Tarakian Patrol Fleet unboxing

So after the right and proper Zenian love I've been showing of late, I thought I'd achieve a small amount of balance by putting up an unboxing of the new Tarakian Patrol Fleet. As ever, this comes with a glossy sleeve with some lovely photography of the SG studio models, with renders and fluff etc on the reverse.

Opening the box, you once again get the models in bubble-wrap bags, parts & tokens in press-seal bags, plus tokens etc. The newer box sets also contain the revised TAC cards with clipped corners and white border.

Getting all the resin out, you get quite a haul;

Now the old Tarakian battleship was quite a brick, and the new one follows that mantra. It is cast as a single-piece hull with drop-ons for the engines and flight pegs (both of which it shares with the cruisers).

Size-wise it is a monolith - here's the hull compared to a standard Chironex cruiser;

As you can see, it completely dwarfs the cruiser! The Tarakian cruisers are two-piece, the main hull and the same drop-on engine sections as mentioned above.

The flight peg piece drops in an insert on the bottom of the cruiser quite nicely - better than the over-large and too-shallow holes the old Sulan had!

A front view - quite how Spartan manage to cast a single piece with this sort of cut-in is beyond me - they're very clever people!

The  cruisers always were short n stumpy, as shown here, but they feel SOLID! There is a great feeling of stability and robustness about the Tarakians (which I suppose fits them well, fleeing from a great, dark, unknown enemy!). Next up in the box are the Frigates, the replacements for the old metal ones;

These are two-piece, the main hull...

...and the engine section.

Very nicely cast and very much in theme with the old models, though on steroids! The frigates are much chunkier than the pewter versions, as is the case for all of the new resin frigate models.

Finally, there are the SRS tokens for the Tarakians;

These look like something out of a 50s sci-fi movie - a flying wing and a Viper! Very nicely done, and I'm sure they'll paint up well (as they have done on the box art).

The Tarakian Patrol fleet is a nice set, which once again makes me marvel at the casting abilities of the SG guys - anyone who's ever tried to make an RTV rubber mould and cast stuff from it will tell you that it's by no means an easy or cheap process. Yet the chaps at SG manage to kick through a great deal of complex, highly detailed resin items with little more than the odd tiny bubble or pour attachment. The Tarakian ships are nicely detailed, and will paint up really well.

So there we have it, a bit of Kurak balance for all those who thought I was purely honing in on the good guys....;-)