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 ;)