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