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Pre-Orders For Deadzone 2nd Edition Fire Up From Mantic
April 20, 2016 by brennon
Mantic Games have opened up the Pre-Order period for Deadzone 2nd Edition. You can now step back into the world of Warpath at this skirmish level and fight alongside the forces of the Enforcers or the Forge Fathers in their new version of the game.
The new look box complete with two fantastic looking factions will be available next month in May 2016.
What's In The New Edition?
The new Starter Set drops the Plague in favour of a skirmish between the Enforcers and the Forge Fathers as noted above.
Inside the main set you get...
- Hardback Rulebook
- Battlefield Mat
- Game tokens
- 8-sided Dice
- Command Dice
- Battlezones Scenery Accessories & Connectors
...as well as two full forces to get going in the game. Five Enforcers join forces with Five Pathfinders to have a scrap with a Ten man unit of Steel Warriors.
However that isn't all you'll be able to play as in Deadzone as they have plans for the Plague, Marauders, Veer-Myn, Rebs and the Asterians. As well as that it should be noted that lots of the new miniatures here come as hard plastic kits.
So what else has changed. Well, you can read more about the thought process that Mantic went through HERE by Ronnie Renton himself but here are the main bullet points for the 2nd Edition.
- The game now has a beautiful, hard cover book – with the rules and army lists for all the factions inone place!
- There is a slick game system that keeps all the charm of the first edition, while adding some great new developments, based on a more refined, intuitive set of mechanics
- A couple of new terrain sprues that take the Battlezones range on to another level (no pun intended!)
- Lots of the core troops in hard plastic, and razor sharp detail throughout
- The cards have been replaced with something that’s just as much fun, but a lot easier to manage, namely the new command dice
- A full campaign system to allow you to play a series of linked games and develop your strike force
Which all sounds good to us. Rules should also be available for Free Here at a later date.
Additionl Army Packs Available For Deadzone
Of course it wouldn't be a launch without the addition of some new models across the board. The first of these are a pair of Starter Sets for the Enforcers...
This should feature some of the familiar looking troops that you've seen before but with the added addition of the rather ace looking Pathfinders which give a decidedly human quality to the otherwise faceless Enforcers.
The Forge Fathers aren't to be outdone however as they have their own Starter Set too.
Here you get the Steel Warriors with their array of weapon upgrades plus some Brokkr for smashing up the enemy in close combat. Six of the Forge Guard in their heavy armour then complete the set in their suits turning them into walking tanks.
You can also expand upon these forces with some Army Sets which add in a Booster Pack of miniatures and a character to lead each force. Here are the Enforcer & Forge Father Armies.
This should help you get prepared for more dangerous experiences within the world of Deadzone and help prime you for the big battles coming your way as part of Warpath when it finally hits.
Are you tempted to leap back into the world of Deadzone?
Drop your thoughts below...
"... they have plans for the Plague, Marauders, Veer-Myn, Rebs and the Asterians"
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"...these armies should help prime you for the big battles coming your way as part of Warpath when it finally hits"
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Wolverine is going to be furious when he finds out that Iron Man ran off with his adamantium claws…
I was just about to write something about 30% as funny and clever as that, so thank you for saving me from myself 🙂
1st edition was a good try but in the end a mess. The overall frame was there but not polished enhough. I ended up selling my whole KS pledge, also the horrible restic played a major part in that decision. Might pick this one p to give it another try. plastic minis and streamlined rules .. We will see
Been having great fun with a friend recently playing through the nexus sci campaign book. Looking forward to the new edition and veermyn landing soon.
I will certainly be giving this a try (probably with the free downloadable rules to start with). I do hope they have made life a little easier for the poor old Rebs, their missions were close to impossible.
I got to have a look at this a couple of weeks ago, it looks a lovely set.
nope, no interest at all and I am unlikely to ever purchase anything from mantic again.
I spent several hundred pound on thier first kickstarter to essentially receive a glorified prototype to beta test for them. I only recieved wave 3 of the KS last year,several months before they decided to completly rewrite the game and its such quick turn around on a system that killed any trust on my part and any dwsire to support the company.
I really like Mantic and what they’re trying to do – I like their games, I like how communicative they are, I like the value they offer, andI like their enthusiasm. But – yeah. They do seem to be releasing things that could use a little more time in the oven. Deadzone, Dreadball and Dungeon Saga have all ended up very quickly as quite sprawling products with a lot of books and a few problems that need addressing. I guess I’m pleased that they are doing a proper overhaul of Deadzone and put it on a solid foundation, but you… Read more »
That’s a lot easier said than done. Few tabletop games are in the position of something like Warmachine which can take advantage of a large playerbase to do extensive playtesting of a new edition, whilst the current edition also remains a revenue generator. It’s hard enough to get people playing a new game, let alone to get people to playtest it first. You can, and Mantic do, do as much internal playtesting as possible, but with such a small sample it can only be so effective. Taking Warmachine as an example again, the first edition of those rules were very… Read more »
To underline the difficulty in getting good playtesting for a new game, Deadzone did undergo a public beta which lasted for many months in which anyone could access the beta rules, try the game out, and feed back.
Whether they did beta test or not is somewhat irrelevent, as they still released a ‘broken’ (by their own admission of remaking the game) product. Even if they could 100% justify the change, how can I trust them by investing in another system, when the past has shown me that they are willing to invalidate game systems after only a few years on market (or outright drop them as in the case of Mars Attacks)?
It’s not irrelevant. I chatted with Ronnie about Deadzone a couple of weeks back and his opinion on 1.0 was that there were some elements that didn’t work as well as they thought they would when they were putting the game together. This is a direct result of the limited amount of playtesting that the game was able to get. This is a very common problem for miniatures games, and many first editions suffer from some or all of being hideously unbalanced, having some mechanics which don’t work as they should, and having rules which are unclear or overly complex.… Read more »
‘This is a direct result of the limited amount of playtesting that the game was able to get’ – then they should have done more play testing before releasing it to the public, The fact they did test the game is irrelevant as they obviously didn’t do enough to provide a working product to those who had already invested it.
I backed the kickstarter and I don’t have any issue with the game getting a new rules version, its not something I will pick up as basically it got boxed to be revisited when I was less miffed about the mess Mantic made of the kickstarter and the shockingly poor quality. First edition games will always launch with issues no matter how stringent the testing in part due to sample pool size.
I have to admit I’m incredibly curious as to what people sold their KS collections for; the range itself is already cheap to buy new.
Look, it’s great that there is a range of models out there that you can buy a bunch of very cheaply, but I do wonder sometimes if I’m seeing a different set of models to everyone else when I read comments about them.
Agreed, still love my original deadzone figures, only painted up plague and enforcers still, but look forward to putting together the other factions too. Restic is only a little more difficult to work with than hard plastic. And I very recently tempted a friend into taking up the plague so we could play through the nexus sci campaign. Version 2 will arrive soon but we’re still getting a great deal of joy out of version one and will complete our campaign with that ruleset. It’s still usable if you’re not ready to move on yet. But 2 and a half… Read more »
@fleetey I know a few that have sold the KS and they didn’t really care for huge value it was more about recouping something from what was an expensive and frustrating debacle. I have kept mine to revisit at a later date but it was a bad experience and as a game the handling of the kickstarter definitely harmed its take up based on my anecdotal evidence.
I thought the new version was Deadzone: Infestation?
Also £50 for a skirmish game of 20 models… Mantic is getting right up there near GW prices.
That includes a hardcover rulebook, 20 figures, plastic terrain set and dice. Seems pretty good value to me. More content than GW boxed games for £100+.
Infestation is the new expansion which introduces the veermyn race and the campaign on Exham IV. The success of the kickstarter allowed them to also update the basic ruleset and boxed game.
Comparing this boxed game to GW’s isn’t going to end well. I’d happily have any of the GW models over the Mantic ones, and I imagine I’m in the majority here.
And yes, while the GW boxed games are more expensive (I can find both easily enough for £80 rather than the £100+ you are quoting), when you look at how many models you get in those boxed set, then it works out rather cheap.
The HH boxed game more or less gives you an pre-HH space marine army for around £80; that’s a good deal in my book.
Should mention that Veermyn are fully covered in the main Deadzone rulebook. Infestation is a Veermyn campaign book. It contains some varient lists based on named character commanders. Hopefully that’s the form future supplements will take, adding optional settings and specialist lists as opposed to “must have” books expanding the main core rules.
With Deadzone getting an overhaul, I’m hopeful for similar for Dreadball. They’ve still got the nucleus of a fantastic game that’s maybe grown too quickly for its own good.
Ronnie said at Adepticon that that’s on the cards. Though seeing the reaction to doing a 2nd edition on here with regard to Deadzone, it appears what the public want is retroactive perfect first editions. Perhaps the Kickstarter can fund some kind of tachyon shunt back to 2012. Doubly absurd considering those complaining are inevitably part of the vast majority who sat out the public playtest, offered no input whatsoever and delight in complaining when it’s far, far too late to do anything. Deadzone 1 had other issues too of course. Delays in delivery, a tricky to work with material… Read more »
I think laying the fault on customers who didn’t beta test the game for Mantic is completely ridiculous. Mantic are in the business of making games, the onus is on them to ensure they are fit for purpose, not on their customers. If they can’t even write a set of rules at a basic level that aren’t broken, let alone put them through (apparently minimal) beta testing without coming up against all the otherwise completely obvious rule problems that seem to crop up whenever they release a new product, then maybe they should consider packing it all up and looking… Read more »
Once bitten twice shy I’m afraid, picked the original Deadzone over Infinity. That mistake has since been rectified.
Mantic seems to stumble from Kickstarter to Kickstarter leaving abandoned games in their wake..
So of course you’ll be able to lit the “abandoned” games then…
Only two systems they’ve ever dropped by any definition have been Dwarf’ King’s Hold (which lives on sort of in Dungeon Saga) and Project Pandora. Neither were Kickstarted.
i must say that while i am glad mantic took the move to add hard plastic kits, the “slick rules that keep all the charm from the first edition” is incorrect to me. you still have a skirmish game that plays with cubes and scenery, right. but lots of interesting mechanism are gone : multiple activations are gone, ability to lay support fire is gone, ability to put models in overwatch to allow them to react is gone. the feeling of the new ruleset after playtesting it is more like a warmahordes where you play on commanders special abilities and… Read more »
Well multiple actions are not “gone” command dice allow you to move an extra figure. The ability was overpowered before particularly with smaller elite forces, where you could sometimes move your entire force between activations. Suppression is still present, though it’s a lot less powerful (some might say game breaking) than before. Overwatch is gone, but with movement being done alternately, without great hunks of the enemy force moving in one go, it’s not as big an issue as it might at first appear. Add in some fun scenarios while keeping the secret missions and the quirky commander abilities, plus… Read more »
I backed Infestation for several hundred pounds on the promise that it was taking what was already there, polishing it up a bit and adding a campaign system that wasn’t complete arse. In the end I decided to get a refund. What was promised and what was produced are two totally different things. I used to be a massive advocate of Manic games. I’ve spent thousands on their products over the years. this has come to an end. Mantic with their constant bait & switches and overall deceitful tactics have finally gotten to the point where I just don’t trust… Read more »
No neg from me, but I’ll point out that this reaction is seen with every gaming Kickstarter from every gaming company in the history of the platform. The final game is never going to be -exactly- what -you- imagined it might be.
Most people roll with it, some spit the dummy, entirely to be expected. I go in (or choose not to) if I trust the company to turn out something enjoyable. I’ve yet to be appreciably disappointed.
I don’t think I’ve ever been part of a kickstarter that was changed quite as drastically as any from Mantic have been. They take real liberties with the whole “you were only backing a concept” thing. In fact plenty of boardgame kickstarters I’ve been a part of have delivered exactly what was promised on their original kickstarter pages.
I think there are some reasonable criticisms here, although on balance I am a mantic fanboy. For my part I never backed DZ1, I bought it later and really enjoy it, but I had good teachers so the entry hurdle didn’t seem that bad. On the back of that I went big into Mars Attacks which I think is a great game. I haven’t backed Dreadball but I have played it and think it’s really fun. Kings of War is another good game. I trust Mantic and I think you get a lot for your money. I am sure DZ:I… Read more »
Only by certain values of “right”, Pretty much any system is always going to involve at least some effort to find an opponent. I get the impression Mantic’s market penetration is very sporadic in nature. They’ve been doing between good to O.K. at my local club. But in some areas you might not be able to find another player for any Mantic system. I’s the toughest thing of all to fix in a saturated market though. Ronnie’s been saying they want to add more support for Bricks and Mortar gaming stores, which if it reaches fruition should be a big… Read more »