Cheap GaGa MILANO . GANZTON Airbrush - Is it worth it?

I saw an airbrush on Amazon a couple of weeks ago for £26.99 whilst looking for some other things, and noticed it had a 4.5 star rating...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016PXGZ68/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here's a pic if the link dies (as Amazon often expires these things)

So this is a gravity feed, double action brush with three nozzles and a braided hose....for £27?? It can't be any good, right? Those star ratings must be from people who listed or work there, right? I mean, a braided airbrush hose will set your back £5 by itself from Amazon (in fact, one that looks suspiciously identical is listed for £5.12!), so we're talking about a double-action airbrush for around £20....that seems crazy.

As I was getting some airbrush cleaning things at the same time, I bought one of these on the basis that being £20 out of pocket for an experiment like this isn't a bad prospect. When it arrived, I was pretty surprised and impressed with what came.

That looks pretty identical with the Amazon picture - so far so good...

Opening the box I was surprised of the quality of what was on offer. I mean, the box and packaging is pretty standard cheap plastic fare, but the airbrush, hose etc all looked pretty good.

I don't have a braided hose, so I popped this out first - no issues from what I can see at all, standard 1/8" fittings with a 1/4" adaptor on one end.

Next up is this - a quick release adapter - another nice feature here

Again, no observable issues, all parts seem like they're good quality.

Last in the airline department is a moisture trap - I've a large trap on my line feed from my compressor, but this is a great little addition too. The only thing I don't like about this is the plastic connection - that type of plastic is pretty brittle and I can see it getting snapped off....

Now here's the main deal, the airbrush itself. I do have a Badger gravity feed brush, but the cup is so small I've never used it. This, on the other hand, has a nice big paint cup and (importantly for me, with the way I use my brushes!) a lid. It's nicely weighted, and feels very comfortable in the hand. You'll notice that it's branded GANZTON - which is different from the name I ordered (GaGa Milano), but its the same unit - when neither is a recognised brand name, does it matter? Not to me!

Here's the lid and rear guard taken off. The brush ships with a 0.2mm nozzle, but it also has 0.3 and 0.5 nozzles and needles supplied

I like the fact these are all individually packed and labelled - seems obvious but we've all struggled with unlabelled products sometimes!

Lastly, we have two pieces - one is essential, as it's the nozzle spanner, one is a little dropper that will be used once or twice and then thrown away. It's inclusion is nice but effectively irrelevant for me.

So I got this all hooked up to my existing compressor, and used it to prime a bunch of my Cthulhu Wars Onslaught 2 minis, as you can see in my former post. That's not really proper airbrushing, however, so I also had a go at a recent model kit I've finished - the Sturer Emil (or more accurately, the 12.8 cm Selbstfahrlafette auf VK30.01(H) - doesn't really roll off the tongue though!). For this I used Vallejo Black Primer, and a mixture of Tamiya black, white and Army Painter Cool Grey. I primed in balck, then mised a dark grey that I progressively lightened on the panels of the tank. Here are the results, which I am happy with, and am impressed by how smooth the brush functions, and how easy it's been to clean and keep running so far.

So if you're looking to get into airbrushing or just fancy another brush - this is a fine little piece of kit which costs not much more than the replacement parts you might need to keep your more expensive piece of kit running!

Zombicide!

Well here's a bit of a change of pace...Oscar's a big fan of zombie games like The Last of Us, and I'd heard a few odd things about Zombicide, so after selling some old bits and bobs I had no real use or intent for, I decided to give it a go...next day Amazon delivered a large parcel containing a rather sturdy box...

This feels like a quality product - the box is nicely produced and very solid. Opening it up we are greeted with...

 Taking out the rulebook...

 ...and then the counter sheet...

...reveals two boxes - one contains the "Survivors" (yes, the small box!), the other the zombies.

Taking these out reveals the player stat cards and the playing board tiles. All in all a full box that has been put together well and feels like a quality product. getting everything out and on the table looks quite impressive.

Taking a look at the miniatures themselves, they are really nice - this is Phil, a cop;

Very nicely sculpted, well posed and nicely cast, especially for a board game (though this is not aimed at your average family gaming audience, more the gamer/modeller market, so this is nice to see). The zombies, despite their number, are also nicely done. Here are a couple of the "walkers";

Again, nice poses and detailing. Next up is a "fatty";

And lastly an "Abomination" - you just get one of these bad boys (unfortunately my picture isn't great, sorry!);

The gameplay doesn't take long to get into, and the little starter scenario is useful to get a hang of the rules. Some bits we needed to jump back into the rules for clarity and some questions we couldn't find the answers to so did what we thought made sense (we were right about half the time, looking back!). After 40 minutes or so we were racking up a larger game to get into, and it was a ton of fun - absorbing 3 hours easily without feeling like that at all. Here's our game mid-session;

So verdict? It's a great game - there are very simple rules for the game, but the system is very elegant and surprisingly tactical, and does result in some very cinematic moments - Doug the office worker, for instance, plunging into a group of zombies with a chainsaw to clear the way for the group...survivors firing and making noise in a room to draw zombies one way, then ducking back through the building to escape out the other side....epic stuff!

The game is very clever in the way it escalates too...we were cowering at the beginning clutching pans and the odd pistol, fearful of more than a single zombie...at the end we were discarding katanas and wading into the fray, despatching fatties with machetes and Molotov's! Every survivor gains experience and skills for that experience over the game, and  the numbers and types of zombie that spawn are affected by the highest experience level of the survivors....very neat.

For less than £60 delivered, I can see it's going to deliver a lot of gaming fun, and it feels like money well spent...higher praise for a game it is difficult to give!