The Power of Brilliance

I got myself a new Malifaux crew last week, the Dark Debts box (as well as a couple of add ons).  I'd thought I'd do a little review of them.  

I love these new plastic kits.  The boxes they come in have some really nice artwork on them.  But I'm not writing this review on box art.  On to the innards.

Here we have the contents of the dark debts box its self, minus the bases (we all know what they look like).  Its just one big sprue.  In my opinion they probably could have cut the sprue in half and put it into a smaller box. It looks more complicated than it is.  Each of the miniatures are labelled a-e, which makes it easier to find the components of each.  A nice feature is that the illuminated have multiple options.  There's a few alternate arms and an alternate head for the female one.  The detail on the components is astounding.  Many of the components are very fine but the hard plastic makes them resilient to damage.
As pretty as the components are they are a few cons to the set.  First of is that all the 30mm bases in the set are slotta bases.  None of the miniatures in the set have slotta tabs, so you have to fill in the gaps.  The second is there are no instructions.  You have to figure out where each component goes, which isn't really that hard, but there where a few moments glueing up the illuminated that I would have killed for a few diagrams showing me which way a few of the components were supposed to go on.  I think I got there in the end.  Also this set seams the only way to get illuminated, which seams a little silly.  I hope that will change in the future.

So here we have the assembled box.  You'll notice the green stuff over the holes in the bases, which i hope wont  be visable once I base them.  The miniatures look great, however there is one problem with them, gaps.  The hungering darkness and the illuminated have the worst ones.  I'm going to have to fill them before I paint them, no biggy, but I'd prefer it if they were less noticeable.

On to the beckoners.  First off there is a typo on the box.  There are only two beckoners in the box, not three.  Here they are along with Mr Graves

The beckoners came on a simple sprue with no extras.  And it was pretty obvious were the components went, if I recall correctly there were only five.  The beckoner on the right was a joy to assemble.  However the one on the right was an absolute bastard.  Her arms and cane came in one piece, which slotted onto the shoulders, sounds simple right?  Those arms were a very tight fit.  It took me ages to get the positioned correctly and then the kept slipping off like someone trying to squeeze a greased up ball bearing between their fingers.  I got her there in the end, but there are small gaps between her arms and her shoulders... poo.
Lastly we have Mr Graves.  He again came on a simple sprue, with very few components.  He came with an alternate left arm holding his fence post (that's not a metaphor).  But I decided against this because his bare fist looked a hell of a lot more menacing.  When I did a dry fit with the fence post hand it looked he was going to spank someone with a ruler.  I didn't think it looked threatening.  He went together really well, although he has the dreaded gaps in his shoulders.

All in all I'm really happy with these miniatures.  The details are great, the plastic is really good quality.  It'd be nice if there were fewer or at least smaller gaps in them.  Smooth bases instead of slotta bases would have been nice too.  Ah well can't win em all.  Hopefully by the time you see this lot a gain they will be painted.  So that's it for today, happy wargaming guys and I'll leave you with a random brachiosaurus

Down into the Halls of the Damned

A Terraclips Review

Hello fellow wargamers and welcome to my first product review.   Dungeonrise: Dungeon essentials, a Terraclips product from World Works Games.   Before I coninue I have a really bad cold, so I'm going to apologise now if my sentence structure seems a bit off.

I bought Dungeonrise to act as the mainstay for my Warhammer Quest dungeon.  I did think about creating my own home built dungeon, but that would be far too time consuming.  For the lazy gamer like me this seemed to be the perfect product.  Now it was quite expensive for what is essentially a lot of cardboard and a wad of plastic clips, yet quite a lot cheaper than what the ink for my printer would have cost if I downloaded a bunch of papercraft stuff.
First impressions of Dungeonrise were "Wow, this box is quite small, I hope this is worth it."  Boy was it worth it.  The box is slightly larger than A4 and a couple of centimetres deep, and it is crammed full of card sprues.  Each sprue is jam packed with stuff.  Unfortunately I was a bit over zealous and popped it all out before it occurred to me to take a photo.  This set completely blew my mind.  The sheer volume of stuff you get in this relatively small box in its self is quite astounding but when you take into consideration that the entire set is double sided then you truely have a worth while product.  No two dungeons will ever be alike. 

 The above images are just one example of the duality of each piece.  Hmm is it just me or does the top one blend in with my kitchen worktop?  The set goes together quite well and looks pretty good when its assembled.  The following is just a small example of how many rooms you can make from one packet of clips (which unfortunately are sold separately).  I've also got loads of floor and wall sections left because I ran out of clips (not to self get more clips)

I would have put a bigger dungeon down (trust me that's barely half of the rooms I slapped together) but I didn't have the space.  But the dungeon is not the only thing you get in the box.  Dungeonrise is full of props.  Tables, chairs, book cases, a fire place, numerous stair cases, and a lectern.  Also included are two sets of spikes, to set at the bottom of a pit, which I think is a nice little feature.

So how does the product hold up?  The card is quite strong and looks like it will be hard wearing, maybe not quite as good as the space hulk floor tiles, but looks like it will have a long life span.  There is a downside to the card though and unfortunately its with the props.  Many of the fittings for the pieces of furniture are very loose (just look at the book cases) and as result flap about just fall apart if you try and move them.  This could be easily fixed with a dab of glue, but with the tables and the book cases, which are both reversible, it'd feel like a waste.  I'm also a bit worried the the smaller stair cases my wobble from side to side once i start putting miniatures on them.  But I might just glue these as the bottom of each step is more or less the same as the top.  

All in all I have to say I'm impressed with Dungeonrise and I see it getting a lot of use in games of Warhammer Quest.  I might invest in another box of clips and another one of the Dungeonrise sets.  The Vaults of Ruin set in particular has caught my eye.  Well I have my dungeon, now I'd better get around to populating it.

Until next time and happy wargaming
Necrothrall