Into the Deadzone

I must admit that I first became curious about Deadzone because of the terrain not long after it was released. The pull was not strong enough to have me buy into the game until after Contagion was released. Sci-fi zombies and solo rules on a small 2x2 playing area hit all the right buttons with me. I started with the main box and Contagion but within a few weeks I was "all in" and had caught up on the expansion books as well. 

Early on I played the Plague as I found assembling the Enforcers somewhat frustrating for some reason. Besides, my friend Rick was initially playing the Rebels so it made sense to give him a solid enemy to match up against. The Plague didn't fully grab me though and I have to admit I was torn between picking up the Marauders and waiting for the Forge Fathers to be released. 

My Plague crew in an early game at the Fremont Game Kastle. 

In the end I opted for the Marauders. I have to admit that despite playing 40K Orks in the 90's I had very mixed feelings about the models. I liked that they were mercs and pirates but they didn't sit well visually. Some of it was with the poses of particular models and another was that I didn't like the look of the heads at all. I even thought about substituting the Kromlech or 40K models for them. I eventually opted against going with another company’s models. Besides being expensive I really wanted to keep them as Mantic minis, but what to do...

I spent a few months mulling it over as we played other games but then it dawned on me to look for size comparisons with other models in the Mantic range. That did it and I decided to get a basic box of Ogres and see how doing basic head swaps would change them up. It worked great and I am happy with the initial results (I apologize for the poor quality of the image).

Half-orx Troopers and their Captain.

Now a big reason I am increasingly fond of Deadzone is that it is the first game since 40K where I am diving into doing conversions to models using anything I can find from within the Mantic line of minis. This is an aspect of the miniatures hobby I have missed when playing games like Infinity, Relic Knights and Malifaux where models are more fixed in appearance and don’t lend themselves to conversions as readily. 

I am calling my version of the Marauders Half-orx since the ogre heads give them a look of being a genetically hybridized version of the true Marauder Orx and Humans. As I clean up these models more and fill some gaps with green-stuff I will post more images of them in the future.