Trying out Deadzone

So, I was watching Beasts of War the other day, and they were talking about Deadzone. Now, I saw Deadzone when it was on Kickstarter, and I didn't back it. Why not? Well, a bit of me felt that it was a little too close to Sedition Wars for my liking, and I already a massive Studio McVey fan. I'd also seen some early Marauder Orx figures and vehicles from the preview packs - and the preparation and assembly was an absolute pain - horrible material, horrible mould lines, and assembly that just, well, didn't fit.

What made me change my mind? Well, the Beasts of War videos explained just enough of the background and mechanics to get me curious. The mechanics were nice and simple, and the darling wife's attention span is . . . limited, so a nice quick game is a good choice for something we can do of an evening. So when my local store arranged a demo day over the Easter weekend, I pottered on down.

This is a limited version of the gaming board for demo purposes. The demo is heavily weighted towards the Plague due to the smaller space, but it gives a good idea of the game. The basic mechanics are nice and simple - your stats tell you what number you're trying to roll on your D8, you roll 3 as a standard thing, and modifiers add or take away dice.

I quickly found out that the system was simple to get the hang of. I was already making moves without having to ask questions by the second turn.This was the point, with four of my five models down, I thought I was done for!

I shouldn't have worried! It turns out that once Plague get into combat and start swarming people, they start pulling Enforcers down. One on one, over a normal gaming distance, the Enforcers will definitely have the edge.

My problem right now is that I am still a bit of a cynic about Mantic's quality. I'm not hugely interested in their figures, and the only way of getting the stat cards for Deadzone are in the miniature boxes. You can buy the rulebook and the mat separately - and I already want the terrain... But that's close to the box cost anyway. That means I'm probably adding the Deadzone core box to my 'to buy' list, to be fair. But really, rather than getting, say, the Marauder starter set, I'd far rather be looking at making some out of MaxMini and Kromlech parts without having to buy Deadzone figure expansion sets and selling the figures!

So, I leave you on that little dilemma, and wonder if anyone has any ideas or suggestions...