Deadzone Beta rules released

Mantic have just released the Beta rules of Deadzone for play & comment.

The main change to the game is the turn sequence. Rather than I-Go-U-Go, there is now an alternate activation mechanic in place.

The game now has two phases, a Round, and a Turn. A Round consists of a number of Turns. In each turn, each player can take actions with a certain number of models, up to a maximum of the Command Value of the most senior model in his force. Play then passes to the opponent, who does the same, until all the models on the board hav been activated.

In this way, it allows a number of models to act in conjunction with each other, whilst at the same time not allowing a player to move his entire force at once, this introducing some more tactical options. However, since during a Round, all the models on the board have to move,the ‘Cheerleader’effect when using limited model activation is avoided (something it would seem Jake was keen to do).

This change is certainly better than I-Go-U-Go, at least in my opinion, but I think that the current allocated command stats may still need a tweak.

That is the major change – other than that, the rules have been tightened in a couple of areas, and had extra clarification added. I’m looking forward to playing these in the coming days.

 

Isn’t it a bit draughty in here?

As you are probably aware, Mantic games are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to produce a new skirmish boardgame – Deadzone.

Their Kickstarter page has been undergoing a big facelift in the last few days, showing off all the latest updates, including some renders of potential battlefields you can make with the new scenery that they are providing.

Now, these layouts are all very nice as far as they go, but I have a concern – do they fit the ‘fluff’ of the game?

As far as I understand it, Deadzone takes place on the frontiers of Corporation space. These are outpost worlds, small colonies. As such, when people first arrived to colonize the worlds, I would expect them to bring ‘flat-pack’ habitation with them. The sort of thing that was represented in the first pictures we saw of the buildings, in fact.

However, there is a problem with this layout – it uses most (if not all) of the scenery provided in the ‘standard’ box of Deadzone, but doesn’t come anywhere close to even half filling a 2′ x 2′ board, which has lead to lots of questions about just how much scenery you will need in order to create the sort of game that Mantic are envisaging.

Hence the new renders, which should various sized boards being filled with scenery.

However, I have a real problem with these table layouts.

Why?

OK, let me ask you a couple of questions regarding them.

1) Do you see a building anywhere where you could either live, or work.

2) If you were a town planner, are these layouts in any way sensible? Is this how you would organise your settlement?

Just because it’s sci-fi, doesn’t mean to say that any sort of common sense or design should just be thrown out of the window. These layouts have lots of places to hide, line of sight is broken up everywhere and there are several high places from which to shoot. To me, these do not say ‘frontier colony’, but rather they scream one simple thing: gaming arena.

Where have we seen this before? Ah yes…

Now, this type of layout for  Necromunda at least fitted the ‘Fluff’ of the game – I don’t think that the latest Deadzone layouts do.

When I picture the type of terrian Deadzone is fought over, I see a sci-fi frontier town – much in the mould of the old Wild West towns, only built with plasteel rather than wood. Or maybe something like ”Hadley’s Hope” from Aliens. I think the original pictures we saw of Deadzone captured this. However, I think they also highlighted a flaw in the vision – you could build sensible buildings with the tiles supplied on the building sprues, but then you couldn’t fill the table with scenery, as was originally intended – not without needing to spend a lot more money on scenery. Hence why we now see these new renders.

Mantic’s new visions of frontier towns may be great to fight over, but I wouldn’t want to live there…

+++ Unidentifed Enemy Armour Spotted +++

Following my earlier blog post about Spartan Games new modular scenery, a couple more pictures have been found.

The first shows some nice stand-alone buildings…

The second, however, contains a bit of a surprise…

Where did that tank come from?

It seems there is something that Spartan are not telling us…

Beaten to the punch?

Recently there have been several high profile kickstarter projects for new scenery – especially for sci-fi games. These have been promising release dates in Q3 and Q4 of 2013.

However, Spartan Games have just announced a new range of sci-fi scenery which is being released for sale on the 3rd July, with not a Kickstarter project in sight! It has to be said, it looks very impressive in the pictures:

The number of releases is huge, and you can put together a pretty impressive layout using all the sets that will be available:

As well as the HDF scenery, Spartan are also releasing several sets of resin scenery for interior and exterior decoration – Med Lab, Armoury, Communications, Barracks and Warehouse themes will all be available

Not only are we seeing this new scenery, but the pictures also seem to be a teaser for something else:

What are these 28mm models that we see?

Why are the roofs and interior corridors etched with a hexagonal floor pattern?

Perhaps the anticpated surface wargame based in the Firestorm Armada universe is not too far away…

More details can be found at the Spartan Games website. You can pre-order all this scenery at the Spartan Games webstore.

Podcast Archive page updated

I just thought I’d drop a quick update to say that the Podcast Archive page is now up-to-date with all the latest episodes.

There are several new episodes due to be published in the next couple of weeks – it will make up for the radio silence since the start of May, honest!

Deadzone: A first playtest report

Deadzone playtest board

Following the release of the Alpha rules for Deadzone, I thought that I’d have a play with the rules.

As you may have seen in my last post, I’d dug my old Necromunda terrain out from the shed – I’m in the process of constructing some new buildings out of the bulkheads and plasticard, but in the mean time I dug around amongst the cardboard for some suitable pieces of terrain and came up with the following board.

Deadzone playtest board

The terrain wasn’t ideal, as the raised areas were without cover, but I thought that it would be OK for a play through of the rules…

Next off would be to find some suitable playtest figures. First the Enforcers (Apologies for the photo quality)

“Generic” troopers in heavy armour

So, having sorted proxy figures for the Enforcers, it was only left to find suitable figures for the Plague. Let’s see, creatures that can spread disease through genetic mutation, with various generations of hybrids…

“Generic” Plague proxy figures – I couldn’t find my old hybrid metal figures…

And so to the game itself.

First blood – 3rd Gen. Plague is killed by an Enforcer head shot

I was playing the Plague, and my opponent (Dave) was playing the Enforcers -I deployed on my baseline, as did he. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t thinking too much about making himself hard to see.

This turned out to be a bad move.

On my first move, I decided to try to seize as much high ground as possible, so I sent most of my 3rd Gen shooters onto the roofs of the neighbouring tall buildings. This left one open to a shot from the Missile Launcher, but thanks to some (very) poor dice rolling from Dave, it survived.

The morale of this photo – do not leave an option for a ‘Clear Shot’

This left the Missile Launcher open to a shot from two 3rd Gens…and a dead Missile Launcher Enforcer.

At this point I realised the error of my previous assessment during set-up. Cover in this game is vital, and leaving a clear shot (i.e. the shooter can see the entire target figure) for a shooter in an elevated position is pretty much suicidal.

Snipers are going to have a field day in this game.

I advanced my 2nd Gen Plague up the centre of the board, at which point the lead model was engaged in close combat by the Assault Enforcer

Enforcer charging a 2nd Gen Plague. Is this really a good idea?

…obviously not…

At this point, things went rapidly downhill for the Enforcers, as the two 2nd Gen Plague charged across the board with bullets bouncing off them and killed both of the remaining troops in quick succession.

So, what are my thoughts on the game?

Well, first off, the movement and shooting work really well. I love the fact that the game does not need a tape measure (although a laser pointer may be in order) and from that side, things work really quickly. However, I think you have to fight the tendency just to place a model in a  square. Cover is vital in this game, so taking advantage of every bit of cover and ensuring that your opponent does not get a free shot is very important. The loss of the Enforcers Missile Launcher was a case in point - the model was just placed in the square, rather than half-hidden at the corner of a building. As a result, a 3rd Gen Plague on a roof shot and killed him rather easily, primarily due to the +2 ‘Clear Shot’ bonus.

It does also highlight that you need a lot of terrain in this game – open, clear rooftops are a recipe for disaster, so I will have to continue with the modelling to ensure (at the very least) that each building has walled edges for troops to hide behind.

The opposed dice rolling mechanics work really well – not quite so sure about the I-Go-U-Go turn order, but apparently that is being addressed in the 2nd edition Alpha rules, which are being released next week.

My only other concern is the strength of the 2nd Gen Plague. They are almost all-conquering in close combat, and are very difficult to kill, or even suppress, via shooting. Is this a game balance issue, or simply a case of learning the correct way of countering them. Difficult to say after a single game.

Also, how much did the terrain give advantage to one side? The simple solution will be to set up a mirrored table for the next game, and try again. I’ve got a few ideas on what Dave did wrong as Enforcers, so i think I’ll play them next time – I’m also going to look at playing Enforcer vs Enforcer games as a more ‘Hard’ Sci-Fi try out of the rules – I suspect I will be using these rules with my own figures…

Overall, a very positive first experience with this game, and I’m looking forward to playing this a lot more.

More Sci-Fi scenery…

Following my recent discovery of more Necromunda bulkheads than I could ever remember buying, I decided to have a root around in the spare room to see if I had anything else useful, and came across this little pile of goodies…

Robogear was a range of products that Airfix was marketing several years ago. The kits are from a Russian company, I believe, and are plastic. They have a lot of snap-together components.

As well as these two box sets, I have a couple of extra sets from ‘Battle Boxes’ for the game

Whilst the scenery itself is not the greatest quality (not the best plastic in the world) the sets should provide enough walkways, barriers and ladders to complement my other scenery discoveries well. What is more, several of the floor pieces have moulded hatches on them, so this means that I shouldn’t need to buy these separately.

It’s all coming together nicely. The next job is to put some together, and also order some scenery add-ons from Antenocitis Workshop.

Sci-Fi Scenery Sanity-Check

Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s possible to get a little carried away on Kickstarter projects…

Now, as I’m sure you are aware, Mantic Games currently have a Kickstarter project running for their Deadzone game, which now also includes the launch of a new range of hard-plastic sci-fi scenery – all very nice and some interesting looks stuff there.

I like the quick-play aspect of the rules, and the zone movement (and the de-luxe gaming mats do look gorgeous) and so I currently pledged for this game. I was considering how much scenery I needed – especially if I was going to play on a 4′ x 4′ area (did I mention that I’d pledged for 4 gaming mats? No?) Mantic have put together a series of scenery pledges which essentially say “this scenery will give you enough building to cover X area”.

But before I did this I had a thought…I used to play a lot of Necromunda, and bought a whole load of extra scenery sprues for the game. Had I still got them?

One trip to the back of the shed later, I found all the ‘spare’ sprues I had collected.

Err…this was slightly more than what I remembered buying.

The figure is a 28mm Norman, just to give a sense of scale…

I also found a couple of W40K ’Battlefield Accesory’ packs, plus several A4 sheets of plastic card, so I guess the answer as to whether I need any more sci-fi scenery or not is a resounding ‘No’.

Funnily enough, the plastic bulkheads from Necromunda just happen to be 3″ wide – the same size as the grid squares on the gaming mat for Deadzone. Whilst the gothic windows might not fit into many other sci-fi backgrounds (nothing a plastic card insert won’t fix) everything else would seem to be ideal for using with Deadzone, and loads of other games for that matter. I’d stuck several of these bulkheads together into 2-high and 3-high towers for the card scenery from Necromunda, so I may need to break some of these down – hopefully aging of the plastic glue will help me separate these.

So, except for the need to purchase some more plastic card, plus some accessories like barriers, roof air fans and hatches (Antenociti’s Workshop, Scotia Grendel or Ainsty Castings do lots of these), I think that my sci-fi scenery may well be sorted, and I don’t have to add any more to my KS pledge with Mantic. Result!

It’s amazing what you can find in the shed…

Fantasy Flight Games announce X-Wing Wave 3 ships

One of the announcements eagerly awaited by many was to take place on ‘Star Wars Day’ – May 4th 2013, during Fantasy Flight Games gaming weekend: The announcement of what was going to be the composition of Wave 3 ships for the X-Wing Miniatures Game.

I think the announcement would have met with most fans approval – the TIE-Bomber and B-Wing really were ‘must haves’, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see the Lambda shuttle appear – suddenly a whole number of scenarios from the Star Wars: X-Wing computer game become available.

I must admit to knowing very little about the HWK-290 – this is the first ship to appear that is not in any of the original three Star Wars films, but comes from the post-Return of the Jedi canon.

In the same way as I wasn’t overly bothered about Slave-1, I don’t think I will be overly bothered with the HWK-290. But I can see my model collection growing to own multiples of these other ships in the coming months.

The only downside to this announcement is the fact that we are going have to wait until the Autumn before they are available.

Deadzone – Alpha rules released

If you listened to episode 108 of the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast, you would have heard Jake Thornton talk about Deadzone, the upcoming sci-fi game from Mantic Games.

Deadzone is a hybrid game, falling somewhere in the middle between a boardgame and a miniature skirmish game, taking mechanics from both areas and melding them into something with plays like a sci-fi skirmish game, but in a shorter time due to not having to do things like measure movement.

The Alpha rules are available to download and play, and Jake Thornton is gathering feedback on his Quwirkworthy blog.

My initial impressions are pretty positive. The rules are relatively simple, and their lack of complexity will not be to everyone’s taste. On the whole I quite like them, and can see them being adapted for use as a ‘general’ skirmish set.

I do have certain issues – for example, I do not like the i-go-u-go turn format, but understand Jake going this way as he’s talking about trying to institute fire and manuevere tactics in the game. As you might guess, I have been an instant convert to the turn sequence that Too Fat Lardies are using in their Chain of Command rules, and I feel sure that an adaption of this would work in Deadzone – it would mean that you could still use fire and manuevere, but would be perhaps more limited (and therefore have to make more tactical decisions) on which units could or could not be activated each turn.

It is well worth taking a look at these rules, and with the de-luxe terrain mat now funded on the Kickstarter, if Mantic do what they have suggested they may do, and open up a terrain-only pledge level, the option of using these rules and terrain for your own games with your own figures could be worth considering.

You can find the Deadzone Kickstarter here

Saga at The Staffordshire Hoard – 25th May 2013

On Saturday the 25th May 2013, members of the Stoke Mauraders wargaming club will be running games of Saga for members of the public at the The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke, the home of the Staffordshire Hoard.

The event is entitled Become a Warlord

“On 25 May the Stoke on Trent Museum, home to the Staffordshire Hoard, will be holding a big Anglo-Saxon event. As part of this there will be some SAGA demos and figure painting.
It’s an opportunity to get children and adults introduced to SAGA and to get the game some well deserved public exposure.
Available on the day will be two gaming tables with Anglo Saxons versus Vikings and the opportunity to paint and keep an Anglo-Saxon warrior.
The SAGA demos will be run by the Stoke Marauders wargaming club, the the SAGA rules and figures were kindly donated by Gripping Beast, these have been painted up by the club and will remain as a resource for the museum. The club will be teaching museum staff how to play so the sets can be used for future school visits and events.
Griping Beast also supplied us with boxes of Saxon Thegns and all the paints plus brushes so that children can come along paint up an Anglo-Saxon figure with authentic colours, take it away and give it pride of place on the mantelpiece. Members of the club will be on hand to teach the kids how to paint as well as members of the Museum staff.
If you haven’t seen the Hoard it really is worth the trip, there is also a massive Anglo Saxon Warrior statue that was recently unveiled and is well worth a look.
So if you happen to find yourself near the wonder that is Stoke-on-Trent on the 25th of May, pop in and say hello, marvel at the Hoard, paint a figures and have a quick game, we’re always ready for a challenge match.”

The museum is also holding a ‘Day in the Life of an Anglo Saxon’ on the same day.

Sounds like a good day out.

The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Bethesda Street, City Centre, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 3DW

Telephone: 01782 232323

 

Magnetic MDF Madness

As you are no doubt aware, you cannot move around any wargames hobby new-site for more than a few clicks without running across a new kickstarter project. Some are good, some not so much – this one is jaw-dropping – no, really!

T.J.H. Models are running a Kickstarter for laser-cut MDF terrain. Nothing new there, you might say – there are plenty of terrain kickstarters around at the moment.

However, I haven’t seen a system quite like this one. Yes, there are several MDF systems for creating sci-fi gantries and rooms and corridors on gaming tables, but how cool are these!? (Watch the video to the end – the finishing touches are worth seeing)

Certainly these are not cheap pieces of terrain, and the number of pledge options available on the Kickstarter is, quite frankly, somewhat baffling due to the sheer amount of choice available. However, it’s a brilliant concept, well implemented and this guys deserves to do well.

Oathsworn Kickstarter in it’s last few days

If you like Dwarfs (and who in their right-mind doesn’t?) and you haven’t seen it already, you should take a look at the Oathsworn Kickstarter project, being run by sculptor Michael Lovejoy.

This project is quite limited in scale, and is currently looking at producing a range of 10 Dwarf character figures (available for £32) plus an additional 6 figures, available to purchase seperately for £3 apiece – a very reasonable price for models such as these.

The Dwarfs are similar in scale to those produced by Games Workshop, and should fit in well with models of that collection. However, the group would make a great warband on it’s own for games such as Song of Blades and Heroes.

The kickstarter is due to finish on Monday the 6th May, so make sure you have a look before the weekend is over…

 

Deadzone Kickstarter – now funding ‘Deluxe’ gaming mat

The latest funding goal for Deadzone, from Mantic Games, has been announced - it looks quite interesting…

This mat is 2′ x 2′, and has a 3″ x 3″ grid drawn on it to cater for gameplay – but it’s potential for use as a general gaming mat for Sci-Fi urban combat is obvious. They are currently available as add-ons to your pledge for $20 each, or have additional bundles of 3 ($55) or 5 ($90) mats which will allow you to cover a 4′ x 4′ or 6′ x 4′ table.

Mantic are promising a ‘Terrain Only’ pledge to be made available at some point in the near future, which would be worth a look, even if you don’t lik ethe look of the game or figures.

Check out the Deadzone Kickstarter for more details…

View from the Veranda – Episode 11 published

Over on the View from the Veranda website, I have just published episode 11 of this occasional podcast.

Henry & I recently got together for our usual discussion on all things wargaming. We primarily discuss the recent Miniature Wargames magazine relaunch, and talk about some immediate feedback, as well as the recent Salute 2013 at Excel, London.

As usual, our conversation digresses at several points…

You can download the show here, or it will be available on iTunes.

Meeples & Miniatures – Episode 108 – Salute 2013: Interviews, Part I

Download Episode 108

Welcome to Epsiode 108 of the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast

This show comprises of several interviews that I recorded during the recent Salute 2013 show and the Excel Centre, London, and includes interviews with:

Nick Skinner (Too Fat Lardies)

Robert Avery (Scenario packs for IABSM and Quadrant 13)

Jake Thornton (Dreadball Season 2 & Deadzone)

Fireforge Games (Crusades Foot Knoights and Mounted Mongols)

Hawk Wargames (Dropzone Commander)

I hope you enjoy the show

Neil

Heroes of Normandie Kickstarter breaks through £100,000 pledge funding

Many congratulations to Devil Pig Games and all the backers of the Heroes of Normandie Kickstarter project – iit has reached it’s £100,000 with over 48 hours left to run. 

This means that the Tiger Group strech goal has been unlocked for Overlord level backers, giving a very impressive array of stretch goals to the KS backers of the Platoon-level board wargame.

Interested? Listen to the interview in episode 107 of the podcast and follow the link above.

X-Wing : Welcome to the party, Pal

You may remember last year that I posted a blog entry about the X-Wing Miniatures Game, and how I was going to stick with the Titanium Die-Cast range of models that I had collected…

…well, 6 months, and many conversations, later I finally decided to take the plunge and purchase the FFG game – especially since the BookDepository was selling it (releatively) cheap.

Well, I got to play it last night, had a tremendous amount of fun and now wondered why I waited for so long.

We played two games last night, with me playing the lone rebel X-Wing pilot on both occasions. The first time, we playd the ‘quick start’ rules, the second the ‘full’ game.

To be honest, I really wouldn’t bother with the ‘Quick Start’ rules – whilst they give some flavour of the game, the ‘Full’ rules are much, much better. The gamelay was no doubt enhanced by the playmat that we were using, but this game, at least on initial impressions, is more than I hoped it would be and nothing like I feared. It’s fast, exciting and gives a lot of tactical challenges – even with the very limited number of ships we were using last night (the basic 3-ship game straight out of the box)

Of course, I do have more ships available, so I’ll slowly be increasing the size of the the dogfights – ultimately, I want to look at recreating the sorts of missions that I enjoyed playing back in the days of the X-Wing computer game.

The Wave 3 ships are being announced by Fantasy Flight Games next weekend – here’s hoping for a TIE Bomber, B-Wing and an Imperial Shuttle…

Salute 2013

Thanks to Nick Hawkins for the photo – wide angle lens required, apparently!

Well, Salute has been and gone for another year…was it any good?

First thing of note was the size of the ‘queue buster’ queue. I was late arriving, not getting to Excel until just after 10am – even so, I joined the queue before it had got into the show, 15 or so minutes later. This caused a few disgruntled comments, but since around 2,500 tickets were pre-sold for the event this year, it’s inevitable that simply getting into the show is going to be something of a logistical challenge.

Once inside the first thing I noted was the ‘buzz’. There seemed to be more energy and atmosphere about the place this year, which considering the size of the hall Salute was held in, is something of an achievement in itself. (It was also noticeable during the day that there seemed to be more women and families around this year – and not just those employed by certain traders for apparent eye-candy value!)

So, it was time for a ‘quick’ tour of the show…which ended up taking about 2 hours. This was partly due to the number of traders and games (although there did appear to be fewer games than last year) and partly due to the number of people who stopped to chat to me – in the last few years, wargames shows (at least for me) have become less about the games and traders, and more about the people. It’s a chance to meet and chat to podcast listeners, blog and article readers and catch up with people who I regularly correspond with over the interweb, but hardly ever get to meet. This year was no different – hence the time it took to tour the show!

The tour had two purposes – you hopefully get a feel of what is going on (although, this year more than ever before, I was concious of just how much I didn’t see – can’t wait for all the photo blogs to appear!)  but also it means that traders can deal with the usual pre-lunch rush and maybe have more time later in the day to chat. That’s the theory anyway. The practice is that it essentially gives you a 3 hour window to try and rush around and get as many interviews as you can – something of a challenge at the best of times and I this year I failed to get half as many interviews as I did last year – which was a shame.

So, whilst I did get a few interviews, there were more that I missed – although I am pleased to say that I have lined up future chats with the likes of 4Ground, Crooked Dice and Great Escape Games, to name a few.

As I’ve already said, this year was as much about meeting people – so thanks to the chaps from Bristol Big ‘Uns, Nick Hawkins, Robert Avery, Mike Whittaker, Phil Mackie, Sigur Squrrl, Whisperin Al’, Colin Hagreen, Dave from TMTTerrain and to everyone who simply stopped me to say ‘Hi’ and pass on encouragement about the podcast (apologies if I’ve missed anyone).

You may be surprised that I don’t actually get to see the people I record the shows with very often, so it was also great to chat to Mike Hobbs, Rich Jones and of course Henry Hyde.

Coming away from the show, the first half an hour was filled with forhead-slapping moments as I realised what I failed to do – like buy a minis case for X-Wing from K&R, or chat to the Berry’s on the Baccus stand…I suppose this is inevitable, but I’m more aware this year of what I failed to do rather than what I achieved during the day.

So, was Salute any good? It was hectic, massively tiring (not helped by son disappearing with all the water supplies!) and I felt at the end of the day that I had perhaps missed half of the show.

BUT it was also a huge amount of fun, filled with interesting goodies and some great new releases and simply wonderful to talk to people – however briefly in all too many cases.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done Warlords, mission accomplished for another year!

Heroes of Normandie – a glimpse at the artwork

I have just published episode 107 of the Meeples & Miniatures podcast in which I talk with Clement Seurat of Devil Pig Games about their Heroes of Normandie Kickstarter project.

I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what the sort of artwork that is promised in the final game. It’s going to be printed in full colour on 2mm – 3mm thick cardstock.

What’s in the box game…

Front and back views of the battleboards (you can purchase these as a separate set to add more tiles to your game)

Previews of some of the extra units available:
US Recon Platoon

US Tank Platoon

US Weapon Platoon

SS-Kampfgruppen

And just in case you wanted to use miniatures with the game, here is an example…