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Yeah, it's so much easier to break clips taking things apart than it is assembling. I don't use nearly as many hot-gluing structures, but I'm still gonna nab a bunch for when I want to take things apart. You can't build buildings quickly out of this stuff from raw tiles, but you can make bigger buildings out of small ones in seconds if you set them up right, it only takes 2-3 strategically placed corner clips to secure buildings to a "good enough for gaming" level of temporary durability.

The worst thing is when you break off a clip and those slots have a clip on the other side, *especially when the remaining clip (that you have to remove to get at the broken stud) is a corner clip on the inside angle of a corner, ESPECIALLY when there's hot glue involved making further disassembly difficult. I haven't run into this yet, but I mildly fear it :p

I'll put up some more shots of those same buildings broken down and spread out to cover a 2x2' board, sans landing pad and one of the towers (with a space marine rhino filling in for ground cover). I'm going to leave a lot of tiles (mostly half tiles, but several full as well) unused in actual construction so I can use them as temporary ramp/walkway/platforms between buildings. I think this stuff looks so much better when it's got a lot of interconnected parts.




Needs rails/barricades on the walls, and a smattering of barrels/canisters/crates and so on, but I think you could play a solid game of deadzone here, and all reducible to 1h structures, you could transport it pretty easily.

Here's what I've got left to work with, finally organized:

Marvel at my custom organizer and it's brilliant engineering! It doesn't seem like a lot condensed like this, but I think there are still 120-140 tiles, and there are a couple boxes of misc parts not shown.

Got the sniper and half of the plague sprayed last night. I underestimated how long it would take to wrap the clear bases in tape and didn't get them all finished before I needed to sleep. Perhaps today!

That whole getting sick thing threw off my painting, haven't gotten back to it yet and I've been fine for a good while. Mostly I've been putting the DZ scenery together. I'm aiming for a bunch of modular chunks of 1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, etc sized building components that I can clip together to create the battlefield. Today's offering is more of the same, the first batch includes tiles stacked up to an 8 cube high tower. When I was waiting for this stuff I had a vision of a very complicated and tall board involving a 2x2x2' cube of terrain. I'm a little afraid right now that if such a structure weren't completely glued and reinforced it would be a bit dangerous to itself and the models battling over it. I think heights up to 4-5 cubes up (12-15") should be significantly impressive and fun to play with, and the terrain will stretch further. The other batch of photos includes some of my newer structures.




This is a bit crooked in places, I didn't fully clip all of the connectors in since I just wanted to assemble it to the height, take pictures, and tear it back down again. I would need more terrain with supporting walkways and so on before I would try to have something this tall on a board I intended to use for gaming.










I had to let my moderator, dwarfs, and corporation guys out to play, they were all getting bored. Zombies next time, they've been stuffed away for too long! This stuff is too fun to play with, I could sit around all day rearranging the structures I already have just to take pictures

My current quandary is whether or not to to get a few more infinity models, or put in a sweet spot pledge for Mantic's Dreadball Xtreme. The DBX kickstarter would cost a bit more of my own funding (parsing out some birthday funds), but it includes a game system and a bucketful of models. The Infinity models would be more fun to paint for sure, but I might actually be able to get my sister and her boyfriend to play DBX... Not to mention all of the awesome Deadzone friendly models.. nothing is listed as a crossover at the moment, but you could easily mod the poses, slap a gun in somebody's hand, and photoshop/paintbrush up a new unit card for them, even just copying an existing unit. The DBX stuff is also colored plastic so I wouldn't be turbo-obligated to paint it right away either. I'm thinking about it... the Gekko's Corvus Belli just put out are amazing, as is the Iguana, and a Corregedor starter box would love to pal around with either...and be sooo much fun to paint. I've still got 9 nomads left to paint though.

Well, anyway, I just thought I'd drop some more fun building pictures and move on. Diablo 3 is threatening to actually be fun again so I'm gonna give it a shot for a bit.

I can sympathize with the whole getting sick thing. My Wife has been off work for a week now and I am starting to feel the dreaded hallmarks of the same symptoms that have knocked her down, as such my life seems to be put on hold.

Although you seem to still be able to put out the eye candy to the adoring fans. So jealous right now. I would vote for the Infinity models, I think Covus Belli do some absolutely amazing models.

Yeah my next infinity purchases/gifts would be along the following lines:

So much fun to paint packed into even one or two of those kits.

But the DBX gives me a whole new game to play and there may even be interest in playing it =/ There are some neat models in there too though I dunno how the board game plastic will turn out. The mars attacks stuff seems to look pretty good though. I do have about 10 infinity models to work through as well and i paint them sloowly compared to my other guys. If I didn't have any I'd be more inclined towards getting some.

We'll see, got almost 1 0 days to figure it out

Geez, you look like you're having a ball with the scenery. I wish I were that motivated to make buildings. I'm a little tempted to steal your dice tower idea though. That could be really useful.

Totally ganked it from somebody on the facebook group. The core design would be hard to do any other way, but the armor plate dice deflectors mounted on the 90 degree strut connector bits was inspired and so much easier than using cut down wall tiles and I can't take any credit for that bit at all

I'll post more pictures later or tomorrow or something, but I'm really starting to see the value in the landing pad battlezones, once you're done making proper landing pads that stand alone or come off of buildings (got a large and medium/small already) you can use the extra tiles for ceilings or walls, or even wide walkways, and any extra support post thingies work really well under your walkways to hold them up and add extra LoS blocking terrain under the walkway as well. You should only get a clear shot in Deadzone if you outmaneuver your opponent with a move card and or agility, not because the board is too lacking in los-blocking bits and pieces

I think with a generous covering of railings and scatter terrain I should have enough to cover two 2x2' boards adequately now. I still have a bunch of tiles. I think I should be able to cover a 4x4' area pretty decently, but the height will only be from point to point, not foot-high terrain evenly spaced throughout the 4x4' area. I think I could give a decent infinity board a run for it's money, though I'm not sure I could precisely duplicate the 9-ish 3 story buildings in a grid style they seem to suggest. Would have more uneven height, but lots of walkways instead.

I have a bunch of plasticard and old computer parts too though, and I've been itching to use it all. I know that hard drive case has been cropping up in some of my pictures and it's almost just the same size as a 2x2x1 cube buliding. Just need to dress it up a bit to make it blend with the other scenery, perhaps in an 'old quarter' or 'new construction' portion of a given board along with other similar pieces.

More from me on this later, for now I fully intend to see if I like the changes to diablo 3. I'm not one to stay stuck in the past and lament how it isn't diablo 2, I'll give it a fair chance to impress me on it's own. He said, as he continued to generate party ideas for old-school D&D rpgs instead of looking out for new ones

That super tall tower makes me nervous. I can just imagine it tumbling down. You are a braver man than I, sir.

My gaming group and I are about to start playing some 40k kill team scenarios, and I can't wait to use the deadzone terrain for that. I might even try your 7 story tower of doooooom!

The more I think about it, the more realize super tall towers are impractical lol. Large complicated buildings with a fair amount of height are still snazzy though.

 GrimDork wrote:
The more I think about it, the more realize super tall towers are impractical lol. Large complicated buildings with a fair amount of height are still snazzy though.

Yeah I learnt that myself. 2-3 storey size is as high as I'll go. Gets really expensive in tiles (and clips). Good luck dismantling it lol

Oh it's long since down to more reasonable heights, was only sitting in place with a couple of clips per building, mostly why it was so rickety.

'whatever you do, Yndij, don't look down...'

It may be dangerously impractical, but it does look cool. For gaming purposes, I think anything up to 4-5 stories should be fine so long as you have plenty of access to the upper levels.

^yeah I'll be aiming for 4-5 high on the outside. Gotta make sure I leave access for silly non-enforcers too.

Haha, I've just thought of a game where the enforcers fly up to the top of a 4+ story building while the Plague just mill around on the floor getting blasted. Maximum trolling value.

 Paradigm wrote:
Haha, I've just thought of a game where the enforcers fly up to the top of a 4+ story building while the Plague just mill around on the floor getting blasted. Maximum trolling value.

At least until the Plague Teraton teleports behind said Enforcers lol.

That's possible, I haven't looked into how jump packs work with the climb ability, as in can they climb two spaces without a wall or not... but teleport is a direct shunt of two spaces so anything they can do he can do, wonder if 4 enforcers supporting would have a chance in melee against one of those... I guess the next best thing to do would be to get them out on a bridge that high up, then the teraton's size means he can't follow onto the half tiles... and it'll be up to the boomstick plague to get a grenade to land on the walkway then Watch 'em all fall down then muahaha!

 GrimDork wrote:
That's possible, I haven't looked into how jump packs work with the climb ability, as in can they climb two spaces without a wall or not... but teleport is a direct shunt of two spaces so anything they can do he can do, wonder if 4 enforcers supporting would have a chance in melee against one of those... I guess the next best thing to do would be to get them out on a bridge that high up, then the teraton's size means he can't follow onto the half tiles... and it'll be up to the boomstick plague to get a grenade to land on the walkway then Watch 'em all fall down then muahaha!

Would the mortar team be able to hit someone at that height?

I haven't looked into them but surely? The grenade launcher is something like 3-6 range too I think, doubling that would easily reach that far, but hitting may be less than guaranteed.

Shame there aren't rules for knocking down the buildings. Imagine the terror that could cause with some of those huge buildings and towers.

Bwahaha. That would be amusing.

Don't know why I have never visited this blog before Grim, but it did mean that I had 24 pages of awesome sauce to get through. Loving the Deadzone work, you Sir are an inspiration.

Thanks . I try to keep moving forward, ever so much on which to work.

I've missed a lot oof blogs that were staring me in the face and then went dur.. how I do that dur...there are some real gems here on dakka that I've failed to notice for months. I wouldn't rate myself among those either.. It is really easy to overlook a little link at the end of a post. Maybe I need a flashy banner in my sig.

Today I'm working on another building, a fortified 2x2, and hopefully getting some paint on those plague.

Totally forgot to take shots of the fortified 2x2, it's pretty substantial though. I managed to lose one of the small seals inside my airbrush and now I've got air bubbling up into the cup. You can still spray water like nothing is wrong but the paint bubbles up like from a straw in chocolate milk... too insubstantial to blow out a smooth spray. Will have to see about replacing it, I think Amazon is out.. they have parts but I don't think they've got this one. I could probably grab something generic, it's just a little plastic ring, but it's super tiny and would have to be just right. I'm gonna see if either of my previous brushes has a comparable part (unlikely as they were Iwata knockoffs), and try to cheat with some pipe thread tape stragetically placed... but I think i'll just have to find a good way of ordering the part. I hope I don't have to order the whole head, the gun has a really high theoretical value of $400 something. They seem to be on amazon permanently for 70-90 so the MSRP is a joke, however, it tends to drive up the prices for replacements and spares.

^TLDR: Airbrush broke, painting will be slowed down.

I've got my 8 plague and enforcer left to finish, so there's that at least.

I cleaned out the garage today, I was just in there a little bit ago and noticed the sun hits the garage door really hard this time of day and it was diffusing the light pretty well. Kind of like a light box. I took some pictures to try it out, I think I may do some more shooting in there as the sun's going down, these turned out pretty alright.






Could be worse, yeah?

So I'll be trying to work on those plague later tonight, possibly reorganize my hobby room, been meaning to do that for awhile.

I've been digging around in my previous 'found items terrain' pile, I think I may start working on some of that on the side. I got a lot of Deadzone scenery, but I know it probably won't go quite as far as I'd like it to go, so I'm going to start working this stuff in here and there before I run out of tiles altogether. I've still got at least two more battlezones already paid for coming in the second survey, and may order a handful more, not to mention my mars attacks scenery... But I want a really super cram-packed board. I'll use the found items stuff in a section meant to represent an old or abandoned section of the city, made of local materials either before the colonists arrived with their habtainers (deadzone scenery is basically cargo containers that are designed to break down and be repurposed into buildings for colonists/workers) or by the colonists as they expanded beyond the limits of their supply chain.

Looks like I'm going to re purpose some of my second survey funds to pay for Dreadball Xtreme too. It looks like it might be a fun game, and there are so many models in it that would make lovely additions to my horde of painted minis, and crossover into deadzone fairly easily. I mean half of the models in it are probably going to be used to swell my rebs ranks

More from me later, I may not be painting the buildings for awhile but I'll hit them hard when I start up again.

It looks like Nature provided you with a pretty nice lightbox. Lucky find

Yeah I could do worse. Plus its a comparatively huge area so it should work for terrain shots.

Tried dipping, cant say was a fan of the results. Was using Dark Tone though so that may be part of it.

The enforcer and the infinity models are great. Were they the results of dipping?

Everything from the corporation zombies forward has been dipped. Those were a brown tone, dwarfs are mahogany and everything else is Tudor which is kind of like a dirty black. What didnt you like about your dipping attempt? I wouldn't say is much of a skill, but it is possible to mess things up if you don't siphon the extra quick enough, and you really wanna flat/matte/dull coat it too.

I think it just filled in a little to much of the detail.

I cleaned up best I could as quickly as I could.

I dont have the advantage of power tools to get the excess off which may be a factor.

The test model was a model I wasn't a huge fan of either which may certainly be a factor.

Will post a picture up on my blog once based. (Probably tomorrow.)

Dint have to use s drill grab it with pliers and swing it like you mean it, that was my first approach. Little rolled up bits of paper towel or napkin and q-tips (those are s thing everywhere right?) especially help to clean it out quickly. Then you kind of need to babysit it for up to five minutes to correct for any stain pooling after you clean it initially.

In other news, finally ordered my Teflon washer for the Sotar so hopefully that comes quick and I can get terrain painted. Been eyeing those plague too but work may keep me too tired. We'll see.

The infinity guy with the Enforcer up there came out really well. Especially nice work on the armour glow. I'm also enjoying seeing what you do with the buildings. One day when my MA ones arrive, I'll be able to have a good play with them, with the benefit of having watched you guys put stuff together.

And since I'm only gluing sub-units together, once you make something really cool, I'll be able to break my stuff down and then copy you back

I used nothing behind those guys, no additional lights, and it gets that way basically every day around 4-5... or well any time after noon and before sundown it should be fairly viable really, as soon as the sun hits that side of the house. The garage door acts like a giant diffuser for the light, should make taking larger scale imaged of terrain work out better.

I'm probably going to move my airbrushing set-up to the garage as well, as soon as the weather gets to where it's saying consistently warm. Then I'll be able to charge up the tank regardless of napping toddler and spray to my hearts content with a box fan blowing sucking the atomized paint away from me and blowing it out the open garage door.

Growing Terrain collection
I think my terrain collection is going to be steadily growing all year long lol. I've got 2 more battlezones already paid for that should come in with the second survey, I think I'll go ahead and add one of the battlezone sized extra scenery sprue they funded with survey monies, but that's it. I want another fortification zone, but I'll wait till those hit retail, its maybe a six dollar difference (as long as I pick it up or combine shipping somewhere) and I probably don't *really* need it.

Then I've got Battle systems coming in roughly a month from now. I ordered the stronghold which is for a 2x2' area but it will probably stretch a bit more than that with the extras I ordered. It can either be assembled as a full isolated interior or as discrete buildings with a viable exterior thanks to an add-on. I'm not sure if the paper terrain will blend or clash with the deadzone and scratchbuilt stuff, but I got a lot of it so hopefully it works out. Lots of crates, tables, cyro/specimen tanks, screens and computers, chairs, large standalone items like turbines, etc.

Mars attacks will bring in something like 2-3 more battlezones worth of scenery as well, sometime in august if things go as planned.

And then around November/December I've got two scifi expansion packs coming from Reaper Bones which means two large shipping containers, two reasonably sized dumpsters and weapon locker/crates, two not-tardises woot, a couple of 'starship generators' and computer terminals which might act as objectives or at least additional dressing, two jersey barriers, and 6 dragons teeth concrete looking thingies, and a couple of doors for giggles. Plus a bunch of aliens I plan to convert to work in deadzone

Plus anything I come up with from scratch. Mantic also got back to me about my missing items (great call in hassling them through the DBX comments, finally got around to it there ) and they should be coming at some point. The rebs were marked to show up in the second survey so I dunno if that's still a thing and if they'll send them all second survey or if they'll send them out intermittently like other peoples' missing parts. I'd be happy to get them sooner, and all of those accessory sprues should help bulk out my table.

Moving forward
Hopefully I adapt to work quickly and get back on the painting train. I should have my airbrush back in commission after a week or so (hopefully) and I really want to hit the terrain heavily and get a board ready to rumble. I've only just started my plague strike team but I think 2-4 hours of work, one to four concentrated painting sessions with a little time for dipping and sealing, and they'll be good and done. I'm going to do the marauders next and I'm really excited to be working on those, think I'm gonna try a red/brown skin-tone. I want them to look like they take themselves very seriously, probably dark shiny black garments with crisp white/grey edge highlights, potentially gold or silver trim where viable, especially on the captain. Ripper suits will be painted shiny and serviceable as well. Might have to go with a light red (more towards orange than pink) slash tan skin tone (but nothing too human).

Upcoming potential projects
I've got some side project ideas cooking too, I want to knock out some more sedition wars minis to use as counts-as rebs just because I can and a lot of the unit types fit. Private security force maybe. I also still want to try some re-posing some space marines to get a tad more height, and some experiments in leaving off their shoulder pads and backpacks (probably add an aftermarket rucksack or smaller power generator etc, but not those huge power plant packs) and trying out some different heads. Get them to look more like starcraft marines with hasslefree guns instead of bolters, and something along the lines of catachan heads. May stick with marine helmets too but I think those heads, or some other similar theme, would really bring home the merc angle. Then maybe I'd repurpose some of my old GW goblin wolf cav wolves as counts-as mawbeasts, trained wolves used for sniffing out objectives and for attack purposes. These would probably be counts-as marauders.

Anyway lots of typing no pictures, I'll fix that as I get moving again. I think I'm going to take some time arranging my terrain into suitable layouts for each of the five location assault nexus psi campaign scenarios and take pictures before tearing them back down. Well ok, the dreadball scenario too, and if either of the ambush scenarios has a special setup.

More later, thanks for watching, happy hobbies!