Part 1 of the unboxing showed what was in this mammoth Kickstarter, now we look at what we get in those boxes. We should start, obviously, with the Core Box set
On opening, this is crammed to the brim with gaming goodness!
First up is the rulebook, which is unsurprisingly very Zombicide in its presentation. It looks good, layout is clean and uncluttered and I'm sure it explains everything well...but that's the scope of a different blog.
You get tokens, though as you'll have seen from part 1, we have the plastic replacements for these in any case.
You get mission cards with map tile layouts
Under all of that are the minis...
But first we have dice and cards.
So let's deal with the elephant in the room first...or at least, the elephant-sized monster! The largest thing in the Core set is Pride, a betentacled monstrosity with claws and suckers galore. Its striking a threatening pose and the sculpt is nice and fluid, it looks like those tentacles would be constantly in motion, writhing and flailing;
Detail on this model is great, and the pre-assembly has been done nicely. It really is crying out for a really good paint job, and will definitely be a central "wow" piece.
Next up are the other monsters for Pride, the sin of Sloth, members of the "Hell Club" (the figures in red/pink) and corrupted nuns, hobos and doctors (the figures in the brownish-grey at the top)
Let's start with the remainder of Pride, since we've already done the avatar. Here's the controller;
It's a really nice figure with a feeling of Johann Kraus from Hellboy II. We then have the Abominations. You get two of each of the three sculpts, which are all great figures in their own right, and they reflect elements of the avatar, which binds them together nicely;
We then move onto Sloth, which has the following Avatar, a sort of slug-human monster hybrid;
The controller for Sloth is next, a quite unobtrusive guy in a raincoat;
The abominations for sloth continue the slug-beast theme, these being massively mouthed, grasping creatures. Again you get two of each of the three sculpts, and these are pretty substantial models:
We then depart from the grey plastic to go to a pinkish-red and the members of the Hell club. These have a heavy SnM vibe, but I think they gel together well and overall the detail and posing is good, even though they're no my favourite genre of baddies.
Creepy orb dude and what might be his wife...get their tailor - he's big on rigid plastic wearables....
Although the female Hell club figures here are not wearing a great deal, it fits with the theme and they're not doing anything stupid, like pouting or trying to be girly. They're just into SnM at Hell club, y'know?
The creepy twins....yeah...
The best figure in the Hell Club set set for me is the biggest brute - you said what? No, I never said you looked like you were wearing a skirt....sir.
And the last set of "baddies" are the corrupted. First we have a set of corrupted religious types;
Next up are the hobos;
I particularly like the guy with the noticeboard! He takes us to the doctors and nurses;
Thus we come to my first issue and disappointment with the set - the nurse, despite being horribly corrupted, is still a bit "TnA in your face" for me. The nurse really doesn't need such large or prominent (and very visible) breasts.
The doctors expressions are a bit too "grinny" for me as well - they just come across a little too comic, but this is a minor grumble.
Finally in terms of figures, we have the characters. There are 7 (one has standard and wolf forms), and are generally of very high quality, with a couple of disappointments which I'll mention individually.
First we have this sword-wielding lass, who is a much better female figure - she's feminine without being overdone or slutty. I think she'd make a great DnD figure too!
OK, the next one is again a bit TnA, but despite this I rather like it, she's not sexualised in a vulnerable way and she looks like she'd kick ass. Detail is great and the painted examples I've seen look amazing.
The next guy has some good elements, and not having his large rifle weapon in a firing position is a bit different, but I just wish the figure was a bit more dynamic - the gun is great and the pose doesn't sell it well, making it look awkward.
Then we get to demon-dude, who I like a lot more - the musculature is great, he looks like a real brute, and having a huge chained hook as a weapon is unusual to say the least! He looks ready for action and I'm sure he'll look great painted. The only minor downer for me is that I wish he didn't have braces - I mean, they were NEVER going to fit him, so why would he bother?
OK, from one of my favourite hero figures to my least favourite - this is what CMON often do with female figures, and I don't get it, really/ So here you have a hyper-sexualised girl with a tiny skirt and scooped blouse, too much exposed flesh, a ditsy pose and expression..but wait! She also has tentacles coming out of her arms, so that's ok, right?
No, no it's not. Oscar hated this figure, so do I and I know it'll be the last one used of all of them. Massive miss for me, and disappointing given the quality of the rest of the set. I could understand it more if this figure was in an add-on box with other similar sculpts, so that I could just ignore them. As it is, however, she's in the core box and I think it's a poor example to set.
OK, from a low to a higher point - other than the rather silly over-sized sickle-sword (not sure what else to call it!) I really like this guy. The braces here are forgivable, they're in tune with the rest of him, but they make the braces on the demon dude look weird, I mean, is this some sort of club? Despite that, what's even cooler about him, is that he's a werewolf, so you get him in two versions....
The werewolf pose is interesting because it's not the standard kind of werewolf we're used to seeing, baying at the moon or raising over-sized paws to strike...he's got that odd sword thing, and he's pointing...this has intelligence, he's not just a beast, and I like that take - it's different.
So I'll end with a real paradox for me, because this figure is both my favourite and greatest disappointment. On the one hand, he's a cool, dual-wielding guy in a trench coat, so casual he just walks around with his weapons at his side....but then you look at those guns and...wtf? His handgun is fine, but what happened to the uzi-styled autopistol? It looks like it was cut from a sheet of blank Styrene! I think it looks pretty bad, and detracts from the detail and look of the model overall. Given the look and detail of the other heroes, I think this is a pretty odd oversight. It's bad enough that I may either replace the gun or cut it off entirely - he'd work with just the handgun after all.
OK, so figures done, we round out the box with cards for everyone and the game map tiles.
Phew! That's a lot of stuff you get in the core box, and we've not even touched the Kickstarter freebies or the Apocalypse expansion set yet...more on those in the next posts...
