Delving back into Deadzone

6th November 2022

This week I started into this project, making my first move on 2nd November.

As with Warcry, I decided to start out with the terrain. (I have some minis painted already, but plan to add more)

Most of my first edition scenery was still on sprues, so first things first – I needed to do something about that.

Taking over the table again I pulled out the sprues, plus the other boxes of terrain I have picked up over time, and the terrain from the 3rd edition starter set.

And so began the great snip-athon of 2022 ?

Interestingly, Mantic designed the sprue attachments in a clever way…..

The edges of each of the terrain tiles are angled (to allow them to butt up together in either orientation), and the sprue gates are onto one of those angled edges rather then on the very edge of the piece.

This means that by angling your snippers to match the angle of the edge you can get a very clean cut – someone in the sprue layout team was thinking as a gamer there!

After much snipping, and a sore back, the parts were finally free, to roam the streets of the many corporate cities…. Or sit on the table for now.

Next evening it was onto sanding down the edges.

The cuts were all pretty clean, but I still got it into my head that I needed to sand down all the edges – to be honest it likely wasn’t needed for these parts, but I ended up doing it anyway, as I would still know.

At this point I was still lacking concrete plans of how to build my terrain into a suitable set of scenery – I knew that I wanted to have at least two or three sections that were two cubes or more high, not have any buildings that were too large (and therefore would not allow models to be moved through or around effectively) and that I wanted to try to avoid having too many (as my friend puts it) ‘bus shelters’.

So, sanding things down and then making a note of how many of each part I had was a useful thing to do in my mind, to keep things moving and help with the soon to come planning stage.

In doing this I realised I only had three doors out of all these parts (a couple went to my friend for when he was building his terrain layout – which actually exists, and I saw it as better they were in use on a usable layout than sitting in a box).

I’ll have to come up with a solution to get around that.

Next up was taking the parts from my other boxes and laying them out as well, to get a full picture of what I have (and what I am lacking).

So, I cracked open the Military Compound box, and the rest of my 3rd ed starter box – and over the next couple of sessions I set about sanding down the edges and adding them to my organised piles.

Today,  realising that things weren’t progressing as quickly as I had hoped I found that I needed to make a temporary storage for the components.

I took the 1st ed box lid, and some old cardboard, and knocked up a quick organiser, so that the dining table could be usable again 🙂

10^th November 2022

It’s been a bit of a slow start on this project, since I have been having trouble deciding on what to build.

With the Warcry set the terrain was all straight forward, one layout, ‘build it as it shows’; but with Deadzone you have free reign to use the components to come up with what you will, a bit like with Lego.

However, this meant that I spent quite a bit of time procrastinating….

I did come up with some rough sketches of building ‘units’ that I thought would be useful. Such as a ‘2×1’ unit, and an ‘L’ shape unit – and how I could fit them together to make C shapes, 3x2s and suchlike.

This of course led to more procrastinating, as if I was to be putting some buildings (temporarily) together for changeable layouts in the future then I would need to ensure that those adjoining sides remain relatively plain, and also to ensure I didn’t close off any entrances….

Conscious of my dithering, Tuesday night I decided that I just needed to crack on and get something built, in order to get the ball rolling.

So, I give you – a food shack ?

This gave me the required spur, and I put together a couple of 2×1’s, with small walkways on the first level, as well that eve.

I have glued a few parts, but in the main I am push fitting the connectors and blu-tacing some parts at the moment. Once I am happy with the rest of the buildings I will probably glue them together then, and also add on any low walls and other additional decorations. For now it will remain as mostly dry fit.

I did also deploy the ‘terrain hammer’ to help with some of the more stubborn connectors…..

Last night I knocked out another 2×1 and a couple of L shape buildings. Plus two 1×1 cube buildings that can be used as stand alone terrain, or added onto other buildings for elevation (the most likely use). Still loosely fit for now.

I have been keeping in touch with my friend (the one that has already built a Deadzone layout) as well – sending him pics of the progress, bouncing ideas around and generally getting advice.

I have been asking some questions on the Deadzone Fanatics Facebook page to get some insight from players and terrain builders. I was thinking to make a larger building, but was concerned about the usability. Most responses were in agreement that large buildings didn’t work (unless you had a lot of wall gaps etc). And also that you run the risk of forgetting that you moved ‘that model’ into the building on round one, and only find it again when packing away ?

I do have plans for a slightly larger building, but will keep some open areas as well rather than blocking the base level out. If it looks familiar that will be because it is an homage to the old cardboard Necromunda terrain (with a separate additional section to potentially combine with it). Hopefully I will be able to have several good build sessions over the next couple of days and weekend, and may even get this built.

14th November 2022

Since last update I have put together a few more of my basic shaped buildings; one is a 2×2 building that I will treat as a Repair Workshop.

For the repair bay I wanted it to look a little more substantial, so I used some of the buttress connectors to bulk it out. However, due to the raised detail on the side panel I had to trim one side of the buttresses in order for it to fit more snugly.

With more buildings built, and running low on some parts (tiles suitable for floors in particular), I decided to lay out what I have so far onto a standard Deadzone mat. This would help me to see what worked (or, as is often the case, didn’t work) and what else I may need – before I run out of parts.

I felt I still needed some more elevation, so I subsequently built a couple more 1x1s that can stack up where needed.

I have also decided to make the repair bay 3 squares wide now, and have modified the front doors.

With the building being a little bit larger now (I did consider going to a 3×3…) I thought about adding windows to the sides, but chose not to. My reasoning was that if there were good LoS each direction from within then it would be too good a fire base. With some LoS cut off, it will mean more manoeuvring hopefully.

Now running low on some tiles I have arranged to buy some of my friend’s spare tiles. He only has a few floor ones, but all will help. Plus he has a couple of diagonal floor pieces and two sets of stairs – which I don’t have ?

But in the interim, I have made use of some of the large door pieces.

With the addition of a half tile to join them at the top (the only connector location) they make some covered storage, or a covered walkway perhaps? If I use them as storage I will add a half tile to the front I expect.

I didn’t get around to making my planned tower, but can ‘sort of’ make it using the 1x1s stacked up. However, I may revisit my plan for that in the future, using foam card……

17th November 2022

For this project I have chosen to glue most of the buildings, for added strength in play (and in storage).

As I have mentioned previously, I have designed most of them as ‘L’ shaped, 2×1 or 1×1, so that they can be pushed together or stacked in a variety of ways.

However, trying to maintain this versatility does mean that I wont be able to add details to those edges or roofs that I want to potentially put another building against.

And that’s where my dilemma lies – should I sacrifice some versatility in order to get some more interesting details on the layout?

I know that the connector system on the DZ terrain is meant to mitigate this, but I do find it a little difficult separating the tiles once connected with a solid push together.

My plan is to trim or sand down all of the connectors on the ‘add ons’ that I plan to be removable, in the hope that I will be able to move them without damage to anything.

But I think I will still have to permanently affix some of the extra details, like some of the half tile walkways, and some of the ladders etc.

So in the end it feels as though it will be somewhat of a compromise.

On a more positive note, I met up with my friend and purchased some of his spare DZ terrain – so I now have another 4 floor/roof tiles ?

Plus a couple of diagonal floor tiles to break things up a little (sadly I don’t have any walls that will fit the diagonal, but will work out a good use for them).

…and I am still debating making a larger building.

23rd November 2022

I had thought that I would be into the painting stage now, but things have gone a little slower than intended. However, I am trying not to let this put a negative spin on the project progress.

Its still moving along, and I have more structures completed.

I wanted to have a couple of larger buildings (at base level at least) so in addition to making the ‘repair workshop’ larger I made a new structure centred around a cross shape.

I used the precious two triangular pieces I acquired to round off one end.

Then I took one of my few remaining floor/roof tiles and carefully cut it in half along the diagonal.

Adding these to the building gave it a more rounded shape, to help break up the right angles present in the rest of the buildings. But it did end up reminding me of something….

To feel like I had moved things along, I went ahead and painted up a small structure. This was to represent a small generator building, or possibly a comms building. For most of the buildings I am planning to use a red primer paint, then go over with grey followed by white. But for this I wanted a more striking (and somewhat industrial) look, so opted for a yellow coat after the prime. I will possibly do a few small structures this way, to add touches of colour variance.

24th November 2022

Just wanted to take stock of where I was with the terrain building. Because I have chosen to make the terrain set pretty modular I have a lot of structures that can be stacked on or butted up against others. I fear it may not be as impressive as the more permanent set ups I have seen on the Deadzone FB page, but its what I needed for my purposes, so I will just stick with it. I still need to work on more walkways, some with their own base pillars (example in corner of the pics below) and some that I can just drop onto the building edges. I will experiment with using connectors, the ‘piston’ supports and also with making some from foam card (need to get some checker plate plasticard to attach to it). But for now, here’s where I am with the construction….

(Plus the one piece I have basecoated)

1^st December 2022

Construction has continued, albeit relatively slowly.

I have made a couple more 1×1’s, a 3×1 with a single cube on top at one end, and finally a 3×1 on stilts ?

With that I am pretty much out of terrain tiles.  I will scrape together what I can now from a few half tiles and barriers.

Unfortunately I pretty much forgot to plan in my Industrial Accessory parts to the overall builds. As such I will need to build them as free form scatter pieces, at the same time as I put together more walkways.

Speaking of walkways – I have made some ‘drop in’ walkways to use with my variable layout. These have been constructed from some of my leftovers, things such as the 1.5 tile barriers (stuck together bottom to bottom and top to top), urban doors (bottom to bottom) and industrial doors (overlap).

With a dry evening I also decided that I would start on the priming of the buildings I have constructed.

But now I need to buy some more primer. It was a big can, but still didn’t go as far as I had hoped….

5th December 2022

Since last post I have continued with the rattle can phase of the process.

I picked up another can of red primer (using this in order to tie in to my friend’s colour scheme) and finished off the base coat top and bottom of the terrain pieces.

I wore a mask, which did its job, but neglected to wear a glove ?

Another can down – they really don’t seem to last very long when spraying terrain.

Next up I went over all of the terrain (except one piece) with a grey primer sprayed from an angle.

This was with the intention of keeping some of the red at the lower edges as shading.

However, it didn’t work on all the pieces due to the spray being quite vigorous, and my hands being quite cold.

This also resulted in yet another empty 500ml spray can ?

I wanted to paint my ladders and rail edging in yellow so that they would ‘pop’ from the white/grey of the buildings and give some visual interest. I was trying to think of the best way to mount them for spraying, and ended up just pushing the connectors into some spare barricade pieces – perfect mounts ?

The final stages I have managed to complete were then spraying the repair bay, ladders and railings in yellow (along with one other building I chose to change to yellow), and spraying all of the grey buildings with a dusting of white from a high angle, to hopefully add some more contrast to the panels.

12th December 2022

With work, and the season’s demands, I have only made some small progress this past week unfortunately.

But, for what it’s worth, here it is:

For the repair bay I wanted to add a bit of visual variety to the roof area, so I chose to put some broad hazard type markings onto it.

I masked the roof off with some low tack masking tape that I bought for decorating. In hindsight I should possibly have reduced the tape width, but its done now ?

The low tack was perhaps a little too low in some places, and I did get some bleed under of the black. To work with this I have treated it as areas of damage / wear, where the yellow has been abraded.

The paint pens that I ordered finally arrived, so I set about using the silver to add some edge highlights, scratch marks and such like to areas of the black on the roof. I’m actually quite pleased with how it came out in places.

The pack also had white paint pens (the main reason I got it) so I just had time to try that out on one of the grey terrain pieces.

Not sure if I will be able to get much more done this week sadly, but if I have anything to show at the due date of next update I will post it up ?

21st December 2022

Due to a combination of work (including being on call evenings and weekend for a week) and still waiting on a delivery of hobby materials, my terrain progress has pretty much stopped.

I have done a little more with the paint pens, but an insignificant amount tbh.

Realising that this was impacting my ‘hobby mojo’ somewhat I decided to change tack, and crack on with building up the strike teams that I want to use to run intros.

I had a few (3 GCPS and 3 Verr Myn) already built for running the small board mini intro (plus the leader models), but was unsure of how to build the rest. Seeking advice, I popped up a post on the Deadzone fanatics FB page. I had a couple of replies, and took on board some of the suggestions where viable with the starter box contents.

Over the last couple of days I have been able to build up the GCPS contingent.

I wanted to make sure I used the flamethrowers and grenade launchers on the new plastic sprues, but doing so meant I didn’t have many minis to be just the ordinary rank and file. In steps my old stock ? I have the old Corporation army box that contains 40 ‘restic’ corporation troops.

These compare pretty well in size and design, so the old restic ones could become my basic troopers to make up the numbers.

For the special weapon troops on the plastic sprue there is only one left arm that is used for both the FT and the GL. With plenty of spare arms I found one that was close and just bent it a little to fit. Then repeated for the second sprue.

I then put together some Rangers (as I really like the helm and overall look… should have made more but not really viable for an actual list), followed by coming back to the restic models.

There were three designs of torso, and three sets of laser rifle arms. I started out by just putting three troopers with laser rifle together. Then I knew I would want more, so planned out another three.

Initially I was just going to build them as is, but make sure they had different arms to the previous matching torso – but then I realised I had plenty of plastic parts spare, so did some test fits. Due to the mounting point on the restic bodies I had to bore out a socket on the plastic arms. Craft knife time…

A few minor conversions later (the heads fit pretty well already) and the restic bodies had a bit of variety between them. The guns are a little thinner on the restic versions, but I think that once painted they will blend in well.

I also converted one of the rangers to have a different looking gun (possibly use as thermal rifle) by chopping up one of the pistols and sticking it under the barrel.

21st December 2022

So, this is where I got to yesterday evening…

A few finishing bits, and I have 16 GCPS ready for painting up, when I get to that stage. Up next…. Not sure, depends on mood, time and motivation. With Christmas on the way I’ll just have to see how it goes.

28th December 2022

Having taken a brief break from the scenery (building the GCPS) this past week I returned to it with some more energy.

Having tried out some paint pen work the next step was to test out some options for weathering.

My plan here was to give them an overall thinned down dark wash (wiping away excess on flat panels).

Followed by sponging on some splotches with a darker colour, to represent areas of dirt or general wear and tear.

Started with a mid grey, then I tried out a darker brown contrast (Wyldwood) as I thought that may both give a slightly warmer tone, and keep fluid longer.

I tore up an old piece of sponge from packaging, and using some tweezers dabbed it into the paint, tested on an old tile, then applied it in a series of dabs in various locations on the terrain piece.

The combination of the two colours on top of the wash seemed to work pretty well, so I will look to roll this out across the rest of the terrain (quite a daunting task at the moment).

28th December 2022

I have a few buildings that have yellow as their overall colour, but at this point the rest of my terrain was looking pretty drab. The weathering test came out quite well, but from ‘play height’ the majority of the terrain is pretty plain grey. So, time to inject a splash of colour!

To endeavour to tie in with the other buildings, I thought I would try using yellow as a spot colour on the grey buildings. ‘Cry ‘Havoc!’ And let slip the tape of masking!’

Out came the masking tape again. For some of the buildings I went for a broad horizontal band of the spot colour. On others, where it seemed more appropriate, I picked out the vertical embellishments on the panels (carefully masking off the lozenge parts on them).

Much masking, spraying, masking and spraying again and I have quite a stack of now somewhat more vibrant terrain. Ready to be finished off with the weathering techniques I have decided upon.

Once that is done I will need to work on the signs, bridges, scatter and such – so still quite a way to go on this yet….

An old friend of mine came over on New Year’s eve for some board gaming.

I had discussed Deadzone with him, and he was up for trying it out.

So, I set up the small demo layout from the 3rd ed starter (3 vs 3 models, Veer Myn and GCPS, on a 5 x5 grid instead of 8 x8).

I gave him a brief run through of the key rules, then we were straight into it.

He picked it up really quickly, and seemed to have fun.

Plus my wife kept up her 100% record (loosing both games ?).

The GCPS under Mike’s control won the first game, then they switched sides and played again. This time the Veer Myn won.

Standout moment was my wife making a save roll for her Ranger, with the armour value of 1 saving it…..then Mike quickly muttered ‘AP1’…… followed by my wife shouting ‘No!’ very loudly. ?

This second game came down to one model left on each side, with the Veer myn taking it with a final mid range shot.

4th January 2023

I have made some moderate progress over the Christmas period.

All of the light grey buildings have now had their wash pass carried out, and I am now working through the edge highlighting with the white paint pen. A few smaller buildings have had the sponge weathering stage carried out as well.

I think though that I severely under estimated the amount of work involved in getting this all done. This has gotten me down a little, however as long as I keep plugging away at it then it will get finished, eventually ?

8th January 2023

I have been using the paint pen on almost all the panel edges of each part of the terrain…. Yep, it’s a lot.

Some pieces I would just apply a dashed line, to make it stand out slightly more than a solid highlight. Sometimes the dash will draw the eye more than the solid line.

I also used the white on the yellow slightly more sparingly than on the grey/white parts.

It has been a bit of a slog, often feeling like work due to the sheer amount of terrain I am working on at the same time, but the main paint pen highlighting work is complete ?

For this project the paint pen was so much more convenient than hand painting all the panel edges, so I have to thank my friend for the suggestion.

12th January 2023

With the paint pen work complete, and washes carried out previously, its on to the sponge weathering and adding some more spot colours.

Started with my yellow ‘stilt’ building.

Added dirt/scorch marks around the damage area, picked the re-bars out in a copper colour to add some warmth (more effective on the grey buildings) and some other blue and copper areas.

For some reason I decided that the lozenge panel parts would benefit from a colour gradient, from Lothern Blue to Macragge blue. Blending isn’t something I do much, but from play distance I think it looks good.

Next up were the buildings for the demo layout.

They had the same treatment (as all now will) of some sponge applied dirt areas in grey and brown, lozenge in blues, some black contrast around the damaged areas and copper re-bar for warmth.

The linear ground barricades I applied a black contrast panel, to make it look different (as if deployed by police perhaps?) and added a colour to the vertical supports – one side has red, one side has green.

The final building that I have managed to ‘complete’ (I’m sure there will be things I revisit) is the quality street shaped octagonal structure.

20th January 2023

Bit late on the update this week, but work has been continuing on this project.

Alongside ongoing weathering, I decided to make some more work for myself by starting into some of the walls, barricades and scatter over the weekend.

The weekend gave me the opportunity to get some spraying in while it was slightly warmer, and more importantly,  light!

So I took some of the pieces I had already built (walkways mostly) alongside new ones that I put together this week (barricades and walls mostly) and laid into them with the primers.

Some of the walkways I wanted to add hazard stripes to the edges of, so out came the masking tape again. For these smaller pieces I had to cut the masking tape down to thinner strips.

Then it was a case of masking them off slightly more at each stage, and spraying up again. I will do the reveal in reverse…..

Once I had the walls and barricades sprayed up through red, grey to white I did a quick and dirty mask off by cutting a notch into a thick piece of box card and using that as a very basic stencil to spray the yellow through.

Then it was back to the weathering on the main buildings

The stack is building up…..

20th January 2023 continued…

Then last night it was a wash on all of the barricade/wall parts and the start of further paint pen work on those while watching ‘Winter Watch’ with the wife ?

It’s surprising how long it takes to line every panel edge on these…..

28th January 2023

A bit of a mixed bag this week…

I completed the walls and barricades, with the paint pen edge highlighting work being finished off, and then the sponge weathering pass on all the pieces.

Next up I decided to add a different colour to the mix – the ‘food shack’ building was treated to a pass of blue/grey with my inexperienced airbrush skills.

I again used some masking tape to leave a white stripe down the middle, for ‘reasons’ ?

Then I tried painting up a sign for it. Not overly happy with the result, but I may return to it yet, as I still have a fair bit to do on it.

Then to make some room I dug out some under-bed boxes, and packed up what I could.

Next up it was work on the scatter pieces. I had already done a little on them, but I spent time edge highlighting, adding spot colour and again some sponge weathering to them. I also pulled out the airbrush again to spray the base blue colour on several pieces (It was slower than I thought).

Finally, among the left over bits I purchased from my friend were a couple of stairs. Using some odd sized walkway parts I made these into freestanding stairs – but they wouldn’t stand on their own….

So, I took a couple of the buttress parts, cut them down to the right size and glued them underneath so that they can be truly free standing.