Mantic's Deadzone: AI Edition

There have been a couple of surprising developments in the world of tabletop gaming over the last couple of years. Firstly, how successful many new games have been on Kickstarter. Who would have thought there were thousands of gamers out there willing to front up millions of dollars to advance the production of a multitude of games and gaming accessories? Secondly, how much demand there has been for single-player versions of many of these same games. Who knew gamers wanted to play with themselves so much?

Well, I always did. I'm one of those guys single-player gaming can really appeal to. I get out and play, don't get me wrong. But with a working wife and two kids to take care of, one trip a week to the local club is about as much as I can guarantee each week. So the opportunity to play many of the games I have spent hundreds of dollars on while at home and alone is very welcome.

She made me buy this table to 'eat' on. Hah.

This week I received my second-wave shipment of Deadzone from Mantic games. Deadzone is playable solo in two ways; with zombies which are also useable as npc's in two-player games, and with the purpose-built AI card deck.

I have built up thirty zombies and even found time to paint twenty of them and will be trying them out in a game with a friend later in the week. But I also managed to get in several games alone using the AI deck and this post will be concentrating on that experience. Rules for using them come in the 'Contagion' expansion book.

In the classic AI game you set up your own Strike Force and an opposing Force of matching points. The game board and cards are then set up, pretty much like in a two-player game, but with a couple of important changes.

For a start the AI team gets two mission cards, both of which you can see from the start. This helps you work out what move the AI models will take as the game progresses.

They also tend to only start out where you can reach them without getting up.

When it's the AI teams turn you draw the top card from the AI deck. All the Deadzone models have been allocated to one of five classes, Command, Assault, Heavy, Support, and Line, and most of the cards will tell you to activate one of these classes, choosing the qualifying model either closest to or furthest from the enemy. Once you have figured that out, each class has a list of activities they can carry out, arranged by priority. So a Command-type model will first make sure it cannot be assaulted by an enemy model. If it is in a safe spot it will then attempt a Command action. Assault troops will prioritise closing with the enemy, Line troops shooting at them, and so on.

So, the big questions: does it work, and is it fun? Well, the answer to the first one is 'most of the time'.

Knowing which models to activate is generally straightforward and easy to do. It can get a bit murky though when you get to figuring out which action that model will prioritise though. The rules tell you AI models will essentially gravitate towards objectives and choose sure-things over maybes and when they will use cards and so on. But you can still find yourself in some complicated situations.

Having two missions often doesn't help as their objectives can be contradictory.

You guys go for killing the enemy, I'll do guarding this bit right here.

In one game, for example, the AI Plague drew a survival mission and an infiltration mission. For assault models this was ok as they just raced across the board towards the enemy. For the slower moving guys though there was the difficult decision of which way to go when it was their time to move. Should they move into firing positions where they might be able to shoot the enemy but risk getting shot back? Or follow the 3d's across the board, but more slowly, thus also risking getting shot down?

Only the Leader understands 'Cover'.

Using the cards also gives your AI models a distinct lack of tactical nouse. Whereas a human player would be willing to build forces in one location to provide overlapping or overwhelming fire on an objective before sending a model out to capture it, the AI will sometimes suicidally rush towards the nearest objective on the board. If they're unlucky in the activation order this can leave models all alone and easily picked off. Sometimes shooting at the enemy is the sensible option, but the rules still tell you a model runs off to sit on an objective.

We knew you were going to charge us. We just don't care.

Knowing what the enemy will do next is also a big advantage. In the last game I played as Orx I knew I did not need to move my Commander to a safe position out of charge range of two Plaguehounds because they had the Infiltrate mission and would run straight past my model to get off the board. Instead I could do a Command action and leave him where he was behind a corner.

All that said, I think the answer to the second 'big' question is still 'yes'. Yes, that is, if you understand and accept this is not like a two-player game.

Games play out faster than two-player ones and the AI models can be dumb. They will not supply the same tactical challenge of a human opponent. Sometimes you will need to roll off to decide which action a model will take or you will find the action priorities nonsensical. Let it go. Sometimes human players do daft things to or catch you off guard.

Most of the games I played were still surprisingly close. Even though I, the human, won them all, several times the AI came within a couple of points of beating me.

With  two mission cards the AI can score points very quickly. The first game I played the AI was getting a VP on each card for every turn they got through with fifty percent of their points on the boards. You also get 'bonus points' VP cards in the AI deck and can choose to start the AI with one, two or three, points from the get-go. The AI then, was getting up to five VP's just for surviving the first round.

The challenge becomes in achieving your goals as fast as possible while having to hold off the enemy from achieving two of theirs.  The game knows the AI is dumb and it is weighted towards giving them fast easy VP's. Be faster.

Think of the bonus cards as a kind of handicap. Give them one if you want a fairly easy expedition, three if you want a real test of speed and tactical awareness.

 A couple of tactical notes:

• avoid giving your AI faction points-heavy, high command total type models. With their default action, assuming they are in a safe position and they should be if you set them up fairly, is Command. Plague Stage 1's get six points in their Command pool and will most likely just stand on the spot using them.
• choose factions you know well for the AI. You have twice as many cards, dice, counters and models to keep track off than usual. Knowing your AI faction's special abilities and stats will help.

And a suggestion:

• prioritise one of the AI faction's missions over the other from the start. Still let them score points for both, but deciding for example whether infiltrating or capturing is more important will make their actions easier to determine and possibly make a tougher opponent.

I like Mantic's AI system. It is not perfect but its a good start. I think it could do with a few tweaks, but we have a great community who tend to be good at that sort of thing.

I have all six Deadzone factions, but have only played games using three. I'm looking forward to using the AI deck as an opponent to help me learn the others.

Today I have mostly been playing with the Landing Pad and Fortifications Battlezones from Mantic. The potential for these kits is absolutely fantastic. Their execution is not quite so brilliant though.

First off, the Landing Pad. I started off building this in the square pattern shown in the Kickstarter. On my first go I used the flat connectors all over the pad to get the sturdiest construction possible. This did work. But, it was only when I came to put the support pillars on, these also having connectors on each end,  that I realised the potential drawback of a belt and bracers approach.
 



That is, if you connect the top surface all over and then connect the bottom surface with the pillars it can be difficult to remove them without prising. Prising is the enemy of the Mantic connectors, you really need to push them out with a pin or dowel of some sort. So I ended up gingerly removing a lot of the pillars again, before popping out the flatties on the top, and replacing the pillars.



 As you can see, you can make a very nice looking landing pad. But, here's where it gets really cool: you still have a bunch of stuff left over on the sprues that, unlike a certain other game company's kit, is still useful. After building the square pad you will still have four square floor sections and half a dozen triangular ones too.

 So I built an extension :) using all the floor tiles, the main body of the pad is just a foot long by 9" wide!

Note that none of the pictures I have shown so far include all the parts on the main sprues or any of the accessories. you can, for example, put a skirt all around the landing pad, not just on the corners like I did. You get a laser cannon or radar dish in this kit too, which can also be put anywhere. There's a whole accessories sprue with loads of crates, and barrels, a ladder, and a cool looking elevated light that doubles as a connector for wall sections too.

The main sprues come with several sections of stairs as well. These are the weakest part of the kit though, at least as far as I can tell. I'm just not sure how they are supposed to actually connect to the landing pad. There seems to be a half-hearted attempt at putting connector slots at the top, but I haven't found anything they will actually clip on to yet. They are supposed to join to each other as well, so you can have double or triple width stairs. But the sockets are too small for the pegs. So unless I've missed something, these are not so useful.

Still, check out that pad! I can totally see Stormraven's landing on the larger one. Perhaps the smaller one gives us an idea of the kind of size of kit Mantic are working on too.

Next up is the Fortifications zone. This is a funny one.

I thought at first the thick pillar sections were supposed to join the fortified walls together. But they just don't. I couldn't understand how Mantic could tool something so badly that they refused to work together at all. Then I realised the pillar connectors are actually intended to connect Core Worlds walls together >< Used on those thinner tiles they work just fine and look cool. Same with the corner columns. They just won't work with the walls on the sprues they are supplied with, but go great on Core Worlds tiles. In that way, I see the Fortications as augments for the other sections. You'll get the most out of them if you mix them in with the other zones.

But what happens if you do mix it all up? Well, you can do stuff like this for a start:

 Its perhaps not so good for Deadzone, what with it being played on a grid and all. But 40k, or Infinity?

 It reminds me of the Forge engine from Bungie. The ability to mix and match terrain pieces in infinite combinations is fantastic and I am so excited to see what people do with these kits.

When Forge came out, a map editor for a console multiplayer, the first ever I think, it blew people away. It has been iterated on a few times since then, growing in both subtlety and complexity. The maps that have been created have likewise become more and more amazing. I really hope we see the imagination of the community go to work on Mantic's kits to produce some similarly amazing boards.

The pieces I have built and shown so far have just been experiments as I get to know the materials. I'm going to decamp from my tiny office now to the big dining room table to see if I can't build something really cool. I'm thinking a multi-level keep, with gun emplacements and holds and all sorts. Lets see what is possible :)

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 ;)