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!

Battle Station Construction Part 2 - Relthoza

So I've not been idle the past few days in an FSA way (as well as finishing Christmas shopping, watching crap TV with the kids and eating too much of the wrong sort of stuff), principally in getting the most complex of the battle stations put together - the Relthoza Weaver class. Now because this is a three-layered structure, it'd be pretty difficult to paint some parts of it when complete, so the first job was to get the parts painted to a level where it being in one piece wouldn't hinder completion.

Parts ready, I looked at the best way to put the station together. Now I'd had much head scratching initially on how this beast is made, but after figuring it out it's not actually as difficult as you might think. Essentially the acrylic struts need to go onto the structure first;

However, doing this would have made the other side difficult, so the easier way was to attach the struts to the side pods, like so;

The whole assembly could then be added to the main body thus;

Which just left a repeat for the other side;

Following by adding this to the main body.

All of this was done simply with superglue. When dry, the bottom piece then goes on, locking the other elements solidly together.

The station is then complete, ready to defend Relthoza installations across their territory.

Of course, I need to complete the painting, but she's 85% of the way there, and still suitable for gaming purposes if I don't quite find the time to finish off those last touches before my next game!

Battle for Valhalla has arrived!

An enormous parcel arrived today from the Troll Trader. Under the 4" layer of bubble wrap (you could have dropped this off a building and it'd have been ok!) was the rather large and heavy (1.8kg) Battle for Valhalla boxed starter set. This is considerable larger than a standard Patrol Fleet (probably about twice the size, which would make sense as the set contains effectively two Patrol Fleets), but comes in the same double-walled cardboard box and sleeve format we've seen become the SG standard over the past 6 months or so.

On the cover is a decent photo of the fleets and station, and on the reverse of the box is the usual contents of the box;

A quick opening of the box shows the box is absolutely packed to the brim;

Unpacking all of this from the box you really appreciate how much is in there!

So in addition to the ships, the station (complete with acrylic parts) and rulebook, we also have two sheets of asteroids, two token  sheets, two battle logs, resin SRS tokens, two bags of dice - one standard and one tiny (for the SRS tokens) - and finally the Battle for Valhalla scenario book. It covered a good section of our kitchen table!

OK, taking a closer look at the resin, let''s start with the station. This is a single-piece resin casting, together with the acrylic parts. The single-piece resin is a nice casting, and a fair size;

There are some differences between the top and bottom, but you'd be forgiven if you missed them, they're pretty subtle.

Turning our attention to the other Terran ships, the one that interests me most is the new Tyrant-class. I like the homage to Hawker and their designs, together with the more traditional Terran elements - it's a nice blend of fluff and design. It gives the feel of a solid, chunky ship, which (with its multiple shields) it is!

It looks good from top or bottom, and fits together very well (the three main elements above are only placed together) - the insert and vertical "fins" on the hull are included in the accessory pack bag, together with the flight inserts for the other ships.

Next up on the Terran side are the regular cruisers. These are also really nice castings, and come in two distinct pieces. There are no heavy cruiser upgrades in the Battle for Valhalla set, so these are all standards. As others have mentioned, each ship has two inserts which are just the right size for 3mm magnets, allowing you to magnetise them, which is a great feature.

Finally on the Terran side are the all-new resin frigates. These are unmistakably Terran, but I like them much more than the old Pilgrim.

For the Dindrenzi, the big-hitter of the set is the new Praetorian, a monstrous vessel cast in three main pieces, a main central hull and two drive sections. In addition are the gunracks, bridge, and engine inserts.

Onto the cruisers, these are again three-part castings following the same vein as the battleship.

The Dindrenzi ships finish up with the three frigates, which are very nice single-piece castings

The other resin pieces are the SRS tokens, and there a whole bunch of these - a lot more Terran than Dindrenzi, which I presume is down to the wing capacity of the station.

Relthoza Patrol Fleet Unboxing

So hot on the heels of my Battle Stations, my Relthoza Patrol Fleet (and Oscar's Xmas present Aquan Patrol Fleet) arrived in all their glory, plus my "Member of the Month" plaque for October - which was a nice bonus! Anyway, the Aquan fleet unboxing will need to wait until after Christmas, but didn't want to wait to show my Relthoza!

As with the other unboxings of SG products I've done, the Patrol Fleet comes in the now-standard cardboard box and sleeve. The outer sleeve has a picture of the Patrol Fleet all painted up - and in this case it looks simply beautiful! Possibly the best sleeve I've seen to date in FSA;

They look suitable brooding and menacing I think! On the reverse is a breakdown of what you'll be getting, together with a short bit of fluff-blurb about the space spiders;

OK, so away with the sleeve, and into the box...opening the sturdy cardboard reveals an interior chock-full of resin goodness;

Unpacking this lot out and laying it on the table, you get a sense for what you're buying into - the ships themselves in the bubble-bags, add-ons (including SRS tokens) and flight stands in two separate resealable bags, three sheets of card counters and a sealed pack of TACs. Oh, and a little bag containing four micro-dice for the SRS tokens. Nice!

Now onto the ships. Getting the resin out of the bags we can see exactly what we have, and it's quite a nice haul.

Taking the ships one by one, first off we have the Nexus Battleship, with its Brood predecessor. As you can see the Nexus is slightly shorter, but considerably higher and also broader. In fact the Nexus is almost twice the ship the Brood is, weighing in at 108g vs the Brood's 60g. The level of detail is excellent, and consistent themes across the two sculpts keep the Nexus tied into the old models, whilst looking very much more up-to-date. 

Next we have the cruisers, which I found surprisingly larger than I expected. Here is one of the Assassin class vessels with a Scarab, which normally dwarfs the Swarm. Some of this is a bit of an optical trick, however, as although the Assassin is 18g vs the Swarm's 15g  (20% higher), the Huntsman is 21g vs the 30g of the Scarab.

This brings me to my first real bugbear of the Relthoza Patrol fleet, which is the Huntsman upgrade parts compared to the Assassin parts. For me they're a bit of a let-down and don't really provide the imposing presence that the Scarab does on the table. As it is, this matters not one bit to me, as I have a full squadron of Scarabs in any case, so my cruisers will almost certainly spend their lives as Assassins. Still, it would have been nice to see something a bit more adventurous for these parts than "a little bit bigger" racks of guns - they don' really reflect the change in stats between an Assassin and a Huntsman.

Finally, we have the Widow Frigates. These are once again surprisingly large, 4.5g a piece compared to the 2g of the Drone (resin equivalent) - well over twice the size. It's a nice design, and shows how much SG have developed their design and casting processes in the past few years. I like them, and they'll certainly be finding their way into my future fleets.

At this point it would also be pertinent to mention the new flight stand inserts. These are present (in two different forms) on all the models, though I'm not sure I really "get" them....they're deep enough to fit on a flight stand without drilling out (which I think is the point) - to provide consistent and sufficient depth in the models to hold them on the stand without glueing. They seem to work, but I'll need to test further before coming to a conclusion.

Of course when I said finally, I was meaning the final main models, because of course we have the SRS tokens. 

The box sleeve states you receive 1 of each token (small and large) in the fleet, but I actually received two of each, plus four dice. I'm not sure if this was by design or error, but it looked like the former so I'll just presume they changed the quantity after sending the sleeve to the printers. No matter, it was a nice surprise to have more tokens than I expected rather than less!

Now onto the card elements of the set. The TAC cards supplied with the fleet are nicely presented and shrink-wrapped for protection. The cards themselves are very nicely executed, and certainly look better than the bits of printed paper I was using in the Beta Tests and thereafter. It's nice to get the whole set as well, as it makes games playable with them even if you have only one new Patrol fleet (provided you don't pick the same cards - perhaps an initiative test to see who picks the first one is in order in that case).

Under the other elements you have the pre-cut, pop-out token card sheets, which again are very nicely done, though you're definitely going to need more than one fleet to get enough tokens to play - having just two cloak active tokens, for example, in a Relthoza fleet is stretching it! Some have mentioned they find the card a little thin, but I'm fine with how they are - I don't necessarily want really think tokens everywhere.

The final element is the Battle Log, turn template and random direction indicator. These are nice, but I can see how the battle log is going to get dog-eared through a lot of use, and I think these items are prime candidates for either SG or an after-market company to produce an acrylic alternative (as SG did with their turning templates a while back).

Overall, the Patrol Fleet is excellent - it certainly feels like you're getting a lot for your money, and it feels like thought has gone into each item's crafting. With everything the packed into this box, I'm wondering just how the managed to cram everything into the Aquan box now, given they've four cruisers and their heavy upgrades are much more substantial. time will tell!