Deadzone: Doin' The Zombie Shuffle!

My zombies are here, my zombies are here!!!

Yep, my first Mantic minis have arrived and not only have I assembled half of them, I even got some of them painted too!  Sure it's not all twenty but hey, it's a start at least.

Not a fancy paint job but hey, they're just zombies...

My overall impression of these is they are pretty good minis, especially for the price.  $30 retail for a box of twenty figures is almost unheard of nowadays.  But what about the quality?  Not too shabby if I do say so!

The sculpts are pretty clean with just some minor mold lines which is good because I hate cleaning those up.  I don't mind assembling minis and find it kind of relaxing but cleaning them up?  Just not a fan.  Think somewhere in the back of my brain I'm just wait to accidentally slice off some cool little bit of detail.  And speaking of detail, these minis have a good amount of it that is nice and clean which I find always makes painting them easier.

There are also a number of options when it comes to assembly as well.  The good old ball and socket joint is the most common connection, giving you a good range of options for positioning and swapping bits around.  Note that I did say that they are the most common.  There are two sculpts that are more limited in their positioning and one of them is just downright fiddly.

Introducing jaw dropper and batter up!

On the left we have the jaw dropper.  I think he is eating a big ball of intestines but he also might be ripping his lower lip off.  Maybe both?  Assembly on this one is much clearer than the other pose as the forearms holding the spaghetti ball just plug right into the torso, quick and easy.  This is also "handy" because if gives you an extra set of arms which is good in case you don't want to use batter up, which you can see on the right.

Where jaw dropper is easy to assemble, batter up is kind of fiddly.  The rifle and both arms come as three separate pieces.  One of the arms has a flat connection at the wrist but its the other one that is tricky.  Instead of a flat, there is what looks like a tab that is actually a hook so its definitely best to dry fit this side first to make sure you get a solid connection.  Personally I find the easiest thing to do is glue the hook side to the rifle first.  Once that is set, then I attach that unit to the other arm and the body.

Overall I'm really happy with this set and I've decided to grab one of the starters as well.  I had been eyeing the Enforcers but someone else beat me to it so I decided to grab the Rebs first.  This faction has a mix of human and alien troops so I'm excited to get my hands on them.  They do look like their poses are a bit more static at least in variety but there is enough variation to keep it interesting IMO.  Once they get here, I need to start piecing together some terrain so I can actually push them around in a little plague zombie smackdown.  Until next time...

Deadzone: Dabbling With The Dead

Yeah.  A new shiny has caught my eye.

Back in 2018 (can't believe it's been so long!!!), I bought into Mar Attacks by Mantic Games.  Beyond the base game I also grabbed more Martians to give me a solid force to pull from since it's easier to get ahold of modern day soldiers.  I have only pushed the minis around a couple of times but it was a fun little system.  Since then I've hit the road for my job which has put a bit of a dent in my hobby time.  Well, a dent in my gaming time because my painting time has definitely increased.

I've been able to play some solo games of Antares and Wrath of Kings in my hotel room which I've enjoyed.  I suspect that both would be more fun against an actual opponent but something is better than nothing, especially when you are sitting in a hotel room four nights out of the week.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed an email from Mantic Games saying that most (maybe all?) of their core rulebooks were available for free in digital format.  The larger Warpath system doesn't really appeal to me but I was aware of Deadzone so I decided to take a closer look.

The system seems very similar to Mars Attacks which makes me wonder if the system of Mars acted as a test bed for the mechanics (I looked this up later and apparently Deadzone 1st edition was first). This and the limited table space needed (the typical table is only 2' x 2') really intrigued me so I started looking closer at the models.

The style of some of them appeal to me more than others but the thing that really surprised me was the value of the starter and booster sets.  The rulebook defines a basic strike team as being worth 100 points total which even just the starters that I looked at blew that limit out of the water.  For example, the Rebel starter weighs in at 192 points without any special equipment at this was one of the lowest point totals that I figured out. On the other end of the spectrum is the Enforcers which total 393 points without options.  To give some perspective, while the smallest game is 100 points you build a 500 point pool of to draw from for the basic campaign.  Even then, you aren't typically going to be fielding the entire army in one go so just a starter gives you access to a good number of options to play around with as you learn the system.  On top of that, the starter and booster are both only $40 which works out to a couple of dollars a mini or less in some cases.

One of my concerns is that Mantic use to cast their figures in a material called restic.  I've never worked with it but I've not heard good things so I decided that I'm going to start small.  Currently I've got a box of Plague Zombies on the way so I can check them out.  Worst case scenario, I will have some modern/sci-fi zombies that I can use for other games.  Best case, I might have a new game that I should be able to push around for some solo play or maybe even pick up a game here or there.  Fingers crossed.  Until next time...

Random Updates: Just a Wee Bump in the Road

At the end of last week, I had started typing up me next article which was going to feature a breakdown of my 750 point Ghar Exile list.  There was still a bit of painting to do on the Outcasts and a battle suit but I figured that I could get at least the suit done at the beginning of this week... and then I was told to stay in Maine on Sunday.

All well and good, and definitely the best choice in the situation but it also meant that I had a ton of stuff still in my hotel room so... limited hobby for a while I guess?

Turns out that situation changed though as I drove down and check out yesterday so everything is with me up in Maine.  Huzzah!  Now I just have to find some place to put it all...  Until next time...

Antares: Starting LIfe as a Ghar in Exile

I have had my Ghar minis sitting on my desk for a while as I've agonized over their paint scheme.  I had decided to go with just bare metal since the Ghar are only concerned with war.  Why not simply churn out the warmachines and send them out as is?  It kept feeling like there needed to be more though but the question was what.

As I mulled this over, my Ghar collection continued to expand like a gremlin that got wet which is when the Antares Facebook group started talking about Ghar Rebels and Exiles.  This got the gears going but it was the Mandolorian that finally sealed the deal.  After watching a few episodes, I sat down with some Menoth white base and started painting in panels on one of my assault suits.  I hit it with a wash of seraphim sepia, painted a couple of panels different colors to make it look more ramshackle...  and now I'm working on painting up my first armored trooper squad.

I'm really happy with how they are turning out and since I took this picture, I've been working on five more armored suits, a couple of outcast disruptor cannon teams, and ordered a set of rebel outcasts to mix into my outcast squads for a bit of variety.

One of the questions for me now is what I'm going to do with my command crawler.  In the Exile list the command crawler has fewer options available and even looses Command, Follow, and Leader but its still a beast of a machine.  Ultimately, I think I'll have to figure out a what kind of cap I want to look at for my list and then build accordingly but for now I'm just going to aim for 750 as a good starting point.  Planning to get a chunk of that completed next week and then there will be more pictures.  Until next time...

Funkoverse: Oh Yeah!!!

There is another addition to the wonderful world of the Funkoverse and there ain't nothing that's gonna slow him down! Oh, Yeah!!!

That's right, Kool-Aid Man has joined the fight, standing side by side with Voldemort, Batman, and Blanche.  Because... well, why not?

A few weeks ago I had looked at the upcoming releases for Funkoverse just to see what else I might be interested in.  At that point, the only solo expansion showing was Aggretsuko so when I saw the Kool-Aid Man at Target, I was quite surprised.  With a little bit of research on the interwebs, it turns out that this is a Target exclusive release (at least at this point anyway) and I must admit that I instantly caved and picked him up the next day.

This was another one of those "It sounds so ridiculous it's gotta be good!", but after looking over his abilities, it might just be true.

Kool-Aid Man brings a red and blue ability token to your pool, backing up some interesting abilities.  The first one is Hey Kool-Aid! which is a move 3.  The only caveat to this is he must end his move adjacent to an ally which might sound limiting, but in a fun little twist he can also move through walls so not so much.

Next up is Splash Zone, a challenge 3 against all adjacent rivals.  The catch with this one?  He has to move this turn to be able to use the ability.  It is worth noting that a turn is when each individual character activates so a round consists of six turns, one for each character.  This means that if another character moves him on their turn, it doesn't count because he has to move on his own turn.  This is a minor thing but I can see it coming up so it's worth noting.

His abilities are rounded out with Oh Yeah! which gives him move 1 and challenge 3, and yes, that move can also go through walls.  Notice a trend yet?  Oh Yeah!!!

Thanks to his Bust Through trait, when Kool-Aid Man moves through a wall using one of his abilites, you place a rubble token on the wall to represent the big old pitcher shaped hole he has smashed though the wall.  Any character (ally or rival) can then move through the hole though interestingly enough, there is no mention about line of sight.  Going by rules as written, I would take it that this means the wall still blocks LoS but even so it still opens up some interesting options.  There are only three rubble tokens and once they are all placed, move one of the old ones if you need another.  This opens up some board control options as well as this likes you close one of the holes to keep your rival from using it.

Overall, this seems like it will be a little fun pack.  Is it a must buy?  Probably not, but if you are a fan of Kool-Aid or just interested in adding some more options to your Funkoverse, this is one worth checking out.  Until next time...