Pocket Money Hobby - Part 1 Deadzone.

Greetings and welcome to the first in the series of “Pocket Money Hobby”. This series of articles aims to continue the work of my on a budget articles by helping those who may not have loads of spare cash to spend on hobby get the most out of what they can spend.
We’ll be working with an “average” pocket money budget of £10 a week or £40 a month. With this we’ll look at paints, models, and all the ancillary gaming material s you may need.

In this article we’ll be looking at starting Mantic Games’ new game system Deadzone. Deadzone is a great little sci-fi skirmish game that makes a perfect introductory game for a beginner. It’s light on models, extra materials and is very easy to learn. 

So let’s get started.  Picture the scene, you’ve been past your FLGS (Friendly local gaming store) you’ve popped in and had a chat saved up a little cash and settled on a sci-fi system. You’ve got no hobby resources back at home so what can your £40 get you to start you playing?

First up you’re going to need some models. Deadzone makes this very easy.  There are four factions:
Enforcers – super humans in high tech armour, the elite of the “Corporation”.
Rebels – An eclectic bag of freedom fighters.
Marauders – Well trained alien mercenaries.
Plague – An intelligent strain of virus bent on destruction.

Each of these factions has a starter box that costs £20. For half our monthly budget we get; between 11 and 12 models which are enough to play the game, and the cards needed to play your faction (mission, stat and battle). The box also comes with two Mantic points. These little guys are your friend. They work like loyalty points that you can collect to cash in for free models, including Deadzone bits.Another great point about the boxes Mantic's products come in is that they are plastic cases lined with foam that are great for transporting your models in complete safety.

Right we now have our models; however you may notice they are in lots of tiny pieces with extraneous bits hanging on them. We’re going to need to clean them up and stick them together.
The cheapest and most effective solution for this is “The Army Painters” metal/resin assembly set. At £8 you get clippers, glue and a file so your models should be near perfect once you’re done clipping and filing the flash away.

So £28 in and we’ve nearly got everything we need to play and our models are built all be it still grey plastic. To get playing in our first month, we’re also going to need some D8’s and some tokens.
Mantic do an Acrylic token set for £10 which is nice but a little steep for many gamers. However some generic counters would do the trick. Mantic also sell d8’s, £5 for a pack of 10. However some search round the internet or your FLGS should find you some cheaper alternatives that fit in the remainder of our £12 or less.

D8's - £3
Mantic tokens - £10

This gives you most of what you need for Deadzone for £41 (a little over budget sorry), but you're going to need to find a local club or FLGS to play in. Most of these will be able to provide a extra crates and the bits you're missing and of course a board and an opponent.


Next time we’ll look at getting paints and brushes sorted for £40 or less