Zone Raiders - Adam's Zone Stalkers Team

Here is the second of our Zone Raiders build projects.

If you haven't heard of it here is the description from the publisher:

Zone Raiders is a fast-paced tabletop skirmish game where small groups of hardened survivors battle against each other in an unforgiving post-technological world called the Matroshka. Within an unending world of inscrutable science, radiation storms and machines dedicated to exterminating life, players create narrative stories and rewarding tactical gameplay in an open-model skirmish ruleset.

We’ve shown Daniel’s Reclaimers in one of our previous blog posts - they need someone to play against, so I decided to build a crew!

In most games I go for the heavily armed and armoured military faction, but those were taken - so I went for the opposite, something I very rarely play, the stealthy sniper Zone Stalkers.

Ever since we released the Desert Nomads in the Digital Forge I wanted to use their hooded heads with goggles and rebreather masks, this was the perfect opportunity. I also needed a lot of camouflage cloaks (but those were too plain for my vision of the crew, so I went for the Wasteland set, I’ll camo them up with the paintjob!) and somewhat high-tech looking bodies.

In the end I settled on using a mix of 3D printed and resin parts, including the following:

• Heads and weapons from Digital Forge Desert Nomads

• Torsos, legs and characters from Digital Forge Recon Drop Troops

• Resin High-Tech Drop Trooper Pistol Grip / Command arms and Pilots

• And various weapons and accessories from our resin ranges

Since Zone Raiders makes all sorts of fun movement shenanigans possible (like wall-running!), I wanted to build at least some of my more melee oriented models in very dynamic poses - they might look a bit odd on their current plain bases, but it will all come together once they are painted and on their scenic bases!

Zone Warden

He is my leader, and I also wanted him to be the centerpiece model of my crew. The base model is the wall-running pilot from Recon Drop troopers, with both hands removed and replaced with a Desert Nomad pistol (Flechette Pistol) and Drop Troop Command sword (Progressive Edge). The hooded head went on easy, the cloak definitely took more work! The rifle slung on his back meant that I either had to remove it, or carve a lot of the cloak out to make it fit. I opted for the latter, filled the gap with Milliput, added a Modern Suppressor, and upgraded his loadout to include an Auto Carbine.

Jaeger

A full digital kitbash based on the Drop Trooper Sniper.

She carries an Interdiction Rifle, which is essentially an anti-material rifle. The original Gauss Rifle would fit the bill, but I wanted something that looked heavier, like the Desert Nomad sniper rifle. I loaded the character up in Blender, set the rifle in place and scaled it up until it looked correct. The fit was almost perfect, I only needed to remove bits in two areas, boolean cutting with cubes (marked in red), then I designed a simple filler bit to make the join between the specialist weapon lower and the rifle look better (filler marked in green).

Then I added a Desert Nomad head and printed the model using mostly the original supports.

Trespasser & Troubleshooter

The Troubleshooter has the same loadout as my leader, except her Mobility Frame which is represented by High-Tech Exoskeleton legs.

The Trespasser is armed with a Thermal Lance (Axe in this case) & Plasma Burner, both coming from the Gothic Void Melee Weapons & Pistols set.

Scout Stalkers

Rounding out the team and spending my remaining RUs I built 3 Scout Stalkers.

Two of them are the Drop Troop Pilot #1 & #2 with arm and head swaps and the third is a regular Recon Drop Trooper.

Two are armed with Vesper Rifles (sniper rifles, but lighter than the Interdiction Rifle) which were built from the spare DSR-1s without hands, cut to fit the Pistol Grip arms and the stock from the Vektor Carbine. I didn’t have enough RUs left for a third, so the last model is armed with an Auto Carbine (Vektor on sling from the Female High-Tech Command). I didn’t even have to modify the arm to fit perfectly with Pilot #1!

As I was assembling the models, I heated some of the cloaks a bit (Using boiling water, treat your resin componets exactly like a tea bag, but be careful!) so I could shape them to fit the models better, and the final step was filling all the gaps with Milliput.

Now it’s time to build the bases and paint the models so we can try out the game!