Mantic Games – Page 2 – An Archive For The Steinberg Shed Space Blog

Dreadball Team Two.

A couple of weeks ago I finished a small team for Dreadball. They were some very nice sculpts, Orcs (or Orks or Orx) depending on your upbringing. They painted up well and I was pleased with the outcome (except for those horrid Mantic bases…)

So, as it takes two to tango (and play Dreadball) I picked up a cheap second team and popped some paint on these too. Overall, the poses of these individual models, and the look of the team, with the futuristic armour and helmets, is great.

Once undercoated though, the detail on the sculpts seems to be less defined and painting them left me slightly deflated as the details blurred with each colour added. In the end, I left them slightly more simply painted than even I would normally do.

Another small issue was that I did not plan ahead. Blue was on the painting table so blue was applied. Just like the last team… No home and away strips as such so I had to add a dash of colour to make them stand out from the Orcs (not that the green skin and teeth don’t make the Orcs stand out already…)

Overall, Not my best painting experience but a second team all the same. If I go for another team I will be looking closely to see that the models have suitably deeper sculpting details before buying anything new…

Further Updates On The Deadzone Scenery With A Few Extras.

Only one piece (granted the biggest piece) is left unpainted of the Deadzone scenery I have been working on. It wont be long before it too gets the fast and dirty paintjob that I am using for these terrain elements.

The rest of the sections are now done, and have been made up in a range of sizes, so that they can be mixed and matched to create a wide variety of layouts.

The smaller elements like the barrels, crates and lamps can be used as objective and scatter terrain. The footbridge from Hurlbat can be used to bridge the building sections or to widen the footprint of the setup. It also allows for more range in heights for foot troops to move through.

Some platforms are destined to be used by gunners and snipers as their extra height will give a wide view of the table.

Two new storage cylinders or water tanks also got a similar paint job and fit in well when mixed in between the other sections. These are a couple of the silos made by Sarissa Precision. I picked these up earlier in the year, at Salute, but have only just found themselves a use. These went together easily and look great, but I was slightly upset when I found out that the taller silo does not come with any access ladders. These are available for £5 each on the Sarissa website (add postage and that goes up to £7.50).

At this price I may wait to see if I can pick some up next time I see them at a show. With everything I have left to paint, even if I did get some, it would likely be a while before I got them done.

Just need to get a game played on these pieces at some point…

Busy Doing Nothing… Not Really…

Work life often gets in the way of home life. Know how that feels?

Lately work is casting a slight shadow over play. But I have managed to get a few things done. Mostly due to the kindness of the girls in my life who have allowed me to get out to the shed as a place to chill for an hour or so when things get hectic. Thanks to them I have things to show you. Sadly work demands are stopping me from getting these things on the blog as regularly as I would like.

Anyway things to show…

A friend (as is often the case) turned my head to these little beauties. He placed a copy of a rulebook and a team in my possession and left these seed to grow. 4 months later we played a game and 4 days later these were painted.

Dreadball is Mantic’s futuristic sports game and reminds me of Bloodbowl to some degree. It is however much more playable and fast moving meaning even we got a game in, in an after dinner hour or so.

I can see us playing this more in the next months as a small pick up game for those days when a larger game would take too long.

Will be painting up a human team in the next weeks for another friend to get involved.

I now just need to get a copy of the rules for myself and a board to play on. Oh, and maybe a ball or two!

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…

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.