Deadzone – Page 2 – An Archive For The Steinberg Shed Space Blog

Progress Report…

I have made some progress with some of the previously featured items in the last week…

Unusual I know, but maybe this blog is helping my productivity more than I realise.

I did a rough and ready drybrush over black spray on the footbridge from Hurlbat. This was in a GW Brass. I then tried to dulled that down a little with a drybrushed coat of the grey I am using for the Deadzone stuff. I am hoping it will then match in with those items enough to be used alongside those pieces.

The brass proved quite difficult to cover so a second coat of grey helped to tone it down a bit more.

Also this little (actually quite large) item turned up from Hurlbat. These guys are always super quick with their eBay deliveries.

As I was in the painting mood, it almost instantly got one coat of paint. I find very thinned down paints and inks best when painting MDF buildings. I cant say this is the best method but it works for me. All those very flat surfaces can look slightly odd if I leave the paint too thick. Any detail can be lost very easily too with thicker paints.

Don’t know quite what to do with the centre of the column at this point… Grey is my new best friend so I will attempt to paint the lighter areas without getting any on the carved areas of the iconography thereby ruining the whole thing. Then it will be time to find something that will sit on top (anyone know any good, generic, 40-54mm figures?)

More of the Deadzone scenery got done too. The VERY basic paint job is coming on well. Quick enough to not cause me problems but the insides of the buildings are remaining unpainted as I thought about doing them in a second colour. However, drybrushing inside a box is not as easy as it could be…

Plenty more to do though…

More Laser Cut Goodness, And Some Odds And Sods Of Resin.

First up, 28mm hand carts… These are from an eBay seller who went out of his way to sort out just what I wanted even though I missed out on one of his auctions. These are due to be used on my Victorian Gothic table and any Mid East Bazaar I manage to set up in future. Seller s_j_day is the guy to go to for a wide range of items in all scales and with some novel ideas to. School room sets anyone? (Complete with a blackboard and an upright piano).

Hurlbat Games makes this little beauty. They call it their footbridge and it’s from their expanding Sci-Fi Cityscape MDF Scenery Accessories Range. I see this little footbridge featuring in a number of settings, as its wrought iron look fits in very well with my Victorian stuff and even my Deadzone stuff. It’s a great size for street level skirmish games, with bases fitting perfectly onto the steps. This range also includes some simple barriers to block off roads and now even features a lovely little statue plinth complete with carved effigies on the sides. The plinth is new to the range since I picked up my bridge and will be in my shopping basket very soon. Shipping is free for these items and at only £2.50-£3 an item even my, post Disney, pocket can cope with that.

I appear to be back in a wagon period as well, as these bits are all awaiting a finish. The first is an ox cart for my Saga games. The second is from those lovely Warbases chaps and was sat, flat packed, on my bench for months after Salute where I picked it up… Can’t find a horse to fit this yet as my blitz box is currently bereft of anything equine at this time.

Thankfully the chaps at Westwind do supply theirs with draft horses. The last is a Black Mariah (Victorian police van) that, one day, will be finished off to join the peelers crew I have for Empire of the Dead. Then I will need to read the extra rules for wagons from their Requiem Kickstarter.

The last little lot is from various places and finally got started (and in the case of the crates, finished) recently. I have to admit, table scatter like planters and pots appeal to me as a nice way to get usable blocking/ cover terrain on the table, and do keep things looking natural. How often in real life is a tyre barricade found to be in just the right place when you want to take a pot shot at some villains? Never… Planters, pots and wheelie bins however, now these are all over the place…
Reminder to self: I must find some 28mm wheelie bins.

Actually, I’ve been up to more than I thought…

Just reviewing my photo stream tells me that I have done a lot more than I thought. Yay!

These test pieces from the Deadzone scenery range were done before my summer Disney excursion.

These pieces were simply sprayed black then given a heavy dry brush of privateer press P3 Greatcoat Grey, with bolt heads and detail picked out in GW Kislev Flesh.

It’s a quick and easy method, as painting lots of bits this size often bores me to the point of not completing them. (I still haven’t finished the remaining pieces yet although they are very good pieces and do deserve a place on my Sci-fi table.

Note to self: I must inventory my Sci-fi stuff to see what I have got, as we seem to be playing more of this recently.

The Plague Cometh, But No Thanks, I’m A Reb…

The plague came to me via a friend… Sounds worse than it is… No, not that kind of plague…

This kind of plague… This is a very nice model by Mantic Games who have launched their board / tabletop game of future war: Deadzone. As I understand it a plague has come to the universe that is spreading through the galaxy and affecting the mega corporations cash flow. As all good capitalists would, they decided to treat this plague with a systemic quarantine and annihilation of the populations of the affected planets. All so that the story never gets out. As such bad press could seriously affect their share prices…

They have been less than effective in their quarantines, and their annihilations, as rebel factions of unhappy inhabitants and resource hungry mercenaries have been fighting back. Not to mention the initial victims of the plague who have been warped into vicious beasties and mutant zombies, all set to ravage the unprotected civilians…

This arrived by Kickstarter and was bought into by a friend in no small way… He then managed to sell me a faction and eBay supplied the remainder of my needs, enabling me to be ready for a game.

The Rebs was the faction to follow for me, as they were the plucky defenders of their worlds against both plague and those pesky corporations. A rag tag band of mismatched aliens and humans with one goal binding them together.

The one fault I see with this game is the mould quality and planning that mantic have put into the figures. Soft resin / plastic materials and heavy mould lines in faces and hair leave me wondering why this still happens. I have read posts bemoaning these problems for the last few years… Is no one listening to the customers? And don’t get me started on the ill fitting and often missing Mantic bases!

My faction pleases me on the whole though and can often be found at the old White Horse Public House when not out saving their world.

Not the easiest faction to play in the game in my opinion (but that may just be an excuse for my current losing streak).

This force is also going to be the mainstay for my larger No Limits force (No Limits being the brainchild of friend and fellow blogger Coronasan). This larger force will be featured later as it is a current work in progress and contains models from a range of manufacturers collected over the last 20 years… The joy for me of No Limits is the freeform army building allowing any miniatures to be used in any army.

The other joy that Mantic supplied me with their Deadzone game, was a fine set of modular sci-fi scenery (as always a passion of mine). Again you can wait for pictures of that project to come up later, as it will be the focus of a couple of posts in the near future.