was a lot of flashing and mold lines. I was dreading
the clean up when I first saw the material as the models seem to be made of a
similar, yet slightly softer, material to the Privateer Press plastic models.
There was also the issue with some pieces where a multi-part mold was used so I
was playing hunt the mold lines on a
couple of pieces.
I was surprised by how much easier the Mantic plastic was to
work with than the Privateer Press plastic. The mold lines were pretty obvious
because of all of the flash so hunting was kept to a minimum and were removed
simply and fairly cleanly. Do not get me wrong, these plastic models are
nowhere near the quality of the Games Workshop plastic models nor the Finecast
line, but Mantic is not charging Games Workshop prices. There was loss of
detail due to the material being used. I get this with the Privateer Press
plastic models as well.
The difference for me is that Privateer Press models are
harder to clean than the Mantic models, and retail for $5+ a model for the vast
majority of their plastic kits with multiple models where Games Workshop tends
to charge $3 a model in many kits with extra parts. Even GW’s most expensive
standard infantry kits work out to $6 a model with extra bits. I greatly prefer
the GW plastics to pretty much every other plastic kit I have tried in the
hobby up to this point, but Mantic is not terrible outside of the loss of some
details. Mantic is working on a “hard” plastic and it will be interesting to
see the quality and price. You get what you pay for with these few Mantic
models I have been working with. The quality is much better than I was
expecting. I wish they had gone with a similar process to GW, but the models
are not bad for what they are.
The Setting
Miranda
Next
Oh, you want more?
There is very little background material at this point.
Mantic is working on rectifying this with a series of stories. Essentially the
story is there are times when the ruling body decides they need to quarantine
sections of space from the rest. Those sections disappear from star maps and no
communication gets in or out. From the outside it seems like these sections of
space simply cease to be there. This might last for decades or even centuries
where the billions of people in the sector are left to fend for themselves
against not only the threat at hand, but soldiers they thought would protect
them as well.
The threat can vary. One example is the Plague. The Plague
is an alien life form that transmits similar to a virus and transforms other
living beings into creatures collectively referred to as the Plague. The Plague
are one of the six factions which makes up the game. The others are the
Enforcers who are sent into an area to clean up whatever mess is being
contained, Marauders which are Space Orx (very original), and Rebs who are
people that found themselves trapped in the containment zone. The Enforcers
have the best equipment on their basic troops including armour with thick
plates where the Rebs could be painted up as Space Cowboys without the hats if
one wants as there are a lot of dusters to be found. The other two factions are
coming with wave two. All I know about them is they are Space Dwarves and Space
Elves with the Elf faction actually consisting of one elf and a bunch of robots
that assist the Elf.
The Rules
I will not say much as of yet. All I have done is read the
rules and watched some videos at this point so anybody reading this might want
a mountain of salt.
I like what I have read so far. There is some ambiguity, but
it seems like they have plans for another book already. At first the rulebook
reads clearly, but there had been a couple of points already I had questions on
and was not able to find an answer in the book itself. One example was the Frag
special rule. In the rules themselves it does not tell if this is done as a
Shoot or Blaze Away action. Blaze Away is an action which targets a cube where
Shoot targets a single model. The question on which to use is made clear by
every model with the rule can only target a single model with a weapon with
Frag at this point, but it would have been nice to have it clarified in the
rules themselves.
Aspects I like the idea of so far are the small play area,
the dice mechanic, and campaign play even if it is on the light side. The cards
seem interesting and a supplement rather than a core mechanic. At this point I
think I will pick up the expansion when it is released unless I end up hating
the game after playing it some.
The Terrain
The terrain is the primary reason I bought into the game. I
have two core sets and one landing pad set. Well, half a landing pad set as I
was only sent half of the sprues. The terrain is made of a hard plastic. It
feels like polystyrene, but I have yet to try anything that reacts chemically
with polystyrene to know for certain.
The tiles look good. They look better than the miniatures
actually. The plastic is pretty thick and the details are not fine so I do not
know if the same machines and material could work with the actual miniatures or
not, but they work fine for the terrain.
The connectors sometimes work. The tiles themselves have
mold lines inside the holes where the connectors go. I have used a needle file
to clean up the mold lines inside the holes with mixed results. Different connectors
will work differently in the same hole on the tiles where they are supposed to
be all the same size. The buildings will work with some glue. I am thinking
about not filing my second set of core terrain as even with the filing on the
first set some connectors are still tight and some are loose. At this point I
think I am going to end up gluing the models together instead of keeping the
individual tiles modular.
The Verdict (for now)
Overall, I am happy with my purchase at this point. I still
have another faction and the AI deck to come along with two missing pieces and some
terrain sprues. Even if the game itself turns out not to be all that much fun I
now have a 2’ x 2’ mouse pad along with terrain that I can use for games of
Necromunda or even in 40K. While I wish the models were of a better quality, I
do not hate the models and think they are pretty good for the price point
Mantic will likely sell them for.
