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Probably going to be starting Deadzone soon, and I have a few questions.

1) If I wanted to play Asterians, what do I need? I know I'll need their box set (whenever that comes out) for their faction deck... but where do I get their stats? Is it in the main rulebook? Do the models comes with stat cards?

2) Same question, just with the Rebels. Are their rules in the main rulebook? Nexus Psi?

3) How do Mercenaries work? I hear Rebels are supposedly weaker than the rest, would Mercs help them out? Since they are the faction that has a bunch of random aliens anyway, I like the idea of Mercs with them the most.

4) Is Wrath awesome? He looks awesome.

5) When is the Zombie expansion coming out?

6) The zombies are not controlled by a player, right? They will act according to the prewritten rules/conditions and try to swarm your squad?

7) When is the AI deck coming out?

8) The AI deck is not for zombies, right? It somehow is supposed to control a standard squad against you?

9) How is their campaign mode? I never played Necromunda, but I did play Mordheim. How does it stack up with Mordheim? Does everyone gain XP, or just specialists/rares/leaders? If you have Mercs, do they gain xp?

10) Any idea about the Veermyn? Do you think they would be in a new kickstarter, or just a general release. I feel like a Veermyn vs Corp kickstarter set seems like something Mantic would do. Kinda like DB and DBX.

Thanks for any answers, very curious about this game. The starter set and squad side are too cheap to pass up.

 Red Viper wrote:
Probably going to be starting Deadzone soon, and I have a few questions.

1) If I wanted to play Asterians, what do I need? I know I'll need their box set (whenever that comes out) for their faction deck... but where do I get their stats? Is it in the main rulebook? Do the models comes with stat cards?
2) Same question, just with the Rebels. Are their rules in the main rulebook? Nexus Psi?

Stat cards are part of the faction deck. You get however many stat cards you need, a bunch of mission cards, and a set of Battle Cards. Everything you need should be in the starter boxes.

You'll need Nexus Psi if you want to use Weapon Teams or other crew weapons, but none of those are in the starters so it's not essential. Asterians might have some unique rules in Incursion (new book coming soon), but I'm not sure.

3) How do Mercenaries work? I hear Rebels are supposedly weaker than the rest, would Mercs help them out? Since they are the faction that has a bunch of random aliens anyway, I like the idea of Mercs with them the most.

Mercs vary from bad to awesome, and Reb can use most of them. They're not advisable in campaigns as you lose Reputation points that allow you to buy troops/upgrades by taking Mercs, but in one-offs they pretty good. Nastanza is nasty, as is HelFather, I think. They come with their stat cards.

4) Is Wrath awesome? He looks awesome.

He's ok, but has a 1/4 chance of switching teams for a turn, and that can mess up plans easily. He's fun, though, and has some nice guns.

5) When is the Zombie expansion coming out?

6) The zombies are not controlled by a player, right? They will act according to the prewritten rules/conditions and try to swarm your squad?

December, I think? I think they will get AI contols, and maybe a place in Plague lists.

7) When is the AI deck coming out?

8) The AI deck is not for zombies, right? It somehow is supposed to control a standard squad against you?

Again, December I think. The AI Deck I hink works for Strike Teams and/or Zombies, but I'm not sure.

9) How is their campaign mode? I never played Necromunda, but I did play Mordheim. How does it stack up with Mordheim? Does everyone gain XP, or just specialists/rares/leaders? If you have Mercs, do they gain xp?

Everyone gains EXP, and can buy abilites/upgrades. Mercs don't gain EXP, they show up for one battle then clear off and you have to re-hire them.

[quote[
10) Any idea about the Veermyn? Do you think they would be in a new kickstarter, or just a general release. I feel like a Veermyn vs Corp kickstarter set seems like something Mantic would do. Kinda like DB and DBX.

Thanks for any answers, very curious about this game. The starter set and squad side are too cheap to pass up.

 Paradigm wrote:
All the answers

Awesome. Thanks for taking the time.

Going to try and order the starter set soon. Then maybe Asterians a little later. The game looks like a lot of fun. Like Mordheim without all the clunky rules.

Good luck with it, I'm sure you'll have fun. The rule are fast, fun and flexible, run smoothly, and are pretty well balanced bar a few models/missions.

Wrath is really good for his points, but as was said he has his own agenda and can flip turns, and he's got a grenade launcher which can calls all kinds of mayhem if you aren't expecting the switch.

I think the campaigns are pretty simple compared to necro or mordheim, your dudes get simple xp and when they rank up you get a random upgrade, a stat or an ability. One of the tricky things about them is the balancing, you always have the same points as your opponent, so if you've got.. say, a rebs commander with increased leadership, better survival, and a full upgrade to sniper... she'll be a badass.. but she's also going to cost significantly more points which will reduce the size of your force. Enforcers struggle with this especially as it is since they can only bring maybe 6-7 guys and only that if they're basic... but nobody likes to be down bodies. So it's tricky embracing the leveling.

It seems like it would still be fun though, and the games play fast enough that you could do a whole 8 round campaign in a really long day or a weekend usually.

Sounds good. The campaign leveling up sounds more like Blood Bowl than Mordheim... which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Now I just need to decide between the Forge Fathers and the Asterians.

I've had a look through their beta decks. To me it looks like the Asterians are very good at shooting, but terrible at surviving and fighting. While the Forge Fathers are average at shooting, but good at fighting.

Is that pretty accurate? Generally I prefer to be able to mix it up in melee, so I'm leaning towards the Forge Fathers. The Cypher Prime looks like the only decent Asterian fighter.

I think my group will have at least 4 players willing to try it out. Looking forward to it. Hopefully once the Asterians/FF come out we'll be able to start a campaign.

If you want a melee faction, consider Plague as well. Their rules match their fluff very well, they're only OK at shooting, but if you can get among the opponent's lines you can cause havoc.

They've also got what is for my money the best model in the game:

Yeah I'm into the plague. I'm going to get them through the starter anyway, so I don't have to consider purchasing them.

I do have another noob question though...

If someone wants to use 40k models for Deadzone, what exactly would the need to buy to make it work?

Right now, that's tricky. The aren't selling the card decks separately yet. But that's all you need, the rules, somewhere to play, models, counters, and the decks. And it isn't as if you couldn't make your own counters, the only hard part is the faction decks, i mean.. you could print your own cards but there's no freely available pdf yet.

Kind of makes the faction starter required for legitimate play, unless you've got a copy of the deck they need, then they can fashion their own cards. I'm hoping this is just oversight, or them waiting for their product to level out a bit, and that they release the decks as an individual item... and maybe even a free pdf down the road. It seems like the mantic way to do things, but the free rules don't usually come out the next day after the book is released and it's putting people who want to do what your friend does in kind of an awkward limbo.

 GrimDork wrote:
Right now, that's tricky. The aren't selling the card decks separately yet. But that's all you need, the rules, somewhere to play, models, counters, and the decks. And it isn't as if you couldn't make your own counters, the only hard part is the faction decks, i mean.. you could print your own cards but there's no freely available pdf yet.

Kind of makes the faction starter required for legitimate play, unless you've got a copy of the deck they need, then they can fashion their own cards. I'm hoping this is just oversight, or them waiting for their product to level out a bit, and that they release the decks as an individual item... and maybe even a free pdf down the road. It seems like the mantic way to do things, but the free rules don't usually come out the next day after the book is released and it's putting people who want to do what your friend does in kind of an awkward limbo.

Okay, that's what I figured, thanks for the quick answer. Honestly, I think it's reasonable of Mantic to leave it like it is now. They seem fine with people using other companies' models, but you at least have to buy the starter set for a faction. Also, it looks like they are selling cards on their own for wave 2 stuff, but again, it's the stuff that isn't in any starters.

My Daemon/Death Guard friend can just use Plague rules, which I'll have via the starter set. My Ork friend will be trickier though. After the demo game if he's interested, I guess we can watch ebay for the deck if he doesn't want to buy the Marauder starter set.

Thanks again for the quick answer

Yep! I know lots of people will want to use deadzone with random factions of their own creation... i've got several ideas myself. Kind of like how necromunda started out with the book factions and then they added a few more.. the scavies didn't they? Anyway, they'll probably sell a reasonable number of the faction decks if they make them separately... we're all going to lose/wear out our initial cards eventually.

 Red Viper wrote:
My Ork friend will be trickier though. After the demo game if he's interested, I guess we can watch ebay for the deck if he doesn't want to buy the Marauder starter set.

Until you can get your hands on the proper faction deck:

http://quirkworthy.com/2013/08/13/deadzone-faction-deck-marauders/

Your friend could use the printable cards above. I don't have the Marauder deck myself, so I expect some of the above rules will have changed between then and retail, but he could use these in the meantime.

 Fezman wrote:


Until you can get your hands on the proper faction deck:

http://quirkworthy.com/2013/08/13/deadzone-faction-deck-marauders/

Your friend could use the printable cards above. I don't have the Marauder deck myself, so I expect some of the above rules will have changed between then and retail, but he could use these in the meantime.

Thanks. I've printed out the asterians and forge fathers, but for some reason I didn't think to look for marauders. Thanks for the heads up, I'll show it to my friend tomorrow.

I also ordered the starter set, so soon the profiles will make more sense. I get their statlines, just not some of the special rules.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yep! I know lots of people will want to use deadzone with random factions of their own creation.

After some advice on the main forums I've got a Clone Troopers and Seperatist Droid lists ready to play with FFG's old Clone Wars miniatures. Deadzone is very flexible in this way.