Matt Gee Minis

Game one of the Campaign for the crew of the skinned elf was against the Northern Alliance's Black Order. The pair of scouting parties had tracked down a massive walking monstrosity and would set out to do their best to irritate by a thousand cuts.  The Ogres set out to war with: Ogre Sgt, Jock Wrekham - Heavy Weapon, bandages Warlock, Grakem'Goroth - Lucky charm Siege Breaker, Horny Hagrath Warrior, Chef Rotgut Mauler Warrior, One eye'd Grok Brave, M'Goor'Gn'Throg Brave, G'Throg N'Gorog Goblin Rabble, Scroat - Spear The Northerners formed up with: Thegn - Rare Mount, Heavy Weapon Hurscal - Common Mount, Heavy Weapon Hruscal - Common Mount, Heavy Weapon Ice Queen - Helm of command Elf clansman Elf clansman Elf clansman Ice Kin Hunter - bodkin arrow, long bow As per the scenario the giant set up in the centre of the board, the pirates in two distinct bands with the braves, siege breaker and warlock on the left and the others...

Initially sceptical about vanguard and only having played a few games I've had the chance of throwing a company together and playing in a slow burn campaign. While temporarily distracted by deadzone  I am going to try and use either system to make a welcome distraction. It looks like it will be pretty good timing with the new Fire and Ice release on the way there may be some tweaks that make the game more appealing to me. I have played a handful of games and some of the mechanics look good but there seemed to be a few things that felt a bit broken and open to abuse. We have a gentleman's agreement not to use things like battle mounts in the campaign as they seem very hard work, other changes that arise we'll just adopt as the book arrives on doorsteps. Who's clamouring for attention? I'll be multitasking and making the most of painting up the remaining Ogres for my KoW army and aiming to use them in Vanguard. Because I am single basing a lot of the 40mm ...

With all the guns and grunts out of they way the last set of units to review are those that do not have a direct combat role. The medic, medi bot and engineer None of them come with any particular damage out put to write home about, their purpose in life is to help others. First up a straight comparison between the two medics. The Hippocratic Oath I have only picked up 2ed and the recent Escalation protocols books and it seems that there has been a bit of a rework of the medics as I presume no one was taking them. The original ability to fix up a model that was injured doesn't really have a big advantage when most of your stuff is size 1!  The corporation is probably more suited to zipping up body bags than administering aid. The only slight benefit is the resilience the model will offer to a model in the same square. Once you have given him a ranged rifle he ends up being 5 points more than a standard marine with the same stat line. there's a chance it may  hel...

The Strider... The model that caught my eye and drew me deeper down the rabbit hole into Mantic's sci-fi universe and into Deadzone. The concept of mechs and armoured walkers in wargaming has been with me for over two decades. I first prized open a copy of GW's Space Marine in the 90s after meticulously studying the box art in all its glory. The titans just looked amazing. Ridiculously  impractical but who cares when they look cool. This evolved through systems into playing some battle tech /mech warrior both online and with minis. Few chances to play this meant I progressed through to 2ed 40k with the Imperial guard Sentinels. Then a series of films that captivated my imagination and just looked so damned cool arrived. The Matrix features some iconic walkers in their APUs, the loping run coupled with the heavy guns pouring streams of fire looked fantastic. Avatar's AMP exo-skeletons seem closest to the Mantic models but just feel a bit less violent looking, too cur...

The way Mantic games work appeals to me a lot. There's way less focus on super-mega-killy-death-heroes that can destroy units or tanks with a merely a rye smirk, you have to take regular infantry. In both Kings of War that I have been playing for the past two years and now deadzone, objectives and VPs are (usually) a quicker way to a win over a straight out bloodbath. This means that leaders tend to act as a buff to tip the game over the edge. This could not be more true than for GCPS. Far from being combat monsters and only boasting about the same shoot stats as a line trooper the leader options will not be setting the world alight in a shoot out or bearpit. I see them as two things.  A way to get more command dice A way to make use of the Mantic splat The comparison for the infantry options seemed to work last time so I'll do the same on the leader options. We are presented with the motley crew of: Marine Sgt. Ranger Sgt. Major-General Unit ...

Now I have looked at the squishy organic stuff it's time to turn my attention to the hardware (this post has evolved somewhat since this sentence however...). There is a bewildering choice of weapons on the GCPS list, there are 6 varieties of rifle alone! All seem to have slightly different stats so I am guessing a good mix is crucial. Some have rapid fire and there is weight of fire thrown in for good measure. They are all very slightly different in appearance and it turns out there is a handy guide in the Outbreak book With the base sprues I have I am limited to  LR-rifle LR-32 Carbine Grenade Launcher Flamer Laser Pistol Grenling 340 I am hoping with a sharp knife and some experimenting I can create a heavy laser rifle, Thermal Rifle, Marksmen Rifle & Accutek AWP. Although stocking up on all the weird and magical options makes my squishy base troopers pretty expensive and reduces the model count. Reducing the model count means few guns and as guns is wh...

Fall in Recruits! I have assembled a fair few plastic kits over the years but in recent years have been reverting to lead and metal recently to paint up my KoW Ogres. I favour single models while although they may lack variety in poses they stop me sticking my fingers together and cursing at the number of evil mould lines to remove. Assembling a small force of 15-20 models max should be OK though and the poses and weapon combinations will be essential. A quick mention on the quality of the minis. I've not been around the Deadzone scene for long but I did pick up some Nameless models to use in my Mantic-centric Trident Realm army to use as depth horrors. They were soft PVC and while they painted up OK with some drybrushing and washes I wouldn't say I was falling over myself to buy more of them. The GCPS sprues are all high quality hard plastic with good levels of definition and depth. The mould lines are a lot nicer to deal with than the restic or PVC of other Mantic minis ...

Deadzone! Mantic's marketing plans and principle that people will cross over games is clearly working on me. I've been peering over the fence outside the KoW scene and had a glimpse of Deadzone at Franticon 2019 and despite saying I was't going to go back to Sci-fi universe options that are out there, I have been tempted. One of the things that puts me off playing games with individual model movement is firstly that it takes ages, if I want to play a game I don't want have to sink hours into getting the satisfaction of completing it. I loved Games Workshop's 40k 2ed when it came out but the complexity of all those individual attacks, shooting, save mods etc really drained the fun out of a large game. Necromunda 1ed solved this and the prospect of the relaunch last year was almost interesting until I saw the style of the figures and the board. As seems to be the way with the recent surge in GW specialist games they are brought out with a fanfare and then supp...

Another trip North of the river to the South East Gaming hotspot that is Aycliffe Drive Primary School. Well into their stride now at hosting events Paul and Mat had managed to gather their biggest crowd yet for the charity doubles fund raiser. Same drill as before, 1000pts per player and one inspiring character can be shared and become very inspiring. No allies and only one artefact of each type per army.  A change from the norm I took my ogres as I had 1000pts just about painted up and dabbled with a few lists including taking Grok but in the end figured three big blocks of Ogres and a couple of characters to do the smashing would be best. I took: Grokagomaok Finest Braves A horde of Boomers with headstrong A horde of warriors A boomer Sergeant Nomagorak A Biggit on a fleabag with the blade of slashing  These were supported by my double's partner bringing: A horde of archers with piercing,  A BSB A dragon Lord A Horde of drakons A Dragon Breath I...