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.

Ripper Suits!

In thirty-odd years of wargaming I've never been a fan of orcs. In traditional fantasy they've always been bad guys. Usually they are technologically inept, basic brutes who stumble from one fight to another. Sometimes they're comedy relief - portrayed as being as lucky just to point their weapons the wrong way. So I was surprised to find myself really liking the concepts and sculpts for the Marauders during the Deadzone Kickstarter.

The models are of course out now and I'm actually starting to think they may be my favourite faction of them all. I can see myself collecting an army if they all look as cool as these.

My favourites within the favourites has to be the Ripper suits. These are the ultimate one-Orx heavy weapons team. An already hard as steel and just-above-psychotic genetic monstrosity strapped into a powered exo-suit with every weapon available strapped on top of that - whats not to like?

The resin kit is great. But you get two models in a bag, plus some goblins, and all the weapon options so it can be a confusing pile of parts to sort out. So here's a quick guide to what's what and where it all goes.

I've laid out all the Ripper suit pieces here. I didn't put the goblin heads out because its kind of obvious what they are and they slot straight into their bodies anyway. But you should be able to see, on the left of the picture, two arms, a two-piece weapon, a chainsaw, a las-weapon, and a grenade launcher. Then, in the middle, are three head options, a radar/scanner dish, and a missile launcher. Finally, on the right, two more arms, a multi-barrelled weapon, a close-combat weapon, a small rocket launcher, and two ammo belts.

It doesn't matter which body you put which weapon or head or arm on - they are all interchangeable. Most of the weapons are too but the gatling gun does, I think, need to go on a left arm. This is largely because the attached flame-thrower would look a bit silly on the 'inside' of a limb. If we can say anything on a 10ft tall orx with this many weapons systems attached looks silly, that is.

Edit: after gluing all my models together, I finally got round to opening the packs of cards and looking at building lists. It turns out I messed up a bit here. While the weapon systems are all interchangeable on the models, in the cards there are two distinct builds for Ripper suits. One is the clos-combat oriented Mauler, the other the more shooty Rainmaker. The two piece weapon I tend to refer to as a missile launcher is actually a Ram and should be paired with a Buzzsaw - I believe you can use either of the two saw-type weapons to represent it and make a Mauler. The las-cannon, or HEW Beamer as it should be known, should be paired with the rotary cannon. This makes the Rainmaker. The addon components are all more or less still interchangeable, although the back mounted launcher should also go on the Rainmaker.


Here's how the models look with heads, arms, and major weapons attached. The two-part missile-launcher thingy was the only one that was a little problematic at this point. It has a guide stud on one part to help align the pieces when gluing. The female receptor on the weapon head was not really drilled out deep enough on mine though. Even though I bored it out a little, I still didn't get a good fit and so my weapon is now a little wonky. My own fault though for not being thorough and I'll be fixing it before painting.

 

The trickiest part of the whole kit was the ammo belt for the gatling gun. For a start, you get two of them, in different lengths. So you need to figure out which one to use. Now, there are a couple of possible reasons for this. One is that each one is intended for use when mounting the gun on a different side of the body. The second, more likely one, is they are both for the left arm, but you get two different left arms of differing length, so you need different length ammo feeds. Whatever the truth of it is, if you mount the gun on the bent left arm, like I did, you need the longer ammo belt.

 

Moving on to the extras, you get some cool stuff, but only one of each piece. I would have liked more, but then perhaps the suits wouldn't be as cool or individual if every suit had every upgrade on it.

Each suit has two holes in the top of the chest plate, about level with the orx's head - the scanner dish will fit in any of them. 

It looks like the top-mounted rocket-launcher is also intended for use on either suit. Perhaps I got a bad cast, but ti didn't feel like it fitted perfectly on either suit. It looks like there are guides and slots in the sculpt, but none of them seemed to make the part go on just right. I ended up picking the one that seemed best.

The shoulder-mounted rockets do have well-sculpted guide rails though. You should be able to see crenelations on the underside of the piece that fir into the zig-zags on either suit's left shoulder.

The small grenade launcher for the right side also has a guide hole bored into it and it fits onto a vambrace, or wrist armour. I seem to have managed to forget to take a picture of that though, so take my word for it ;)

Once all is done and dried though, you should have two very cool and mean looking Marauders, as well as a spare head, ammo belt, and chainsaw.

I had no major issues putting these models together. Mold lines were pretty minimal too. Mantic seems to have made a habit of casting the two halves of the Orx heads right down the middle in Deadzone though, and both heads did need a little bit of slightly tricky scraping here.

The detail on the models is fantastic though. If you look closely you might be able to see the models' knuckles! And, just in case all this isn't enough to make you want a collection of Marauders too, here are some bonus pictures of Chief Radgard, a Marauder character funded through the Kickstarter and now almost completely sculpted.

I'm painting mine like he's snapped a broom in half and put the end on his head :)