Well, a couple of holidays, a nasty cold and next thing you
know it’s another month since my last post.
Aside from family holiday festivities I did manage to break away and get
some models painted. I spent some time
finishing up the post-apocalyptic models on my work bench then I dove into the
huge box of Deadzone goodies that showed up from Mantic.
I went in big for the Deadzone Kickstarter campaign and picked up almost all of the models and terrain that were available with the first round of deliveries. With this review I’ll take a look at the Enforcer Starter Faction that comes in the main game box. Hopefully I’ll find time to shortly show the rest of the box set as well.
The first thing to know about the Enforcer starter is that
Mantic did not include exactly what was promised in the original Kickstarter
Campaign. This is covered in more detail in the update
HERE but the abbreviated version is
that Mantic is still working through the planned hard plastic enforcer
kit. To get the first shipment out the
door on time Mantic decided to slide some of the basic enforcer models from
first to second shipment and include some of their older Warpath models with
the starter. There are plenty of reviews
around the web for the older models (including a short one I did last month HERE) so I’ll only cover the new models
contained in the starter.
Love it or hate it, these models are cast in Mantic’s “restic”
material (although they prefer to call it "sprueless plastic"). There are a great number of pros, cons and
rants about restic around the web, so again I’m not going to dwell on this too
much. If you haven’t dealt with the
material before I highly recommend reading up on it before purchasing any so
you know what you’re getting into.
From my perspective, the figure cast quality is comparable
with other restic Warpath minis I’ve bought over the last few years in that
there are numerous mold lines around the model (some in the most inconvenient
places). There is some, but very little
mold slippage or offsets. There are no
bubbles or serous casting defects. Similar
to most other restic figures out there today, I have a problem with the
“sprueless” idea. The parts are
typically ripped or twisted from their sprue frames, which can often lead to
damage. I’ve seen numerous comments that
these figures are a significant improvement over the last round of Dreadball releases. I don’t have any of Dreadball but if that’s
the case, I shudder to think about the amount of cleanup the Dreadball figures
would have required.
CASTING QUALITY
Despite providing great looking Digitally sculpted renders during the campaign, the end result is actually
quite disappointment for several reasons.
First, the printing before casting seems to have been at a visibly lower resolution than I've seen from other companies that utilize the process. There were many prominent details (especially the helmets) where the end result was a lot of blobby or soft detail. This is one area where I feel the painted figures on the Mantic website are a little misleading. If you look at the pictures closely and compare them to the bare models you can see that a lot of the helmet details were painted on flat surfaces, not part of the model itself.
Another issue with the digital prints are the fact that there are still residual print lines on many of the models that were not cleaned up before casting. This is a disappointing sign of too little quality control in the release process.
The last sculpting issue I have is with the change in visual style between the old enforcers and the new ones. The addition of the web gear with equipment and a pistol holster is nice, but the overall slimming of the sculpts combined with the change in armor plates here and there is annoying. You could put this down to different versions of armor, but I was happy with the older style and didn’t see any reason to change.
Another issue with the digital prints are the fact that there are still residual print lines on many of the models that were not cleaned up before casting. This is a disappointing sign of too little quality control in the release process.
The last sculpting issue I have is with the change in visual style between the old enforcers and the new ones. The addition of the web gear with equipment and a pistol holster is nice, but the overall slimming of the sculpts combined with the change in armor plates here and there is annoying. You could put this down to different versions of armor, but I was happy with the older style and didn’t see any reason to change.
While I was disappointed with the final sculpts as compared to the digital renders shown during the Kickstarter campaign, the physical figures do end up at acceptable tabletop standard once they are prepped and painted. They aren’t great figures, but they get the job done. Hopefully (knock on wood) Mantic manages to get the hard plastic figures completed for the next wave of deliveries later this year.
As with other soft PVC figures, the devil with restic is clean
up of mold lines. Blast and damn it’s a
chore. I generally enjoy this end of the
hobby, but restic clean up can surely try your patience. My preferred method is to start with a new
blade in my hobby knife and remove the mold lines with precise forward
strokes. As you can imagine this is a
slow process at best. As you can see by
the pictures there is still the odd mold line still on the model here and there
even after my careful clean up work. I’ve
read a number of reports of people cleaning restic mold lines with a brass wire
brush but haven’t yet given it a go. I
think I’ll experiment with some of the older Warpath enforcers.
Once the mold lines are taken care of assembly is relatively easy. There are some confusing parts, especially with the engineer. Mantic has a breakdown of all the figure parts in one of their updates HERE if you get confused.
One thing to note when you look at the pictures is that I
did a few head swaps. I found the detail
unacceptably soft on a number of the
heads (engineer, assault and missile launcher) so I replaced them with some of
the older enforcer heads that I had left over some from some of my unused Warpath
Enforcers.
For basing, I stuck with the method on my previous Enforcers and used 3mm clear acrylic bases from Litko.
For basing, I stuck with the method on my previous Enforcers and used 3mm clear acrylic bases from Litko.
MISSILE LAUNCHER ENFORCER
ENFORCER SNIPER
The sniper is another cool figure marred by soft detail on the sniper rifle.
ENFORCER ENGINEER & SENTRY GUNS
ASSAULT ENFORCER
ENFORCER CAPTAIN
This figure is a bit different than the others. This is a new sculpt from the original metal
captain model, but it doesn’t appear to be a digital print. At least I didn’t find any of the residual
print lines present on the other models.
Unfortunately, the model has a cape that is mostly cast as a separate
piece, but still has bits of the cape molded to the shoulders and chest. I shaved of the cloak detail on the back, but
left the bits on the front and the clasps.
It’s not ideal but they were in a spot that was problematic to get a
knife into. Other than that it fits in
with the other figures in that it’s not a great figure, but is passable for
tabletop standard. Unfortunately my
painting style from the other enforcers (solid colors with a wash) still left
this guy kind of flat. I’ll probably
have to go back and do some dry-brushing or hard edging to make him a stand out
a little more.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT
To be fair, after going through the other parts of the
Deadzone boxed set, the Enforcers are the weakest pieces I received. I don’t recommend judging the entire game on
them alone. For now I’m taking Mantic’s
word that these are acceptable if underwhelming figures that are a stopgap for
the future planned hard plastic figures.
For the price I paid through the kickstarter (roughly $2 a
piece depending on how you pro-rate them with the rest of the rewards) they
were a decent value to me as far as gaming goes. However if you are looking at them in terms
of the retail price for the standalone Enforcer Starter (at roughly $3.5 a
figure) I would probably think twice or maybe pass on them.
The more important drawback as far as the game is concerned
is the lack of options compared to the other starting factions. Not only did the delay of the hard plastic
enforcers hold back some of the starter releases, Mantic has held back on the
Enforcer booster packs as well. The
other three Deadzone factions in the first wave (Marauders, Plague and Rebs)
all have full starters and boosters available in the first delivery. So far I’ve only played a couple of learning
and test games so I don’t know if the lack of Enforcer options is a problem,
but for players serious about the game, it might make the faction limiting for
the moment.