Wayland

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Sprue Peter - Here's Some I Haven't Put Together Yet

I got back from the Mantic Open Day about an hour ago and I am, to say the least a bit tired. So tired in fact, that I could not make sense of the massive number of sprues I found in my awesomely large Deadzone Kickstarter box. Honestly, I got so much stuff I am grateful it is coming in two shipments. I could not cope with a larger injection of plastic crack at the moment.

As well as all the starter factions and mercs and whatnot, I also pledged for a large number of playmats and battlezones. Enough to put out a full 6x4 table of the stuff. This means I have literally dozens of sprues to sort and I was having trouble figuring out what sprue belonged to which battlezone and whether or not I had the right number of each.

I have figured it all out now. So, for your entertainment and edification, and possibly to help you if you're as confused as I was, here's some pics of what you get in a Core Worlds Battlezone, a Fortifications Battlezone, and a Landing Pad Battlezone. I haven't included any pictures of the Accessories or Connectors sprues though as they are pretty obvious.

Please note all the pics are poor quality as I've been up since 6am and driven for about 8 hours today. So I may get some of the numbers  mixed up but you should still be able to make out vague shapes through the gloom.

1. Core Worlds


Deadzone Core Worlds Sprues

For some reason, the Kickstarter updates refer to a single sprue when describing contents, but the actual delivery split each sprue they designed into two. So, you will get four of the top left sprue, and two of each of the other two (this is the one I may have got the count wrong on - I seem to have an extra set!). You also get a connector sprue and an accessory sprue.


2. Landing Pad Battlezone


Grrr, stairs.
 Apparently there was some controversy about this one. It was concepted as being slightly raised, like the helicopter landing pads the military deploys when it builds a base somewhere. I don't know why, but during production it got changed to being raised fairly significantly. So, you now get three each of the top left and bottom right sprues, including the bane of Daleks everywhere - stairs, plus one each of the other two. The two smaller sprues are the Defense Line sprues. These include the massive turbo-laser/AA gun mount, so you can let them land or shoot them down. Whatever you feel like.

3. Fortifications Battlezone


More Laser!

I really like this one. Partly because I saw some of it put together at the Open Day. You get three each of the top two sprues. At first glance they look the same. But if you look closer you can see some of the flat panels are smaller than their counterparts on the other sprue. This is because they are designed to clip on as extra armour. You also get another Defense Line so now you know if you play me at 40k there will be nowhere your fliers can hide from my Interceptors.

An Important Note

I've only been back a couple of hours and I've already seen forum posts where people complain the scenery is crap and Mantic deserve arson. Maybe they got a bad batch, I don't know. But there seems to be a lack of explanation in general of how to use the connectors. I don't know if this has been widely disseminated, but, just in case it hasn't, you need to push the connectors out from underneath. Don't try to prise them out of their sockets with your fingernails. This just puts stress on them, bends them, and stops them being reusable. I saw Ronnie pop them out and reapply them with a drawing pin and, frankly, I think they missed a beat by not adding in a branded pooping tool. I've copyrighted that idea by the way, so don't go stealing it.

Please do feel free to repost this page though or ask questions or whatever. No comments on my photography or flames of Mantic for not sending your stuff by courier/sending other people's stuff by courier/not sending you the dead birds. I've been awake far too long to be able to stand it ;)