For years now I’ve spent $$$$ on Games Workshop products. Their sculpts are amazing, but their business practices leave a lot to be desired. Pricing of GW products, especially in Australia (+$20 on a standard troops boxed set, after conversion rates are applied), is ridiculously expensive. Not to mention frequent new releases that make expensive rule book purchases obsolete in under 2 years.

Then along comes Deadzone. Originally a cheap alternative to GW, Mantic created miniatures at bargain prices (the sculpts reflected the cheap price and still do). These were designed as proxies for GW games.

The turning point for mantic was the release of their own gaming system. It shone in its simplicity. Deadzone was born and I won’t look back, especially after the adjustments made in 2nd edition. The rules are streamlined, and easy to learn. You can even proxy in the better sculpted Warhammer 40k figures if you have the $$$$.

Then comes Nexus Psi. I jumped at this because it offered solo play. Now my miniatures can hit the table even more often! Perfect! The solo rules are simple, just like the core Deadzone rule book.

The box offers value for money in the terrain alone: you get lots! I built a landing pad, the GW equivalent of which (mantic blantanly ripped off the design from GW) would cost more than the entire Nexus Psi boxes set. But you can arrange the terrain in a myriad of different ways. It’s a click system that, in theory, you should be able to pull apart and reassemble, but in reality it’s far from perfect and you’re best picking one design and supergluing it.

The miniatures are fine, but difficult to assemble. Expect lots of glue on fingers, lots of time holding them in place, waiting for glue to dry, only to have an arm fall off when you let go. The sculpts are not GW standard, but look good painted.

Now the worst bit: the number of zombies. You get 10 plastic zombies, plus one special metal zombie character. Here’s the problem: all missions in the rule book that comes in the box call for a minimum of 14 zombies. I emailed Mantic. And their response- Buy more zombies!

Overall, it’s worth it for the terrain and solo rules. It was a big disappointment not including enough figures to play the missions, but it is cheap for all you do get.