Welcome to the Deadzone

I've always wanted to enter the sci-fi side of miniature gaming, despite being mostly a fantasy player most of my life. My interest in miniatures stemmed from playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. My first introduction to miniature gaming came from Milton Bradley's HeroQuest and Space Crusade. HeroQuest turned into Warhammer Quest and then into full blown Warhammer, but Space Crusade never grew into the all-encompassing obsession that my sojourn into fantasy eventually became.

Until now, anyway. For the longest time I was a loyal GW customer, and a big fan of their IP. I still love their fluff. The Old World was derivative of a hundred other fantasy tropes, but became much more than the sum of its parts for me. 40K is an amazing gothic re-imagining of Paradise Lost, replete with Biblical allusions and its own account of the Fall. But with both fantasy and sci-fi competing for my time, it was swords and sorcery that fixated my attention.

The days of collecting and painting massive armies is over for me, I believe. I am done with large scale wargaming, and the time investment required to assemble fully painted forces. Plus I no longer have the tournament incentive I had in Australia. I am a lazy painter at best, but with four, five, even six tournaments a year in the Australian calendar there was plenty of incentive to put brush to lead/white metal/plastic in order to prepare for these events. These deadlines focused my painting efforts and gave me concrete goals to work towards. In Japan I use the monthly calendar events at the various clubs for the same purpose. What I'll paint is chiefly determined by next month's meet. Nowadays though these are no longer the massive armies of my high school and university days, but skirmish level forces composed of about eight to twelve models.

The venerable Necromunda, released over two decades ago in 1995.

I played Necromunda and Mordheim when I was in university, so I am no stranger to the skirmish level miniatures game. Nowadays there are dozens of similar systems - War Machine/Hordes, Infinity, Malifaux, Bolt Action, Empire of the Dead - set in an almost equal number of different settings - fantasy, sci-fi, steam punk, historical, alternate historical, wild West - all competing for the skirmish level market. Out of this confusing mess I chose Deadzone from Mantic Games. I don't know why. I wanted a sci-fi game, but Infinity looks better, deeper and is supported by a tournament scene so I have no idea why I didn't go with it instead. Perhaps it was the simplicity of Deadzone that appealed, or perhaps it was the modular scenery that came with the base game. Or the rubber play mat, which I really like. I have two of them.

Deadzone First Edition, with Enforcers and Plague as starter factions.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my choice might be influenced by my disenchantment with GW after they destroyed Warhammer. Mantic Games made a name for themselves by creating proxy miniatures for GW games, while carefully avoiding fluff which might infringe on copyright. Buying Mantic products might be my way of giving the middle finger to GW, despite the fact that they don't give a shit. They costed in my reaction when they made the call to pull the plug on Warhammer. Disenchanted fans are already accounted for in their profit/loss margins, and they've worked out that the losses accrued from manufacturing and supporting a line of wargaming miniatures does not justify trying to keep alive a dwindling player base. They did the math, and pulled the trigger.

Deadzone Second Edition. Enforcers are still there, but this time they square off against the Forge Fathers a.k.a. Dwarves In Space. Or Squats.

If I'm really choosing games based on residual resentment then I'd like to tell myself to get over it and move on. Like someone on the rebound I moved into another relationship without thinking through the consequences. But Deadzone has its own merits. The rules are fast and clean, the mats are cool, and the cube based movement reminds me of X-Com the video game. That's a big plus in my eyes, because I love X-Com. But Mantic miniatures are simply not as good as GW, or Privateer Press, or Malifaux miniatures. And their factions lack imagination. Space dwarves. Space orcs. Space elves. Space Skaven. Really? Come on, guys.

I can understand why they did this, though. Mantic had to be more about imitation than innovation, because they were piggy backing on the salt of ex-GW players like myself. As Mantic grows as a company this will hopefully change. I just hope they never lose the inclusiveness that currently characterizes their approach - it's very refreshing to see a miniatures company say you can use any model from any manufacturer in their games.

I've had the good fortune of meeting Japanese Deadzone players in the local clubs around my area. I've played seven games since receiving my copy in March this year, as attested to by my preceding battle report. Through pure serendipity I also met the Japanese distributor of Mantic Games at a local gaming club, so I have a line to their products without having to go through mail order every time I want something.

One more thing - I also intend to use proxies from Raging Heroes to sub into my Deadzone games. Rather than buying into the space variants of generic fantasy race tropes like dwarves, elves, orcs and ratmen, I'm going to use the rules for the factions but use proxies instead. It fits the Mantic creed of inclusiveness, plus I'll also prepare comprehensive army lists with pictures so that my opponents know what they are facing at all times. This project lies somewhere in the future, however, as I still have three starting factions to paint. I bought the first and second editions of Deadzone to give me a solid starting base of miniatures, scenery and play mats. The Enforcers and Forge Fathers are almost done, and the Plague are undercoated and waiting for a lick of paint. But for me collecting miniatures has always been about creating a world in my head, as attested to the Warhammer collection that grew around my Warhammer Quest heroes. Later this year Mantic is releasing their sci-fi dungeon crawler Star Saga. By the time it comes out I'm hoping to have a coterie of sci-fi models ready to enter that world.

Shadow War: Armaggedon, GW's spiritual successor to Necromunda in 2017.

So maybe I didn't buy Deadzone for the amazing fluff or miniatures. I may have bought it more as a base system for a line of 28 mm miniatures, and as a gateway to a sci-fi setting which was not affiliated to Games Workshop. In fact, it was stumbling onto the Raging Heroes website that probably reignited my ardour for miniatures. But more on that later. Games Workshop has recently released the spiritual successor to Necromunda called Shadow War: Armaggedon, and the old me would have jumped all over it. But that was before GW and I broke up over Warhammer. I won't buy the game. But if I see a nice looking squad/kill team I might swoop on it and re-purpose it for Deadzone. We're no longer lovers, GW and I, but we can still be friends.

For better or for worse, welcome to the Deadzone.