Building a Deadzone and the second shipment

The first delivery of Deadzone came some time ago now but it was only recently that I started to break into the rather large box we received and get cracking with putting it together.  I considered what faction I should start with first but in the end decided to go for the games namesake and build up a Deadzone board.  As much as the boards seen on the Mantic site and Kickstarter looked fine I wanted to build structures that looked like they were usable buildings and with this in mind I got the graph paper out and started planning.  I wanted a board that reflected a bustling, multi-levelled space (much like a Mega City or Hive World) and was very much influenced by my early memories of seeing Necromunda for the first time.
Here is my progress so far:

The main structures which the board is based around are the military bunker in the corner (which has a fully playable interior), the central administration building and the large watch tower.  I had outlined where I wanted the other buildings and how they would connect but not their actual shape or height so I just let my imagination go where it wanted while staring with the mountain of sprues in front of me.

When it came to putting the buildings together I knew I would be gluing them together, not only for stability but also a speedier set up time.  However not wanting to reduce the flexibility that the Battlezone kits offer I decided to build in a modular fashion where one building might be made up of three seperate blocks and all the walkways are detachable so that the board could be assembled multiple ways.

At this stage I ran out of the corner connectors (something I knew would happen with how I was constructed this) so this was put on hold until the second shipment showed up, which leads us nicely on to...

The Second Shipment

Monday dinner time and the UPS driver dropped off what can only be described as a box of joy (to me at least).  The box was in good condition and didn't look like it had been used as a football by the deliver folks at UPS so I was hopeful that the contents would all be in good order and I wasn't disappointed.

There was some criticism about the packing of the first shipment and, while not perfect, shipment two was much improved with models and sets being bagged seperately and in some cases labelled.
After checking through the survey list and the contents of the box contents everything seems to be present and correct, barring the resin crates and counters - missing item formed completed and sent, and there wasn't a miss-cast in site (though the hair on the female Pathfinder looks awfully fragile and I think either a different material should have been used, she's cast in a clear blue resin, or the hair should have been sculpted differently).
I know there are quite a lot of images out there now of these miniatures so I thought I'd just put up some of my highlights:

The resin Plague Gen 1 - fantastic details and love the doomed Corp soldier in it's hand

 The resin alt Rebel Commander - again lovely detailing

Bjarg Starnafall - the Forge Fathers are my favourite force in the Warpath universe and I think I'll have this fella heading up many an army

The real highlight of the shipment for me was the hardback rule book, I love a good book and this will take pride of place on the wargaming shelf (well as soon as we buy that new bookcase that is).

The second shipment haul

With the second shipment now in hand I have begun the finishing stages of the Deadzone board (which I'll post pictures off once constructed) but this isn't the end as I have yet more Battlezones to go through, not only for use in Deadzone but also Warpath and beyond.  Currently I'm planning to build a landing pad pretty much as the standard layout and then a secondary smaller pad built on a tower structure which is based on an image I saw of one of Mantic's set-ups, then it's on to a few more standard buildings, perhaps a small bunker and finally on to the new ruined sprues (I'm going to have fun with those I think).

Phil