Welcome to the inaugural edition of Deadzone THE Article. With these columns we hope to entertain and maybe even inform a little bit (but don’t count on it).

I guess we should start off introducing ourselves. We are two parts of the whole that is Deadzone the Podcast. I am Rob Harper or BlackSpiral here on the Beasts of War site and my silent, offline cohort is Jack Fyke. We are not hard core gamers, we do not really care about rules, we like pretty looking miniatures and we will offend you (especially if you’re an Orc fan). If you're looking for informative discussion about Deadzone you might want to look elsewhere (like our podcast which is slightly more edifying). However if you want in-depth analysis on why Joey D. Goblin-Sniper is prancing around on a battlefield celebrating during a firefight we're your guys!

Our wargaming pedigree goes back 20 years to us young fresh faced boys discovering Warhammer Fantasy. Before then we painted minis for fun and played AD&D religiously. Jack, myself and another friend went in one the starter box of Elves vs. Orcs.

We split up the miniatures and chose our factions. Jack went ahead and bought some Undead. I snagged the Elves and turned them into Dark Elves mostly because I liked the idea of the cavalry riding lizards. I also built a huge paper-mâché game board that weighed a ton and we played with our minis and lots of proxies for a few months. Jack even got a job working at a Games Workshop store at one point. Eventually the cost of the models, even back then. scared us off, along with those pesky things called lives.

Cut to 20 years later and I'm watching Tabletop and Geek & Sundry which led me to Beasts of War. The beautiful miniatures on the show and site got me hooked. Then the site ran an article about the Deadzone Kickstarter. I was enamoured with the idea of getting so much stuff!! I had never backed a Kickstarter before and now, unfortunately, I can't stop. I emailed Jack and told him he was going to be playing a new game whether he liked it or not and the rest, as they say, is history. As we had already been doing out other podcast Vinnland Old Time Radio it was only natural we start a Deadzone one too. Thus Deadzone The Podcast was born.

We should point out here that we are not affiliated with Mantic Games in any way and I think they’d rather not be associated with us. Luckily, they have to put up with us talking about their game. Thus, we do not know anything you don’t know about Deadzone (in fact I’m sure we know less). We won’t be passing on news or tips as that is Beasts of War’s job or the reason we do a podcast. No, this series of articles will be to entertain and amuse. If we actually inform then consider that to be a pleasant bonus. The truth is we tricked Warren into thinking it will be tangentially associated with Deadzone to get on this gaming site; Ha Ha Suckers!

As we have just started thinking about this article and have nothing really to say this week we thought we’d give an insight into the naming of the column. Jack had two requests when I presented him with the idea of doing a monthly Deadzone article for Beasts of War. The first request was that he didn't have to write anything which, so far, is holding up. The other was that he gets to name the article. His first choice was Jack and the Giant and he pictured it as a "morning zoo" type thing with crazy characters and such.

I quietly explained to him that this was an article not a radio show. He eventually got the concept of the writing medium and thought of more names. Next he wanted to call it the BoWWoW, which quickly degraded in the Powwow. Once again I had to curtail this idea since neither name had anything to do with Deadzone but if Beasts of War ever needs a name for something BoWWoW might be it. His last choice was Deadzone THE Article. I particularly enjoyed this name. We have argued about our podcast name for all 5 episodes so far. Jack has always called the show The Deadzone Podcast where I have called it Deadzone The Podcast and since I post the show I won. So when reading the title of these columns remember the emphasis of the "THE". Jack sees it as a jab to me but I see it as my naming victory!

Well since this is an article about Deadzone I guess we should say something about the game. The rulebook PDFs have been mailed out to all the Kickstarter backers. They have also been updated to include all the cards for the Enforcer and Plague factions which is nice if you want to play the game before the miniature release.

After reading the rules it amazing how simple the game is, which is a hallmark of all Mantic Games' releases. They get you into the game then ramp up the rules with future rulebooks. This was shown in Kings of War and especially Dreadball. In Dreadball Season 1 it had, simple, 2 on 2 games. Then by Dreadball Ultimate all hell has broken out and they're not done yet. I cannot wait to see what Deadzone has in store for the future and maybe we can finally find out what the CSW skill is and what Enforcer Shields do!

So to sum it all up; what should you expect from these articles? Well nothing really, we don’t even know what to expect. So why should you bother reading them? We’re not sure, why did you read this far? I stopped reading it a while back. Oh well. Hopefully the next one will be some what more intelligible and fun… but I doubt it.

Rob Harper & Jack Fyke

If you would like to write an article for Beasts of War then please contact me at [email protected].