The holiday season has come and gone and we've all nestled into our games. I hope you have gotten everything you've wished for during the game-receiving-season.

On the Deadzone front, all the Kickstarter and pre-orders boxes should have been received by now and everyone has their new plastic crack. And that’s Crack as in the highly addictive drug and not the quaint Irish euphemism, which had us colonials thinking the Beasts of War crew were a bunch of tweakers. Anyway, with everyone getting the game and having a blog, I'm sure there are a hundred and one unboxings out there (including ours here) so we'll forgo the in-depth drooling in this column and move onto the important stuff. What is more important than looking at questionable photos of pieces of plastic limbs in baggies you ask? Nothing really but as we've said everyone is doing that. How about some tips for assembly? We can do that!

Miniatures Assemble!

Between Jack and I we divvied up the minis from our Strike Force Pledge. I took the Enforcers which I like to call the good guys and he took the Plague which, I think we can all agree, are the bad guys. In the past, I have argued that the Plague are not the mindless zombie horde that many assume they are, this doesn't make them the good guys however, but more on that later. The other minis, including the Mercs, Marauders and Rebs, were put aside until more time can be found to assemble and paint them.

First thing we learned was that Plastic Cement doesn't work on the material the Deadzone minis are made of. This is good to know before applying some and waiting in vain for any kind of bonding to happen. So in the end I went for good old crazy glue in the pen container with Army Painter Magic Superglue Activator. That super glue activator is a godsend! No waiting for the glue to set and less chance of skin deamage. Some of the pieces were so small and I really should invest in some tweezers but amazingly very few of my extremities were glued to each other in the process!

Jack opted for Gorilla Glue and he had similarly un-skin-gluing results. Of course neither of us could leave well enough alone and started to modify the sculpts right from the start. I used skillful scalpel work and creative gluing to make some of my miniatures unique while Jack went for the hot water technique (as seen on this Mantic Tips Video. Both seemed to work fine and I think we got some better poses out of the minis than were originally intended.

You can also see in the pictures we couldn't leave well enough alone and went on to cut the Mantic base inserts off as well. This was so we could re-base them on clear bases. Now why did we go with clear bases instead of scenic ones you may ask? Well Jack was always annoyed that one's base was always the same no matter if you were standing in grass or on a street. It actually annoyed him to the point that he refused to even paint the bases of our DUST Tactics miniatures and persuaded me into not painting mine either. Then we saw the Battle Systems guys use clear bases with the terrain system and it was love at first sight. So I went ahead and hacked off all my bases with a sharp knife and only minor cosmetic thumb damage resulted. What did Jack do? Well he once again used the hot water trick and cut some of the bases off but then had a change of heart. With his Plague Mortar teams all of a sudden he wants to do scenic bases with rumble and the like! I tell you its like working with a cat!

As it stands now I have my Enforcers nearly completed with only some finishing touches to go and Jack's Plagues are looking good. As you can see I went with a dark green with black motif and Jack went with a Toxic/Radioactive look. I also took some cues from the Star Wars: Clone Wars show and had all my guys have personalized helmets. This far out on the fringes of space no one tells you not to draw a skull on your helmet! You might also have noticed I used the spare, visor up, Captain head on one of my regular Enforcers. I wish I could take credit for this cool modification but in fact I lost his original head to my floor of devouring. I was lucky I even had a spare. Thank you Mantic!

Gorram Terrain!

Well enough of the good stuff and now lets move on to talking about the terrain. Oh that terrain. It looks great, feels great but it's utter hell to assemble. To go against my usual fanboy-ness, I must say I had a hard time assembling this terrain. People complained that there were too few connectors to make full buildings and towers but that was the least of the problems with those damn little demons! The connectors fit via friction which is a tough way to make something work with such small margins of error. The little pins were generally too tight for the holes (no juvenile jokes here).

One fix was to trim the pegs on the minuscule connectors or to file out the holes. I went with the trimming but even then it wasn't going well and after many curses later the good old Plastic Cement came out. Gluing is the way to go with this terrain. Mantic got very ambitious with the clip system and maybe with one or two more iterations it will work well but right now it is just too much fiddling for me personally. This is not to say I won't be ordering more terrain. As I said it looks awesome on the board no matter how you got it together. I can't wait to get the landing pad, fortification and the damaged version in the future.

It's funny after assembling everything, the rules became much clearer when it comes to the miniatures. Both the Prancing Goblin Sniper and Stage 2 Jumping Over the Wall's sculpts actually effect their play on the board. They will be much easier to see than their less flamboyant counter parts. I wonder how much play these models will get because of this, if one was playing with a total hardcore mindset that is. Then there's the Boomer mercenary. He takes up 4 spaces due, not to his size, but rather his smell and the fact his loaded up with explosives. I can see why no other ally would want to be in the same square as him but this also means he can't climb in windows or go on catwalks just because he stinks. I smell a rules revision in his future (get it smell… sorry if I was too subtle there).

Another point people have brought up in the Containment Protocols facebook group is that most of the mercs will work with anyone including the Plague. I understand that you don't want to limit people from being able to use a mercenary they like but I personally wish there had been a bit more faction specific ones. This would make having them only work with some factions be part of the fluff. Some people took real issue with them working with the Plague at all. When you think of the Plague as a roving mass of semi-intelligent zombies bent on infecting all in their path it is strange that, even for creds, these mercs would work for them.

I personally like the idea of the Plague being more intelligent mutations; The next step in human evolution in their minds. They are just trying to do what's best for their species to survive. In this scenario its more likely the mercenaries would work for a new, intelligent species (especially if they were going after the Corporation). As an Enforcer player I don't care if the Plague think they're the next step in human evolution or not. The only good Plague is a dead Plague, along with anyone who works with them but that's just the way we Enforcers roll.

On that note I will bid you readers adieu until the next time. I'm sure I'll find something else to cause trouble about by then!

Rob Harper & Jack Fyke

Deadzone the Podcast

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