Aquan Patrol Fleet Unboxing (Oscar's Christmas present!)

I mentioned during the Relthoza Patrol Fleet unboxing that the Aquan fleet had arrived at the same time, but it was one of Oscar's presents, so the unboxing would need to wait until Christmas. Well that day has come and gone, and now we can proceed with the unveiling of the new Aquan ships!

As always, we start with the box sleeve, which in the Aquan case is a nice watery blue, as you'd expect, contrasting nicely with an orangey-red nebula.

Once again on the rear is the fleet content description and a small amount of Aquan fluff.

Opening the box it seems at first that the Aquan box isn't quite as full as the Relthoza fleet;

But I think this is something of an optical illusion when you get everything out;

You get the TACs, stands, counters, battle log etc as standard (and as described previously), plus the resin that we're really interested in.

First up is the new battleship, the Maelstrom.

This is a huge ship, much larger than it's predecessor the Hydra - the same displacement as a Dindrenzi Conqueror. It looks like a ship specifically designed and built (grown?) for the escalating conflict - unmistakably Aquan, but tougher in every way. It doesn't look as bloated as the early renders showed it, but it is a fearsome looking vessel.

The casting is typically Spartan Games - clean and crisp with no flash. It has good details, and will be nice to see painted up in reality.

Next are the Isonade cruisers, which you get a full squadron of in the patrol fleet - four ships, one of which can be made as a Namazu heavy cruiser. In the renders, the Isonade looked rather small, but in actuality they're almost exactly the same mass as a Storm, just under that of a Chironex.

Again, these are unmistakably Aquan, drawing elements in common with the Chironex and the Medusa in the forward "horn", and embodying the sleek, slippery nature of the new Aquan cruiser stats.

The Namazu upgrade is actually much better handled than I had thought from looking at the renders, the heavy cruiser upgrade being a completely different front section. Although this does make it a smaller ship than the Tsunami, it does fit in with the older ship quite well, whilst obviously being tied in wiht the new sculpts too.

As with the other cruisers I've seen so far, these would be pretty easy to magnetise if you so wished.

Next up on the ship front are the Chimaera class frigates, or Trilobites, as I think of them!

I really like these ships - they're like baby Tsunamis! They're nicely cast, although the pouring stub at the end is a bit large and it's not that clear how to clean it up properly - studying the schematics on the rear of the box sleeve should help here.

The castings are otherwise very crisp and detailed - again it will be good to see them painted up.

The last elements in the patrol fleet are the SRS tokens, again 2 of each, although the large and small token items are very similar in design, and (to me at least) a little disappointing  - especially given the artwork of the v1.5 book that had some interesting little ship designs. Still, a very minor niggle given all the other resin goodness in the box!

So there we have the Aquan Patrol Fleet, a bounty of ocean goodness for all you Sebrutan fans out there, and continuing the high standard being set by Spartan of late. Oscar was certainly VERY happy with his, which is all the praise I needed for the set - merry Christmas!