I recently received my copy of Studio Mcvey/Cool Mini or Not boardgame - Sedition Wars.
This post deals with the what comes in the main boxed game. As I pledged for the Biohazard set I am still waiting on all the extras which will be fothcoming in March hopefully. The Biohazard extras will also be getting their own post.
Those of you who've been following this game from developement to fruition will probably have already checked out numerous blogs and video reviews of the game and it's unboxing and will already be aware of the sad state
of the packaging the game arrived in. Those of you who are not, well this photo
might be a surprise.
Thankfully nothing was damaged apart from my expectations. Getting everything
out and dusting out the polystyrene produced quiet a nice pile of goods.
The back of the box, which gives a good list of the contents is
sadly not repeated elsewhere. It should making checking the box contents a bit easier than
having to either empty the box out completely or lifting it over your head.
Opening up the box reveals the cardboard tiles at the top of the box. Here's
the two counter sheets. Note the train car at the bottom.
As you can see there are rather a lot of counters, I have shown here one of each available, all punched out very cleanly, without tearing the backing. The one issue I have is that the cutting die hasn't quite lined up spot on on one sheet, leaving some of the printing a little off centre.
Underneath these was the rulebook, 58 A4 pages of rules, a bit of background
and 9 scenarios.
Five double sided map tiles were also included. The boards are just short of 14" a side,
individual, and well very well printed although some of the delination lines are a little dark.
Now onto the rest of the box contents. A set of eight black dice, the special coloured faction dice, green nano tokens, red infection and blue shield tokens, the stat cards for every miniature and the scenic bases.
These are the Infection (Red) and Shield (Blue) markers. They clip onto the 25mm bases thanks to the two sockets on the underside of the bases, and the studs on the markers (which can be seen clearly on the blue ones). They stack as many times as you want, as illustrated in the picture, but are a bit of a pain to get apart. The base at the bottom right has an infection marker placed under it, which is quiet hard to tell from above, but should stand out well enough during game-play.
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| These are the 30 nano tokens, with the strain logo cast on them. |
The small bases are 25mm, the same size as most games providers 25mm bases, with straight sides. There's a selection of detailing. The 50mm bases all share the same design.
Each model has it's own card. These are double sided, playing card size, and
include the stats, wound track, and abilities for each model.
The Vangaurd (Human good guys) get the majority of multipart miniatures. Working left to
right, we have Barker Zosa (with parts for the Azriel Heavy Fusion Lance, or
the under-slung Lucifer Plasma Thrower), Corpsman Morgan Vade, Hurley (the
Drone), Akosha Nama, and Captain Kara Black.
Here they are in more detail. Along with the weapon sprue, which working clockwise from top right goes: Bouncer (for the Grenadier) Azriel Fusion Lance (for the Lancer/Elite Samaritan) Reaver arm and finally the Reaver itself.
Now to the Strain forces. Below are the Phase 1 Necro forms (first 3 lines) Phase 2 Stalker Exoforms (fourth line) and finally Phase 3 Quasimodo (Last line)
Below are two Scyth Witches, two Brimstones, and a Cthonian.
And lastly we have the Grendlr.
As you can see, the Grendlr has the most parts to make it whole. Unfortunately this also means you will need a small ammount of hobby knowledge to complete it. Especially as the two main body parts do not go together properly. You will need to soak one half of the body in hot water and then mould this to the second part. A full tutorial on how to achive this, is posted up on the Studio McVey site.
As you can see from this completed miniature, (picture taken from Studio Mcvey site) its well worth the effort.
My other complaint would be the amount of construction required to make the
game playable. While not an issue for most, anyone without experience has a lot
to tackle before playing the game. While you dont need to remove
everything from the sprue, you've still got to
glue models to bases, and then guns, and then the character models. This is
hindered by the box not coming with full assembly instructions, an annoying
omission, or a parts list, which makes it hard to know what you should have in
each bag/for each model. However Studio McVey blog now has all these details on.
All in all it feels like a very high quality
product, and I'm looking forward to the rest of my wave 2 models and the extra downloadable campaigns/scenarios.
I only had one issue with my set. I was missing the Limited Edition Resin Kara miniature. But apparently lots of other people have also had theirs ommited and it's now coming in the wave 2 stuff.
I'm am impressed with the Vangaurd and Strain models.The detail is very nice and crisp, the character models all have their own identities, and the quality is great, for the most part.
There are two minor complaints. The first is that although most mould lines run fairly sensibly, you occasionally come across one going down the faceplate! They're not quite easily cleaned as GW's models as they are made from the same restic (resin plastic) as Privateer Press stuff, and it has to be said that for the most part the mould lines are fairly unobtrusive.
