Mantic Open Day, November 2014 Part 2

The full title of the final seminar at Mantic’s Open Day, November 2014, was ‘The Future of Mantic Games with Ronnie Renton’, leading Ronnie to make a joke about what the future of Mantic would be without himself.

One thing he did want to be clear on though was that he sees digital products as a big part of that future. Geiger, the company that makes Mantic’s digital products, were represented alongside Ronnie and Stewart Gibbs to emphasise the point.

Here then are some of the key points and answers to questions from the room.

This post is about Mantic's pipeline.

• There are no plans to do any kind of space battle game. The reason for this is mostly that there is already a very successful game out there with a very strong ip behind it. Ronnie did say that if he were going to do something featuring Plague and Enforcer fleets he would probably just ask FFG for a licence as they have a solid rule set that people know and like.

• The Dungeon Saga Pledge Manager is on the way. Geiger said they planned a short beta test next week, then the proper release, and the KoW PM should come out straight after that. Ronnie was keen to stress all future Mantic PM’s would go through this one system so backers would only have to log in once. They would also remain fairly flexible so people could add stuff as they could afford it and pay instantly by credit card. He also joked there would be a paypal option for those that want to hide their spend from the other half.

• Geiger said the Dreadball Playbook app is also still on the way. The delay, we were told, is due to waiting for DBX and seasons 5 and 6 to come out so they could be integrated. 

• The idea of fantasy terrain came up and Ronnie indicated there was some tension between himself and Stewart over this. Ronnie thinks the 3” square model used in Deadzone can be transferred, Stewart is unconvinced. Really they need to be sure they can come up with something that will scale up from small villages to castles and the like. They also need to decide on a timescale to develop some kind of KoW skirmish game and there is definitely no room for it in the current KoW KS. 

• Geiger talked a fair bit about Dreadball league software that will be open to testers soon. The idea is for people to be able to set up leagues, record games, and possibly transfer results to a central server. There would be various ways for people to log in, but the issue of people possibly inventing matches and results to inflate their standings needs to be dealt with.

• Season 4 of Dreadball will be seen in January, then more Deadzone in February, then season 5 of Dreadball in March. I’m guessing the Deadzone in March will either be release to retail of stuff KS backers already have, or possibly even the first sign of the next KS.

• Ronnie has plans for a world tournament of Dreadball. He would like to fly the highest ranked European player to the States to play the highest ranked American in a ‘Ryker Cup’. Perhaps they play seven games but have to have seven different teams to counter the ‘Nameless are the best’ problem.

• On the topic of videogames, Ronnie said again they had been approached several times by serious parties. Games companies like that Mantic has good games with solid ip. But the potential cost and associated risk puts Mantic off committing to anything. This is similar to the answer Ronnie gave to the same question at the last Open Day. He would rather they held off doing videogames than risk the company on a poor one.

• The topic of using Restic on big models in the current KoW KS came up. Ronnie said they would be waiting to see what numbers of certain models were ordered before deciding what materials to use for some things. Getting base troops into hard plastic is something that came up again and again during the day.

• An app for Deadzone AI cards is done. Lots of work has gone into the algorithm to make it shuffle like a person. So you will see some cards get ‘stuck’ as it deals, becoming more random as time goes on.
• Confirmation that Deadzone 1.5 features Vermyn and is next on the slate. Will also revisit and hopefully fill holes in current lineup like Asterians basic troops. Ideally this will get all armies ready for a vehicles-focused Warpath KS. Mantic believes the tech is now where it needs to be to do vehicles right.

• There is also a growing possibility of non-KS funded projects. Azure Forest was held up as the example here. The only DB product that was not KS-funded.
• Device compatibility of apps came up briefly. There was some support for more Windows device app support but the issue really is complexity. Even with Android. Geiger said the variety of devices to cater for was huge. Apple is simpler, but the hurdle there can be their approvals process. Ronnie joked the only certainty was that if you had the same phone as him, you could be sure Mantic apps would work on it. Good news for me as we both use Galaxy Notes ;)

• There was a short discussion of the lack of hobby resources being produced by Mantic. Ronnie said this was really due to a lack of time. They have tried to do things like Dave’s Hobby Tips and Army Painter do the occasional painting guide. But there is also a fairly good amount of content being put out by the community. Personally, I like this. It feels more like Mantic to have the community produce things like painting guides and show what can be done with their terrain and models and the like.

That was more or less it for the Open Day seminars. Lots to look forward to including the next Deadzone kickstarter and maybe even a rollout of Warpath late in 2015 as well as more Dreadball, Dungeon Saga, and Kings of War. If you have any questions about what was said or seen at Mantic please leave them below. Let's close with a couple of pictures of what Mantic keeps on their bookshelves. Some suprising and some not so surprising sources of inspiration there...

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.

Speed-painting Fortifications for Deadzone

The next Mantic Open Day is coming up soon so I've been spurred on to get some more DZ terrain and models painted up and ready to go.

Although most of my terrain tiles are done I had left the fortification clip-on sections alone and I decided it might be nice to paint them a different colour to the blue-grey I have used on the rest of the scenery. This is partly because its generally a good idea to paint items made of different materials in different colours or shades of the same colour and partly to provide some visual contrast to a table. From a narrative point of view, if Shensig buildings are made of repurposed freight containers, maybe the fortifications are made of sterner stuff, deployed by military units when the need arises. Such as when the Plague breaks out.

I still wanted to get it done quickly though.

So, here are a few pics of my fortifications, followed by how I did it.

1. Stick your tiles onto a sheet of cardboard or a long stick with blu-tack. Make sure the tiles are all aligned the same way up.

2. Undercoat with a spray of black paint.

3. Spray a layer of dark blue paint on top of the undercoat. Spray from the direction of the top edge of the pieces. This will allow a little of the black undercoat to remain on the bottom of raised edges and give you a built-in drop-shadow effect. You could, of course, use a different colour undercoat, it would just mean you would need to apply the base colour a bit more thoroughly to make sure none of the undercoat remains visible. I used an airbrush and Vallejo's Model Air Blue Angels but any dark blue will do, even one from a spraycan for extra speed.

4. When the dark blue is dry, use a piece of packing sponge, the kind you get in model blister packs, to sponge on a lighter blue-grey. I used Citadel's Shadow Grey. I think the closest available alternate now is their 'The Fang'. Use a corner of the sponge to dab on the paint. Avoid the temptation to drag the sponge. Raised edges and corners are your friend as they will stop the paint completely covering the piece, giving you dark corners and a broken up pattern. This helps you get a natural look to the paint job. You are not trying to uniformly cover the tiles - thats what brushes are for. You're trying to get a patchy or blotchy look.

5. Make a thin wash of a light earth tone paint. I used Citadel's Steel Legion Drab. This is the key word here. It needs to look almost like dirty water. If you're not sure, add more water. Its better to go too thin, then do it again with a slightly thicker mix than mess up your tiles by painting on too much dirt. Make sure you get the wash into the cracks and crevices on your sections. When it dries you want nice dusty effect. On the flat sections you will get a 'filter' effect, where you can see the blues and greys you painted on but through a yellowy brown layer that is almost imperceptible to the conscious brain but that registers as different anyway.Make sure your tiles are standing up straight while they dry so the wash drifts downwards.

6. When the dustwash is dry, mix up a wash of a bright orange. I used an old pot of Citadel's Blazing Orange. It looks quite harsh on the palette, but it works well on the colours I painted the tiles with. I think Vallejo's Hot Orange is probably a good  substitute.This mix is going to be a little bit thicker than the dust wash, but still fairly close to coloured water. You want a consistency that flows around raised details and pools in the corners when you touch the brush to the piece, rather than something it feels like you have to paint on. I put it on the rivets on the wall pieces and around the teardrops and vent holes on the bulwarks.

7. For extra weathering, I also rubbed the side of a standard HB pencil along most of the raised edges. This gives you a nice sharp edge highlight, as well as giving the pieces a subtle metallic look. Its the simplest and easiest technique, but it can really make parts stand out nicely.

Thats it for the painting. Here's how my completed sections look when mixed in with the scenery I painted in earlier guides and some of my Plague and Marauders mini's.

Thats it for post #100 :) As always, feel free to ask any questions and click on the ads if what you read was helpful. Thanks for reading.

Mantic Cases and Battlefoam Bag

Here's a quick video showing what you can fit into Mantic's two sizes of plastic cases and an overview of the Mantic branded Battlefoam bag.



Foam and cases are bog money these days - there are so many great models being made and people want to take care of them. I have found the Mantic cases to be a great solution.

They are not the most glamorous bits of kit. They are a lot like VHS cassette boxes. Youngsters, google it. But with a bit of foam on each side, they hold models in place and provide hard protection against impacts. Stick them in the BF bag, also very attractively priced, and you've got a great way to carry round your Deadzone and Dreadball mini's.

Deadzone Terrain Weathering

If you have been following my previous guides to speedy and even speedier painting of the masses of tiles that came with the Deadzone Kickstarter packages, you should now have a tonne of nicely painted two-tone grey tiles. Are yours not so nicely painted? Well, thats ok too. Its art and art is subjective.

So, that two-tone scheme is a really fast way to get paint on your tiles, but there is no reason to stop there. In fact its a good idea to add more colours to the tiles as all that grey, even with accents, can look a bit monochrome en masse.

I am going to show you here some ways I have added a bit more colour and texture to my collection of terrain. One is as easy as it can be and uses something you are guaranteed to have in your house. The second requires buying a GW paint (although there may be other substitutes out there). The third uses paints you probably already have, and the fourth requires an airbrush and some specialist consumables.

1. Pencil edging. For this, all you need is a simple graphite pencil. If you run it across the edge of your tiles and the edges of raised areas, you can give your tiles a subtle outline that will add definition and a metallic sheen. This is great when you want to fool the eye into perceiving your tiles are made of metal. Where you have salt-masked your tiles, concentrate the pencil edging on places where the darker 'base' colour shows through.

Its hard to photograph though >< In the above picture, you might just be able to pick out the thin dark line along the beveled edge of the tile. I have done it on the edge of the raised square in the tile's centre as well. 

 

2. Washes and Sponging. For my floor tiles I wanted to produce an effect that simulated the combined weight of thousands of footprints, containers and gear, and general atmospheric dust on the surfaces. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Steel Legion Drab is great for producing nondescript dust-coloured washes, particularly as a contrast to the grey colour of the tiles.

I tried not cover the entire tile in wash - I wanted some areas to look a bit closer to their 'intended' colour than others - an made sure the wash got into the recesses and corners as this is where dust and dirt would naturally accumulate. You have to be a little bit careful of pooling though. In the picture above it can look like some of the tiles have got tea stains on them. In real life its a bit more subdued than the camera makes it appear, but you want to avoid tide marks when the wash dries.

I have also sponged on some darker colours, like Scorched Brown, in a few places. I used a packing sponge, just like in the speedier guide, but I smeared rather than dabbed this time. A real industrial floor can be a patchwork of colours and spills, the trick is making yours look random. Again, its art.

3. Blood for the Blood God. GW released a handful of technical paints just before Christmas. Most of them I don't see the point of, but Blood is a good one. You can splatter it, drag it, and pool it, and it dries to a gloss and looks like fresh human blood. There were ways to simulate blood before this paint of course, but this paint just looks fantastic.

In the picture above you can see the same tiles from the previous shot, with a little BftBG dabbed on. Here's another photo of tiles from the same batch with washes and Blood.

4. Weathering powders. Weathering powders are like painting black magic. Everyone has heard of them, but few have used them. Or know how to. Its mainly beardy types that build scale models of tanks and stuff. But, I'm here to tell you, they are surprisingly easy to use, with a little care, and can produce some great effects on your terrain.

 The first thing I did with them was add some to the wash I used on the floor tiles, then reapplied it. I used a mix of earth coloured powders, although I probably used too much of the darker ones in places.

If you look closely at the gaps between the square in this tile, you can see how the powders give the wash a granular quality. Basically it makes a more muddy than dusty powder.

You can also just apply a few spots of powder to your tile and smudge them in with a sponge. This is a great way to simulate soot, scorch marks, and the general accretion of dirt you might see in a place like the Deadzone.

And finally, here are three videos demonstrating how to use weathering powders with thinners and an airbrush to dirty-up your terrain facades. The front bits.




To start with, I sprinkle weathering powders onto wet thinners I have sprayed onto the tiles.



Then I spray some more thinners onto the powders, allowing it to form a paint-like liquid and flow into the recesses of the tile.


The finishing touch is to cover the dried powders with a matt varnish to seal them in.

I reshot the last video in the sequence for two reasons. For one, I had the camera set at the wrong resolution for the first run through, which is why parts 1 and 2 are a little blurry. For the other, I went a bit heavy on the powders on the batch in the first two videos. So I have shot a different batch in the last vidoe, one that is a bit lighter, a bit more dusty than muddy.

I went in a bit lighter on the first batch I weathered too. I think the patchy dirt is more effective looking than the heavier mud for this type of terrain.

That then is how I am weathering my tiles and breaking up all that grey. As always, if this has been helpful, please click on the ad because it helps me buy more weathering powders :) And comments, questions, or suggestions are also equally welcome below.

Deadzone Terrain - Even Speedier Painting Guide

A few days ago I put up a tutorial/report on how to quickly paint Deadzone terrain using a couple of spray cans and a salt masking. While a lot of people seemed to like the guide, a lot were perhaps also put off by the use of an airbrush and even the salt.

So, let me present an even easier way to paint your terrain, using no airbrush and no salt. The effects you get aren't quite as great looking, in my opinion, and take a little practice to master, but are fast and simple to produce.

Start off with the first few steps as shown in the previous guide:

1.  separate your tiles into vertical and horizontal piles (that is, walls in one pile, floors in the other).
2. blu-tack your tiles to a strong sheet of carboard or other firm, flat, and portable surface.
3. prime them - this time it doesn't really matter what colour, but I still recommend black.

It still looks like this.

Now, the first departure from the first guide's technique - go straight to painting on your main colour layer. In my case I am still using Vallejo's Model Air Pale Grey Blue and airbrushing it on, but you can use whatever colour you want. Use a lightish colour though like Army Painter's Wolf Grey (in theory you could just go straight to this step and skip the black primer!). Slightly patchy or uneven paint is still ok but you're still going to want to try to spray your wall sections from the 'top' to try to keep some of the black primer on the undersides of raised edges.

You will need a dark grey paint for the next bit. I made mine using pure black with just a hint of grey to break it up a bit, but you could just use something like Games Workshop's Mechanicus Standard Grey.

Now you take a piece of clampack foam - thats the dark grey sponge that comes in many 28mm miniatures, such as Dreadball MVP's - and use it to dab the dark grey paint onto your tiles.

• Don't load the sponge with lots of paint. Think of it as being a bit like drybrushing - too much paint will spoil the effect.
• Concentrate on hitting edges and corners. 
• Don't smear the paint on, you will just get a sooty look. Dab it on. 
• Mix up the angles you do it at to avoid getting repetitive patterns.

et voila

It might take a few goes to get the hang of it and understand how your sponge puts paint down. But thats the same with any technique. The good thing is a little experimentation here cannot hurt - the more worn, and messed around with your tiles are, the better they will look on the table.

In my previous guide I used salt masking twice; once for the paint chipping effect, and once for applying an accent colour. You can also sponge on the accent. I highly recommend you do this on at least some of your panels or you might end up with a slightly monochrome board.

 To do this, I masked off the area I want to colour. Then I dabbed on my accent, Golden Yellow, before reapplying my dark grey around the edges to bring back that chipped look.Dabbing on a little bit of the Pale Blue Grey would also help with that worn look.

Compared side by side, you can see how the two techniques come out. The dabbed on chips tend to make the tiles look more smoky while the chipped paint seems cleaner. Both are fine to put out on the table though.

One area the sponge technique is probably better for is small parts. Crystallized salt can come in large chunks that are difficult to apply accurately to little things like handrails and ladders. From now on I plan to sponge those parts. The trick there will be making sure the paint I dab is the same shade as on the salted tiles.

So there you have it - a fast, easy, and cheap way to quickly paint worn looking tiles that does not use an airbrush or any kind of advanced technique.

Later on I plan to play around with adding more weathering effects like rust and blood to some of my tiles so let me know if there's anything in particular you would like to see or know how to do.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below and, if you like the guide, please click on the ad as it helps keep me in spraycans :) And check out my guide to weathering your tiles here.

Deadzone Terrain - Speed Painting Guide

I went in fairly heavily for the Deadzone terrain. I pledged for enough mats for a complete 6x4 table, so I wanted enough building tiles, at least when combined with my existing stock of GW stuff, to cover them. Of course, now I have to paint them all...

I want to paint them quickly so I don't just end up with a bunch of unpainted sprues and parts. But I also want them to look good. Partly out of personal pride in my work, of course, but also because I want people to see that this is quality terrain - that Mantic have made a good product. So here's my guide to getting my tiles looking good quickly, as well as some optional 'effects' stuff you can do on top of the paint job to really get it looking cool.

To start with, I sorted my tiles into two piles: one for wall pieces, barricades, and vertical connectors, the other for floor tiles. I am not going to be painting the right angle connectors here. That's partly because most of them will be invisible once the tiles are clipped together, and partly because the ones you can see won't be coloured that differently to the tiles anyway. This is a speed run. But if you want to spend hours painting all the clips, go for it ;)

Next, I blu-tacked the tiles onto sheets of cardboard. Note I only have a dozen or so tiles on each sheet. This is because this was the test run to check the colours ad techniques all worked and looked good. But you save more time the more tiles you stick up each time, so I'll be doing twice as many tiles at a time in future.

Its important to keep the vertical sections all aligned the same way. So the top of every wall is at the top of the card sheet, the bottom of every wall is at the sheet's bottom. It doesn't matter which way you line up the floor tiles.

Once the sheet is full, I took them out to the garden and primed them black. Most of the time I tell people it really doesn't matter what colour primer you use. But here, its important to use black. Any black - GW, Army Painter (which I use), or Halfords. But Black.

Check those corners

 As you do this side of the tiles, its important to make sure both sides of the bevelled edges and all the insides of windows and viewports are well covered. Thats because later, when you come to paint the other side, you don't want to be blowing paint back onto this finished side. So be thorough. Get the edges and sides.

When the primer is dry, I sprayed the tiles with Humbrol Acrylic Sea Grey. This is a dark grey, almost black.

A slightly uneven paint job will give your tiles 'character'

A smooth finish is not vital here - you can afford to be a little patchy. This may be counter-intuitive. You're always told that you need to get smooth layers of paint on models. But this is large scale terrain and a little variation in tone and texture is normal and natural and will make your tiles look better and more realistic when you're all done. I'm not saying leave parts of the tiles blank or to skimp on the paint. Just that you don't need to plaster the plastic trying to make every square millimeter of the thing a flat matte uniform shade.

I also spray the paint down onto the tiles. I don't mean just holding the can above the tiles, but firing it from the direction that is at the 'top' of each tile. This is most easily done by holding the sheet of card with my hand at the top of the sheet, and then spraying away. What this does is put a bit less paint on the bottom of any raised surfaces on the tiles. Doing it this way you get a 'drop-shadow' effect. It means you have shaded the tile without even trying and this is why you needed to make sure all the tiles were lined up the same way and primed with black paint. Again, this effect will be helped by not blasting every tile with paint until it squeals for air.

Note: this effect is probably easier to achieve with an airbrush than a spray can. But speed is more important right now.

So now we have a sheet or sheets of tiles, all primed, and all base-coated. Now its time to apply the main colour.

At this point I switch to the airbrush.

I would guess that at least one person reading this now is thinking 'airbrushes are expensive' or 'airbrushes are for expert painters' or something like that. Let me assure you, neither of those statements are correct.

My airbrush is really basic. It was a cheapo ebay purchase - £75, I think, for two (!) brushes and a compressor. For that I got a half-decent compressor and two basic airbrushes. It literally pumps air through the brushes and forces paint to go along too and thats it. No fancy gizmos, no variable apertures or trigger resistances.  It is one step up from what I would recommend anyone unable to get what I did - a GW spraygun. I think these are around £15 now and you'll need a can of compressed air too. Either of these systems will do for this, giving you the ability to spray much finer layers than a can and much smoother, more even layers than a brush.

Now its time to talk about the coolest part of the process - salt masking. Salt masking is using chunks of salt to mask areas of your model so they don't get any paint on them in the next layer. Its a fantastic technique to simulate wear and tear on painted surfaces. There are other ways to do it but salt-masking is the coolest. It looks like cookery but feels like magic when you do it right.

You will need:

• salt, proper rocky or crystallised salt, the sort that goes in a grinder, not table salt. I use Waitrose Coarse Sea Salt Crystals.
• hairspray. Get the cheapest stuff you can find. I use Tesco Value. 

You then take one of your sheets of tiles and spray the bejeezus out of it with the hairspray. I highly recommend doing this in a well ventilated room and possibly with a filter mask on. You want the hairspray to be a liquid layer on your tiles. While it is still wet, sprinkle on the salt. All over is good, particularly on the edges of raised areas, corners, and the edges of the tiles. Anywhere that looks like it might get knocked about as that tile holds up a building or gets walked over. Then you let it dry.

Ready salted.

When it is, load up your airbrush or spray gun with the main colour for the tile. I used Vallejo Model Air Pale Grey Blue as it seemed like a nice match to the Deadzone mats.

In theory Model Air paints don't need any diluting. In practice I found the Grey to be a little thick, so I did cut it with a tiny bit of Tamiya Thinners. You want a fairly even coat here, but as with the previous step, a little patchiness is quite acceptable. Take note, some of the salt will probably fall off here, so make sure you're painting on a surface you can collect it from easily afterwards. As with the base coat, spray the wall tiles from their top side to accentuate that drop shadow effect.

Once this layer has dried, you will need a pot of warm or hot water and some cotton wool. Dip the wool in the water and use it to wipe off the salt crystals from the tiles. Now check out that magic! Say to yourself, 'Boy, can I paint!'. It doesn't matter if you scratch the paint as you go, or find slightly thicker areas where the light grey paint peels or rubs off. The more damage you do to it the better really.

Boy, can I take photo's.

 So, you should now have a set of tiles that look like they've been through some wars. At this point you could just stick that stuff out on the table and enjoy playing with it.

But all that grey can be a bit overpowering though and make a table look a bit washed out. Don't get me wrong - a collection of salt masked tiles put together will make some impressive looking scenery people will love playing on. But for a little extra 'pop' I added some accent colour and used the salt mask technique again.

For my first batch of tiles I chose Vallejo's Game Colour Gold Yellow. At first glance this seems like a really strong colour. But you have to bear in mind the cold/hot colour model. That is, if you use lots of 'cold' colours - greys, some blues, some greens, - you can accent it with a contrasting 'hot' colour. In this case I have cold greys everywhere, so I am contrasting it with the warm yellow. Reds would also work, and probably some browns and purples as these also have red pigments in them.

I used Tamiya's masking tape to protect most of the tiles, then salt-masked the tiles as above before airbrushing on the yellow. Here's how they look when I wash off the salt.

You don't need to do this accent step to every single tile. I did it to every one of the first batch just so I wouldn't need to do it again. If you did do it to every tile, well, you'd lose a bit of that individuality and leave your table looking all uniform again. I'll probably do a few more of the barricade tiles, just because it seems to make narrative sense these things would be painted to stand out a bit. But not every single wall and every single door needs to be marked out the same.

Note I only did this on the vertical tiles too. For the floors I did a quick wash with GW's Steel Legion Drab and dabbed it all over the tiles. Steel Legion is great for a generic 'dusty' look and here's how the dried tiles look.

Its probably a good idea to give the tiles a coat of varnish at this point and I used Army Painter's Matt Varnish. These things are going to get a lot of wear and tear as they get put together, played on, and taken apart again.

The next step should be obvious: take the tiles off the board, turn them round, and do it all again to the other side. I might not even bother doing the floor tiles again though. One side is all you're ever likely to really see and that's done.

Take care when spraying paint on this second side though. Don't forget you have already painted the first side and you don't want paint creeping under the tile and ruining your paint job. A little stray paint won't hurt, just don't spray the tiles from extreme angles.

The most time consuming part of this whole process then is tacking the tiles onto the cardboard. Spraying the first two coats takes maybe five minutes. Spraying on hairspray and sprinkling on salt takes a bit longer, particularly as you have to wait for the hairspray to dry. Masking up areas for the accent colours is a little time consuming. But if you do a big enough sheet of tiles you only need to do it once. Get big tape. All in all, it is quite possible to paint scores of tiles, on at least one side, in an afternoon.

edit:for those put off by airbrushing or salt masking go here for a guide to similar technique that uses neither.

Hopefully then, this guide has been useful to someone and I'm always open to questions or ideas for other ways to do things so feel free to leave a comment and, if you liked the guide, please click on the ad at the top right :) And check out my guide to weathering your tiles here.