Wayland

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Deadzone Mercs and Wrath Guide

Mercs are the fifth, or maybe seventh, faction in Deadzone, depending on how you view production schedules. Whatever, they are a great little collection of models and come in their own confusing baggie of limbs, guns, and 'bits' for Kickstarters to pore over.

The good news is most of them are actually pretty straightforward to put together and are only two or three pieces. For those guys, please check out the gallery below to help you decide which arm or head goes with which body.

A few notes:

  •  thorough clean up before gluing is highly recommended. There are one or two tabs that need to be filed down to their exact intended shape or they just won't go in right.
  • make sure you put the bladed arm on Blaine and the silenced rifle on the Pathfinder. Blaine's fist weapon looks kinda Enforcery and it will go onto the Pathfinder's body.
  • Freya's arms didn't even need glue on my model, the fit is that tight. I pushed the arms on almost vertically over her head before rotating the pegs down into the sockets.
  • take care with Oberon's toes (easy to clip off) and the Pathfinder's combat knife (easy to snap off)

Nastanza -backpack goes with smooth pointy end up.

Simmonds - reaching right arm.

Freya - no glue necessary.

Blaine. 'nuff said.

The Survivor - backpack has shaped tab to ensure right way up

Pathfinder and Drone

Oberon - no glue needed, but some hot water for reshaping is.

Wrath - hardest model in the bag to put together.
 All of which brings us to Wrath, my favourite model from the Kickstarter fluff and least favourite from the bag.

For a start, he comes in  seven parts: a body, two arms, two kasaya straps, his cloak, and his sword. Then you can add that these parts all have tabs, but they aren't all the right shape. Then add onto all that Mantic's infuriating habit of putting the tabs next to the holes in the molds where the plastic goes in, so when the model comes out you have to trim it down and try to figure out what shape the tab is supposed to be and what is flash. Honestly, that, and putting mold lines right down the middle of faces with tiny tiny details, is the worst thing about Mantic's Deadzone minis.


Anyway. Once you've got all those parts sorted, here's how I recommend you put them together.

1. Put the kasaya strap with a small tab at one end and a larger rectangular tab near the other on Wrath's left shoulder (the top one in the picture above). The rectangular tab goes into a socket just above his groin. You'll see on Wrath's shoulders a roughly triangular arrangement of holes - the kasya tabs go in the front and lower holes.  Put the other kasaya strap on his right shoulder. I did my arms first, which made putting the straps on a lot harder.

2. Put the arms on. Long rifle on the left side, bottom and rear hole, pistol on the other side.

That deep hole in his right shoulder is for the cape.
And there's the one for the left shoulder.
3. Put the cloak on. You'll see a fairly deep and long slot on the top of each of his shoulders. This is where the cloak is designed to fit.
Mind you, he is crazy. Maybe it makes sense to him.
4. Stick his sword on. Once again a little hot water will do wonders here if yours is as bent as mine. I couldn't tell for certain from the KS pictures where this was supposed to go, but there is a small hole in the top left surface of the cloak that appears to match a little tab on the sword's scabbard, so thats where I put mine. It looks awkward as anything, but unfortunately I think this just means its not a great sculpt.
 
He took it off a dead member of the Council of Seven, who's going to tell him it looks silly?

As always, feel free to ask me any questions if you're having trouble with any of your Deadzone Mercs and, if you like the guide, please click on the ad at the top. Or if you know a better place to put that sword ;) Personally, I feel some repositioning and greenstuffing coming on.
 

4 comments:

  1. Holy crap, thanks for the Wrath tutorial. I would have just sat there for hours staring at all those pieces!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for this. I figured it out except the sword. Would really like a guide for painting techniques on this one!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I glues Wrath's sword underneath his cloak straight to his back before putting the cloak on. There's just enough of a gap at the back where it pools around his neck for the hilt to poke up between his shoulders.
    Still possibly the most tricky mini to assemble of the Mercs :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. How does it look? That sounds like it makes more sense than the way I did it.

    ReplyDelete