Delving back into Deadzone

Just a quick one…..

** Apologies – system generated a duplicate and I don’t appear to be able to delete **

4th March 2023

Over the last few days I have been finishing off the last of the terrain for this project.

I still have a few other bits to work on at some point (including the starship scenery set), but as I mentioned before I just needed to set an end point for this.

So, as you may have seen in the post that got duplicated, I spent a bit of time on the computer panels.

For these I went online and found some suitable images (Sundancer already identified them in his comments on the previous post ? ). Because I didn’t have the terrain to hand I simply copy and pasted multiple images, reducing the size each time.

Then when it came to use them, I found the best size, and after painting the edge of the screens black I glued them down. This was followed by several coats of gloss varnish to make them look a bit like real screens.

I also painted up some guns, rubble piles, wall lights (using multiple thin coats of green followed by gloss varnish) and the cash machine. On the cash machine I made a mistake on the side of it – so painted a fresh rectangle of white and tried to make it look like a poster that had been stuck on.

The conveyor belts and small pipes were a little awkward. I had to construct them in such a way that they could be used in multiple layouts (since the rest of the terrain is meant to be modular). In a permanent terrain layout you could have them running across buildings, or down the sides etc. But for mine I opted to build the conveyor in a sort of spiral, dropping down in height as it went. I kept it in three main pieces, for ease of storage.

The pipes I made into two pretty tight pieces, to take up a small footprint, but still have some semblance of ‘reality’. The main section is something like a small pumping unit (although I would have like some pieces with vales on – may add some in the future if it niggles me) and the smaller is just some pipes that come up then back underground.

They all received a black undercoat. The conveyor parts were masked off to keep them black (curving masking tape is fun…), then all sprayed dark silver. A bit of tidying, addition of some copper colours and some mock gauges on the side of the ‘pump’ and they were done.

When I pick up somegood rust effect paint I will use it for these pieces to weather them in a bit.

With that, I am now calling the project terrain complete.

5th March 2023

This one is for you Gerry ?

My wife and I set up the board for a 150pt battle, as a conclusion to the project.

I had the Veer Myn, and she had the GCPS.

The GCPS landed their drop troopers in high spots, but quite advanced. The Veer Myn pounced on this, moving up one of their Chem Spitters and taking out a Ranger!

The GCPS moved up in the middle under cover. The GCPS Leader took a shot from a chem spitter but survived, and moved back onto the 1pt objective (thinking she was safe).

Veer Myn stalker moved up towards the middle building, taking a shot at the ranger in cover there, causing a wound.

Late in the turn the Claw Pack leader used a move dice followed by a full move to assault the GCPS Lt. Thanks to size, charge and prey the odds were stacked in the Veer Myn favour. 5 successes from VM, and the GCPS only rolled one – but it was an 8. Followed by another 8 – it could be on! But luck didn’t hold out, even with a third success and armour, the 5 and AP1 were enough for the Claw Leader to kill the GCPS lt. Another 3 VP!

A brave Veer Myn from the right rushed a 2pt objective, and was then blasted apart by a Grenade Launcher shot….

(Imagine some animations for the next pics… that would look good. Sadly there aren’t any)

With an intel grab (2pts thanks to hacker) and some objectives the first turn ended 12VP to 1 vp in favour of the Veer Myn.

Early in the second turn a Veer Myn with flamer advanced into cover on the GCPS side (after taking the objective late last turn) and flamed two GCPS that were hiding behind a building. Both survived (only one wounded), but were on fire……. Which may be relevant later ?

Back in the middle the Ranger failed to hurt the Nightmare, who subsequently assaulted it on top of the building. Size, prey, charge and the Ranger being wounded meant it was heavily in the nightmare’s favour – and it didn’t disappoint. 7 success to 1 meant the Ranger was definitely shuffling off its mortal coil.

(The first time I tried to post this it vanished, so apologies in advanced if a second version shows up)

Continuation of the battle report:

Back on the GCPS side of the board, a marine moved up and wounded the VM flamer. Soon after one of the on fire GCPS activated (the injured one) – and succumbed to the flames

The Veer Myn failed to hurt another marine, then the next on fire marine activated – with it too falling to the flames!

Further shots were exchanged, one lucky stalker surviving two attacks (the second by rolling four 8’s and two 7’s in total!) and the flamer Veer myn being finished off by another marine.

The battle ended at the end of this second round, with the Veer Myn taking it 21 vp to 3vp.

It wasn’t close, but my wife (and I) still enjoyed it – and wanted to play again swapping sides.

6th March 2023

Well, it has taken just over four months but I have created plenty of painted terrain, and now have three strike teams painted (had a small Forge Father group painted before).

I am happy with most aspects of the project overall.

During the terrain painting phase I tried out several techniques that I hadn’t done before – sponge weathering, paint pen highlighting, large area mixed washes. Personally I feel they worked pretty well, giving some scale realism to the terrain.

For the minis I magnetized bases for the first time, and sorted out small storage boxes for them. Pretty happy with how the camo pattern came out for the GCPS, and I feel the yellow of the Veer myn ‘pops’ nicely on the table.

The terrain is pretty modular, with the scatter pieces and signs really making a positive difference in bringing things ‘to life’.

The addition of the colour stripes, banding and panels (with the yellows and blues) helped prevent the core buildings looking too dull – aided by a few buildings fully in ‘industrial yellow’.

I think I could do with getting a red desert coloured Deadzone Mat, so that the light colours of my terrain stand out better (but they don’t seem to be available anymore).

Some negatives have been the sheer length of time it has taken to complete, and the fact that since I wanted to keep things modular I couldn’t add or fix too much specific detail to most of the pieces. A more bespoke fixed layout would be able to have more detail added all across it. I could also do with making a 2×2 building, but have no tiles left ?

Gerry – I have seen on a couple of the ‘Unofficial Hobby hangout’ shows that you have said about sending me your terrain for working on. Just want to let you know that I’m happy to receive it….. but I’m not saying you would ever get it back! ?

Thanks to you and Sundancer for taking the time to look at my project a few times on your show – it has really helped keep my motivation levels up.

And thanks to Ben for awarding the project a Golden Button (I must get around to adding it to the image….. but I will need to add an ‘r’ to the February on it first ?)

Up next will be a few small painting jobs – some ninjas, a wizard and a Lumineth Underworlds warband. Not sure if I will do a project log for those tbh.

After that it will probably be a Star wars Legion faction, which I may do a project to cover (should be a lot shorter though – more minis, but very little in the way of terrain).

Thanks to all those who have read or commented along the way, I hope that you may have found something of use or interest within it.

Draconis (Rob) signing off.