In the Grim Darkness of the 41st millennium there is only grimness and darkness....

Shield of Baal: Deathstorm...

I needed to take a break from all the Robotech I was putting together and see if I could do something a bit more enjoyable...   With that, I decided to make a start on the limited edition Warhammer 40k box set, Deathstorm. I briefly considered having a stab at the Privateer Press stuff but I'm not quite ready to commit to that much super-gluing.

What's in the box:

So much stuff!

One thing to point out, most of the stuff in here is not like the old days where it was stripped down versions of the normal stuff, snap-fit or wierd, impossible to modify stuff. Most of the mini's are standard off the shelf items. As such you get all of the options. Note: there are 2 "exclusive" mini's a new Brood Lord and a new Blood Angels Captain, both of which look very nice.

Instructions for putting your mini's together.

Also included are a half size version of the main rule book with all of the rules, but no fluff; and a campaign book with all of the rules for playing everything in the box. I did have a look and the points in the campaign book do seem a little bit off, in comparison to the current codex (at least for Tyranids) but who knows which codex was current when they put this box together.

Rules and campaign book.

Inside the campaign book

More from inside the book, note: full colour art.

And of course who can forget the sprues!!!

All of the Blood Angels sprues.

Death Company sprue

More sprues

Even more sprues!

And of course the bases. One thing I did note with the bases, apart from the new 32mm size bases for the jump pack marines is there does appear to be some missing. I'll know more once I start putting them together, but I have picked up some of the Secret Weapon Miniatures steel plate bases for the Tyranids.

Bases

Robotech Season 2

The UEDF are now complete!

This is all of the UEDF from the starter set.

One squad of destroids

 One squad of valkyries

 

And I replaced the last Battloid mode Valkyrie with a Max Sterling mini I had received a couple of Christmas' ago from Palladium, and constructed him and a fighter/guardian in the same configuration.

 

 As you can see the Valkyries are supplied in the three iconic "modes" you see from the TV show:

Battloid Mode

Guardian Mode

Fighter Mode

Each of the three modes has slightly different attributes, in speed, agility, skill and weapons. I won't go into too maby details but obviously the fighter can fly much faster than the battloid, but the battloid has much better hand to hand skills.

 

I haven't had a chance to play yet, so this review will be mainly centred around the models themselves.

 

To be honest, they're not the best, a friend who's also been puting them together stated: they're the only models he can remember needing tweezers to assemble.

 

The pieces are quite fidly, I've included a Games Workshop Space Marine to show scale:

 

 

 

As you can see they're quite small and with that size comes some issues with assembly:

 

 

 

Here is an arm, 2 parts of the forearm, a shoulder and a gun:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



And a small plastic glue pot for scale:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the sprue for one guardian mode valkyrie sprue:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a requirement to build 12 different models just to field a basic squad of 4, this may lead to quite a bit of frustration.

 

In summary, they're not the best. You do get a lot of stuff and there was multiple different options included, head swaps for the different model versions, all of the diferent weapon options and all of the upgrades that may be required.

 

But, the detail is quite poor and the pieces are unnecessarily small and fidly.

 

All in all, it does appear to be a very competent starter, but I'll wait until I finish the other 2 before passing judgement.

 

I've decided to start work on the Games Workshop starter next, just to give myself a break from the fidly palladium stuff. I'm going to try and put together all of the included Tyranids. I've never attempted a Tyranids army so I'm quite looking forward to it.

 

One last point, make sure you download the alternative assembly instructions from www.drivethrurpg.com they make a massive difference and really cut down on the frustration factor:

 

 

 

 

Robotech Season 1

Let the building commence...

I'm going to start my "construct all the things" project with the Robotech Starter Box:

 It's a big box!

And this is what it looks like when you open it up:

 So many sprues - so badly packed

 Zentraedi Sprues

 UEDF Sprues

The sprues are colored to the different factions so if you don't feel like painting them it's probably not going to impact too majorly on your gaming experience. And where you have sprues you also have bases. These have little direction markings on them and a tab to show the rear side of the base. Which does completely ruin any chance of making them unique, but, whatever....

 Base

                                      

There is of course a full colour rule-book:

 Full colour art

 Unit Entries

Fluff

Also included in the box are the squad building cards and unit cards. The squad building cards list what particular units you can take in each squad, as well as they're possible upgrades. The unit building cards list each of the unit characteristics and any special rules they may have.

Squad Card

Unit Card

And all the other little ancillaries that come with these starter sets:

Advertising

More Advertising

Instructions

                                                                     Instructions

More instructions

And Decals

Some dice, markers...

and a very nice template

In conclusion, you're getting a lot of stuff for your $90-$100, the only issue is the quality. I've started putting some of these things together and to be honest they're not the best. Mold lines are prevalent through-out and it's very hard to get things to line up and seal correctly. And the detail isn't particularly crisp. I'm aiming to have all of the UEDF constructed in the next couple of weeks and get some games in with them to see how they go. I'll pop another article up once I do that.

A tale of 3 starters and a little something extra

So it's turning out that 2015 is the year of the Kickstarter for me...   well the year of stuff finally arriving at my house at least.

I've backed 20 Kickstarters over the last few years. Of those, I have received 10, with the 11th coming in dribs and drabs now. It's looking like I should be receiving another 3 in the next couple of months with another 2 or 3 by the end of the year...   hopefully....

So, what does this mean for the current matter, well, with all of this stuff arriving I'm finding I have TONS of stuff to stick together so I thought I would take this opportunity to do a little comparison of some of the starters, currently or recently on the market...  give people an idea of what they're getting.

Here's a couple of Kickstarters, Robotech RPG Tactics and Pulp City that arrived earlier this year.

 

Pulp city looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, but in terms of this review, it doesn't really fit the bill, I want to concentrate on 3 sets that are of a similar price and size. 

 

First of all I'm going to try and assemble all of the mini's from the Robotech set (RRP $99.95) play a few games with them and see how it feels.

 

Next will be Warmachine/Hordes, I was lucky enough to buy both the Warmchine Starter set and the Hordes starter set with a friend and split the 2 boxes up. I took Khador and Legion of Everblight while my friend took Protectorate of Menoth and Circle Orboros. This set retails for $99.99USD

From Games Workshop we have the Deathstorm set, although no longer available, is still quite similar to their current Dark Vengeance starter set, in terms of contents and price. This is slighty more expensive than the other two sets at $125USD.

And lastly, for something completely different, we have an Eisenkern Stormtrooper Rifle Squad from Dreamforge-Games. This is for a possible Cobra (G.I. Joe's mortal enemy) themed Astra Militarum force. This will give people an idea about what the smaller players are doing. This 10 man set, retails for $22USD

My goal is to have everything assembled over the next few months and to get some games in. I'll keep posting updated and some of my trials and tribulations.

Till next time... 

Games & Gears Battle Boards Kickstarter Fulfilled-ish....

My Kickstarted Games & Gears Battle Boards Kickstarter have finally arrived!!!

mostly....

notice the slight space, also I hadn't installed the clips either, I'm lucky enough to have an 8' by 4' board with a raised lip....  

There has been some debate online about whether the boards have been completely painted, well you be the judge:

 

You can obviously see how the road paint has run over onto the side of the board, but if the rest of the top surface was painted it was done a great deal better. From an angle the top side of the board does look to be a slightly different colour.


And here are some pics with some mini's on for scale...

Minotaurs and pre-heresy / pre-Forge World - Horus Heresy Range Emperor's Children

 And last one with tasteful sun setting in the background...   :)

Let's try this again

So I managed to achieve almost nothing hobby wise this month...

I'll post these guys back up, I think this is a better shot anyway....

Actually, I did manage to get one layer of colour on one of them.

You can see a completed Terminator in the back ground.


I did take a group shot recently of how my Minotaur's are looking up to date.

To the right of the picture are my first attempt at doing the army, notice the slightly more gold colour scheme. Eventually, I'd like to go back and touch a lot of that up.

The more up to date miniatures are on the left. I managed to paint up a land raider over Christmas with a darker colour scheme and did most of it with an airbrush.

I've received word that my copy of Angel Giraldez's Miniature painting guide http://infinitythegame.com/ has been dispatched, so I'm hoping to get some good airbrushing tips from that.

I'm back...

Hi Everyone...

So my no hobby for old men turned out to be quite prophetic...   especially considering how long it's been since I posted...

I haven't quite had "no" hobby...  but I haven't had as much...

Still...  with a new year comes new challenges and, the Independent Characters are doing another hobby progress challenge...  

So without much ado, here is my entry...

Emperor's Children, Phoenix Guard Terminator's with Minotaurs Shoulder pads