Maelstrom's Edge Karist Faction Build

After the brief look at Maelstrom's Edge last week, the next step was to put the models together and see if they lived up to their expectations. As I'd chosen the Karist faction I started there, and the obvious model to start off with was the mature Angel. This has a two-piece body, split front and rear, with a separate face piece.

This is followed by the four legs

Followed by the two main claws - these are chosen from two options for each side, even before you start kit bashing.

There's also a small tentacle piece that goes between the two legs on the right side.

The model goes together flawlessly, and you end up with a couple of spare claws, so if you fancy chopping things about for different poses, you shouldn't be worried about messing things up! It's very imposing when complete...and I have four!

Next up are the Karist Tempest Elites...of course I went for the heavy guys with the big guns first! The bodies for these are split front-back, and go together very well.

Next are the legs - these take a little care in placement, but once in place the model is extremely well balanced, to the point where it will stand unaided without a base

After the legs, the head and arms go on. The arms are each in two pieces, which I was initially slightly nervous about. In practice, the shoulder pieces lock in very positively, and the forearms go on nicely. Once placed, I used the gun to ensure they were in the position they should be whilst the cement was still not completely set. This is the great advantage, of course, of having the kits in plastic as the cement gives you a tack bond with some flexibility before complete setting.

The head also goes on without issue, and between all of these pieces (legs, arms and head) they cover any joins in the torso pieces shown in the first pic. The last step in their construction is the addition of that big gun, and you get two options (whose names I do not yet know!). I went for this beast;

 As you can see, he maintains his centre of gravity even with the gun, and looks great. The power armour looks chunky but realistic, with a lot of support in the legs. The gun looks like it's heavy even in power armour, which lends a real sense of these guys being heavy support units - I hope their stats live up to this expectation!

I completed the other Elite with the other weapon, pitched up to fire. This did mean he didn't stand up, the gun pulling the centre of gravity forward a shade too much, but I hardly think that's a cause for complaint! I love the look of these guys, and can't wait to get them airbrushed.

Next up are the shadow walkers. again, I really loved the concept of these guys, so they were a priority for me in putting together. These guys have a similar back/front upper torso split, but then an abdomen piece and separate legs. They are "handed", but represent no problems going together at all. Once again I was impressed that they stand unaided without a base;

Now although you can make two of these guys from each sprue, there's only one head, so I left it off at this stage (I'll come back to that later). As you can see they have different arm options, and even with the default poses you can build some dynamic looking figures.

The next figures I put together were the regular troops. You get three of these to a sprue, and they're simpler again from the shadow walkers, being a simple single piece torso with a separate abdomen. They still have separate legs, and there are both several different arm poses and various different weapons. As the other figures, they stand independently of bases.

The arms are one-piece, with hands moulded onto the weapon separately in the same way as the Elites - this is actually a very painless way of doing things and worked well for my guys. Two shoulder guards (which are Space Marine-esque but look better somehow) later and the head pops on - voila!

You also get four heads for the three troops, meaning you can use a spare head for one of the Shadow Walkers, which is exactly what I did.

The other troop-like units the Karist's have are the Angel Minnows. These tyranid-like flyers come on a sprue with two bodies and multiple sets of wings, so you again get choice of what sorts you'd like to create. The fit on these is pretty exceptional - this one is just dry fit together!

With glue they go together without any fuss in no time. I spent more time deciding which wing options to use....

The final model in the Karist set is the Kaddar Nova, the chief loony. He's both the most complex single model and has the most choices. First of all you have the multi-part torso 

Now this is in four parts - in the image above two of these are just dry-fit, but the fit is near-perfect. Here I've taken them off sequentially - these images were all shot in this order, I've not cheated by photographing as I've glued it together!

This level of precision is really admirable from a Kickstarter, and can't be faulted. Anyway, I then glued it together properly, but just thought it worth showing how tight this design is. Once the torso is complete, I set about creating the three lower body sections, each made up of 6 pieces. Here he is with all the options laid out;

I decided to go for the head with the bits on it, and the pointing arm, to give me this guy;

I then took a picture of all the models;

Not bad for half a force, I thought, but then realised I'd not made two Elites and three troops, so it's not even half way through the box minis yet!

I have to give the guys at SAS a real thumbs up on these minis - the execution of them is pretty flawless. Whether you like individual designs or not, you can't really fault the crispness of casting, the fit and the poses these minis have. Add to that the choice that you're given and options for different poses, weapons etc, and this is a huge hit. If you're interested in the minis, then I have nothing but praise for the way these are executed, and have no hesitation in thoroughly recommending them.

Maelstrom's Edge Unboxing

To go along with this week's podcast, here is the unboxing for the Battle for Zycanthus - the boxed 2-player set for Spiral Arm Studios 28mm sci-fi skirmish game Maelstrom's Edge. This is the first of the Kickstarter games we have funded to deliver, and it's been pretty on-time and delivered all of its commitments. Last week we had a delivery of a large box;

Opening it up gave us what we were expecting, 2 boxes of the 2-player starter set game for Maelstrom's Edge. This has a typically evocative artwork of a battle scene as you might expect from this sort of game on the front.

Lifting the lid, you find a film of bubble wrap and then a very full box

Inside is a short letter thanking us for backing the Kickstarter, which is a nice touch, and then you're into the contents proper. Emptying everything onto the dining room table, you can see exactly what you're getting for your money.

So let's go through the paper stuff first before we get onto the plastic. First of all we have the cards, which are both for the additional bonus game, stat cards and missions;

These are all very nicely printed, matt surface, poker edged and with a good "feel" to them

Next we have the rulebook, which is about A5, or "man bag" sized, printed in full colour

This features illustrations, photography, artwork and sketches in addition to all the text - the only complaint I have is the very small print size, and in this respect I'd prefer a larger book.

Next up are the tokens and templates, spread across three sheets;

The templates are on thick card, the tokens on thinner card. Other than the fact they're well printed in full colour with no registration or bleed issues, there's not much I can say about them until we actually try the game.

Finally in the non-model section we have the dice and bases;

Nothing to say here, apart from the bases are notched, providing facing information which is important in game (I understand from reading construction info!). Dice are standard 10mm D6, and will add to the ranks of those most gamers already have, but their inclusion is welcome nonethelesss.

Now onto plastic - we start with the kickstarter bonus terrain add-ons, which are meant to aid modellers in creating scenery pieces for the game - they're not meant to be stand-alone.

These are all chunky but nicely detailed pieces and could be used for scenery pieces generic enough for any 28mm sci-fi game - from Batman through 40k to Infinity.

So onto the models themselves, and I'll start with the Karists. First up is one of the Angels, the aliens that the Karists use as part of their forces;

 You get one of these in the set, and an additional one was a stretch-goal add-in.  For each body you have different claw options (two for each side), so four possible combinations. Next are the juvenile forms of these, the minnows (which you can sacrifice to feed the Angels as well);

You get four of these but you have three wing options for each pair, so you get the variety needed for this type of unit. This theme of options continues for the basic Karist troops - you get three on a sprue (and two sprues), with four arm pairs, four heads and five weapons. We'll come back to that when I get to the build and post that up.

After the basic troops come the elites in their power armour

You get two of these to a sprue, and two sprues in the set, so four total. Each has two weapon options, and features a host of fine detail. Again I'll come back to these when I build them, but first impressions are very favourable

The next sprues are for the Shadow Walkers, who are the stealthy units. again you get two of these sprues as I've shown;

Now although you only get one head for these guys, you get everything you need for the mini apart form that, so as you've spare heads going from the basic troops, it's possible to make four of these bad boys.

Last up for the Karist Enclave is the Kaddar Nova, a sort of high-priest dude who carries a Cybel energy generator around (which is described a bit like having a portable nuclear generator, and about as wise and good for your health as that too). you can only make one guy, but you have three different lower torso options and a couple of options for each arm and his head.

There's some great detail here, and some very fine casting - look at his single outstretched finger on one arm and the "hockey mask" at the top of the sprue.

So that's it for the Karists', now onto the Epirian Foundation. These guys are a lot more regular;

Even so, great detail and nicely executed weapons and poses. You also get some robot handlers;

These guys have some really nice weapons, and better helmets and some other gubbins! Their main purpose (as far as we know), is to handle the robots, which these guys use a lot of;

You get a fair few of these sprues, each holding two robots which you can build as flyers or walkers (I think!). It would have been nice to have some different poses for the legs on the walker, but then as the whole thing is in plastic this makes for a very easy kitbash project modification.

Last up are the two other robot variants, the scarecrow and the hunter. As I don't know which bits below to which, here they all are!

Now when we've worked out which bits go where (and the Spiral Arm website does have on-line builds of all the models), we'll put them together and post the results here, but on first look and initial impression is good - no missing bits as far as we can tell, no mis-moulds, misalignments, damaged parts etc, which is all "so far, so good". As a set you get an impressive amount of stuff, and everything feels to be of the quality that was expected - no nasty surprises here. In fact, the way Spiral Arm have handled everything to date has led to a very positive Kickstarter experience - lets' hope the build and play lives up to that.