A few random oddments on Deadzone.
I’ve just been talking to the chaps at Mantic and they tell me that the other 2 card decks (Rebs and Marauders), plus the mercenaries and some other things from expansions (like CSW rules) will be made available as a second digital download some time in the next month. I suspect they mean after the mountain of Deadzone boxes have been packed and shipped out to the Kickstarter backers. This, of course, is almost upon us. I think that they’re only waiting for the scenery sprues now, though “only” is probably the wrong word as they’re rather important 😉
Last night I had another long chat about Deadzone with Neil from Meeples & Miniatures, so you can expect that to go up as a podcast soon. One intriguing coincidence was his suggestion that those rules could be used as the basis for playing in other SF environments. Then today I was mailed a link to another proposed variant.
I’m also getting the Asterian and Forge Father card decks finished, and when they’ve been batted about a bit (and we’ve made sure they reflect the model’s equipment, etc) I’ll post them up here too.
Now I’ve got to leave you to it as I’m sure I can hear more zombies downstairs. They just don’t know when to stop…
Quirkworthy 
Thank you Jake.
Too bad about the rebs and marauder stats being delayed, but if this means that we have the chance to get the full package shipped earlier I don’t believe that it will be a problem. ^__^
40k Deadzone? Yay I don’t have to throw my “Grey Wolves” Space Marine army away! 🙂
Any chance of you sharing your points calculator so variant projects can really take off? I realize this may a totally unreasonable request.
Hmm – thanks for the DZ update Jake – I have to say that I am mightily looking forward to receiving my set now, having read through the rules and being thoroughly impressed (in case you’re interested my review can be found here: http://www.fiftyshadesofgeek.org/2/post/2013/11/deadzone-rulebook-by-jake-thornton-review-by-greg.html)
As far as using the system for other settings, I can see why people would want to – the rules are simple but give the opportunity for great depth and tactics, and are a lot more elegant than many other similar scale rulesets. I dunno if 40k is something I’d like ot see getting the DZ treatment, but that’s a personal wish that the Warpath universe and all of its asscoiated franchises be kept as far away from 40k as possible in all regards, rather than a reflection on the system itself.
I’ve got nothing to do with the 40K thing myself. It’s a fan project, and if they’ve got the enthusiasm to carry it through then I say good luck to them.
I wonder if we’ll see a Squat list 😉
Thanks for the kind words in the review.
Oh I didn’t mean to imply you had any bearing on it, it was clear to me that it was a fan project, just as I say a personal taste thing on the idea.
Although if they did Squats I’d probably be all over it like flies on jam…
And you’re welcome – I spent the weekend learning Dreadball with a mate and that was also great fun. Expect a review shortly 🙂
Deadzone just screams for an X-COM variant and we have had some brainstorming about it on Mantic forums. (http://forum.manticblog.com/showthread.php?5691-deadzone-as-xcom)
Currently there has bee not any progress that I know of, because I’ve wanted to familiarize myself with the full rules and might have to wait for the compendium before making it true.
Nice to know that someone is doing the job for 40K, I don’t have to do everything myself to make Chaos Gate on tabletop finally true.
you know what? It would be really cool to have the core of the deadzone rules released as GPL licence (like it was done with Kow)… just saying
If anyone is interested in Deadzone 40K, I’ll happily accept any input into it (there is a discussion thread linked in the dakka article). It’s very rough atm, but some interest was shown so I put up what I had. Haven’t worked on changing the cards at all yet, just getting basic unit lists for some armies and brainstorming some proposed rules… also debating whether to keep new rules to a minimum to keep gameplay fast. It’s a conundrum! I was initially thinking of making a “balance patch” for 40k, but that system is so… troublesome… that this is probably a better solution for enjoying 40k – Deadzone rules look amazing!
I was going to get it more feature complete before I brought it up again and cleared it with Mantic and Quirkworthy, but was nice to see it linked here already! If its stepping on anyone’s toes I’ll take it down, but I hope you take it in the spirit it was meant – praise for your great rules ; )
Oh, but I love my flyers! And my tooled up lists! And my over priced models! Someone might’ve thought I was serious there for a second (you know who you are!) I feel 40k has become a system that forces you to buy the next new over powered model to stay competitive and they get bigger and bigger price tags every year. Honestly I almost left mini gaming entirely because of it. Thankfully, a little bird pointed me to a certain little kick start project. I wish Games Workshop would learn a few things from this system, and not the other way around. At least they are trying to pull space marines into this system and not enforcers into 40k. Sorry for the over done argument. I love this system, the community, and the ability to ask the guy who developed the rules how the rules are supposed to function. Cheers mate, and keep up the great work!
My quick read over the 40k rules made me wince, grimace and swear a little. Why make a Deadzone variant which is so simple and elegant and add several layers of special rules to over power your stuff? All they needed to do was use enforcers for space marines and list which space marine model is which enforcer model. Chaos Space marines for plague! Orcs for Orx, Imperial guard for Rebs. There is no need for EXTRA rules, it’s going to be incredibly imbalanced – not that I’ll be playing it though!
For the plague I would rather use the tyranids myself :
– 3rd gen = termagaunt (devilgaunt and the other weapons options could be used for the HMG and grenade launcher)
– 2nd gen = genestealer
– 1rd gen = Tyranid warriors with close combat biomorphs (or maybe even better any tyranid prime conversion, or even a tyrant)
I don’t think however that the rebs are a perfect fit for any 40k faction, but the human reb should serve as the base profile for a normal human/guardsman, from where Imperial guard and other armies could be adapted.
Tau could be interesting to adapt, with advanced weaponry but very fragile (fire warriors could still use armor 1, but get a good survive attribute to represent their armor, probably something like 4+ like the enfarcers get).
The exosuits however could of course get armor 2 and the jet pack ability.
You’re right it does fit much better!
Keep in mind we don’t even have the game yet, so play testing is somewhat difficult. However I will say that for Space Marines, I’ve created two additional rules, both dealing with jump packs (substantially different from the ones enforcers use) and modified 2 Enforcer battle cards – hardly several layers of extra special rules. I’ve also increased the cost of marines, increased their size so fewer can be in a single square, removed jump packs from most of them and so on so the end result, after playstesting, will ideally be factions balanced with the Deadzone factions but playing more like they appear in 40k fluff.
I heartily disagree that using the current decks to represent 40k factions will be fun. The current factions are great and I’m really looking forward to playing them – but they do not match 40k stuff anymore than The Enterprise matches a Star Destroyer.
If you had of read the Deadzone 40K stuff fully you would have seen the debate I was having about whether or not adding more special rules was a good idea. If it turns out to be less fun, I am more than happy to remove them. Wherever possible I’ve converted things that in 40k would have resulted in more cumbersome mechanics into existing deadzone mechanics.
Hello Jake, can we expect to see to rules for the granade launcher and the stats of the deployable enforcer turret in the expansion as well?
I think the turret is in the equipment section of the rule book. The grenade launcher is too, but it’s kinda hard to figure it out, it’s a frag weapon. It essentially works like a grenade that doesn’t scatter (I think) and has a fixed range. Unless you mean the stat line of a model with a grenade launcher. Hope that helps!
unfortunately they are both missing from the book (we are already discussing about this in the living faq comment), I would like just to know what is missing because it will be in an expansion and what is missing because it’s an actual error.
I for one can’t wait to see the Dwarf King’s Hold variant for Deadzone. Fantasy is much more appealing to me than Sci Fi. That didn’t stop me from dropping several hundred dollars on deadzone, though…
Just to confirm because it reads a bit confusing… I am assuming that the box shipped will still have the physical faction cards for Rebs/Marauders and it’s just the digital download that is delayed??
Yeah thats right. In fact the rebs cards are now available for download too
I really like the Warpath universe and am fine if future Deadzone releases confine themselves to that. As far as using Deadzone for other sci-fi properties, though, Mars Attacks has already done it. It might be worthwhile for Mantic to pursue a two-pronged approach, with mainline Warpath Deadzone expansions and compatible, licensed expansions on the side. This could work particularly well with properties that are well suited for tabletop combat, but have never been featured in a tabletop war-game. I know that a Deadzone version of XCOM would be greeted with a lot of excitement, as would Fallout.
I know Mantic currently wants to focus on their own IP – which as I said, is fine with me – but developing Deadzone into a sort of tabletop GURPS might be something worth thinking about as well. Ideally, it would benefit everyone – fans of other licenses would be introduced to Warpath, and Warpath players could spice up their battles with guest appearances by other factions.