Descent of Angels: 2013

Monday, December 2, 2013

[Pan Oceania] Military Orders - Jotums WIP

My Jotums arriving from HobbyHub (note that wasn't the price I paid!)

Here in Australia, we don't have Black Friday sales - so when HobbyHub had a massive sale on their Infinity range, I just HAD to jump in. I've always liked the look of Jotums, and when I saw him on sale, he just had to be mine!
Being a Military Orders player, Jotums has no place in my lists - however given his heavily armoured look (even for a TAG), I thought proxying him for a Seraph wasn't too far of a stretch.

All the pieces out of the box

After about two hours work, he's assembled and ready for mayhem

After my plastic Malifaux assembly, working with metals again seemed a bit of a chore

But in the end, the awesomeness of the model is definitely worth it!

Sync out.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Bandua Wargames Q-Buildings Pack - Review

I’ve now got the Bandua Wargames Q-Building Set assembled, so this will be a continuation of the unboxing post I put up earlier.
Overall, the buildings were very easy to assemble. After I had watched the assembly video during my unboxing (all of Bandua's assembly videos for the Alpha Series can be found here) all the buildings followed the same assembly format, so I didn't need to refer to any assembly instructions to put the other buildings together.
The pieces all slot together smoothly and the joins between each piece are quite snug, and after a bit of PVA are very secure.

Here is the completed set, with some 28mm miniatures for scale

A close-up of the doors, which fit into their tight in their frames and don't fall out

Here are the buildings stacked on top of each other to make a three story structure

My only gripe is that the L Building, once stacked on the XL Building,
has a door leading to nowhere. In this photo I've taken the doors out to
emphasise the design flaw

The L Building stored inside the XL Building

The S Building stored in the L Building, which is still inside the XL Building

Conclusion

Overall I'm very happy with the product, and I'm very glad I picked up two other sets to fill out my Infinity table with.

The simplistic design elements of the buildings made for quick and easy assembly, and the basic geometric shapes of the buildings will make determining LOS/LOF during play very straight forward.
Apart from 'the door to nowhere' created by stacking the L Building on the XL Building (which I won't be doing for my tables!) the stacking works quite well - I can still stack the S Building on the L Building or the XL Building, giving me a bit more variety in my tabletops
Storage for the pieces is great, and works as I had expected from videos and reviews I had seen online

The major complaint I read online about this set is that the buildings were quite plain, which I do agree with. But given my preference for simple, geometric and functional terrain, I actually see this a positive feature. I like my terrain to have clear-cut corners - Infinity has enough surprises with AD Jump Troops and TO Camo models that the last thing I need to hear is "Oh, actually this Total Reaction Spitfire guy has LOF on that order".
If you don't mind the simple design, then I'd highly recommend this set.

Sync out.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Warsenal Barricades - Unboxing

Earlier in the year, a friend of mine was doing an order from Warsenal, for their awesome Infinity Templates. I took the opportunity to order up five sets of their Barricades to add to my terrain collection.

At USD$3 for the set of four walls, I couldn't resist! I thought they would make a great-looking, cheap option for cover.

Unboxing

The sets come in a snap-seal plastic bag, which seems pretty standard for MDF terrain these days.

Here are the contents of each set. Two long walls, two short walls and six stands.

And here they are assembled, which took the better part of one minute to snap the stands to the walls. The snap fits aren't very snug, so I'll need to glue them together for the pieces to be solid.

And here is a shot for scale against a 28mm miniature for scale.

Conclusion

I really like these pieces of terrain - simple to assemble, cheap and look great on a sci-fi table. Not really much more to say, but here are some thoughts:

At USD$3 for four walls they are very well priced, and a solid option for some table filler terrain
The designs, while basic, will fit in with many other ranges of MDF terrain available
It would be nice if the stands 'snap-fit' snuggly into the wall pieces so that I didn't have to get the glue out, but that comment probably speaks more to my laziness than any fault in the product

I've decided not to follow up this Unboxing Post with a Review, simply because there isn't much more to say - it's simple, functional and great looking sci-fi terrain.

Sync out.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Bandua Wargames Q-Buildings Pack - Unboxing

I recently picked up three sets of the Q-Buildings Pack (for a total of nine buildings) from Bandua Wargames official Designed for Infinity Alpha Series.

What initially attracted me to the product was the way the individual buildings could be stacked on top of each other, giving the option for multi-storied buildings, and the way that the buildings could be stacked into each other for easy storage.

After a few months of being unable to track down the product in Australia, I discovered Slave to Painting, and put an order through for three of the Q Building Sets. So let's get to the unboxing!

Unboxing

The Q-Buildings Pack comes in a sealed plastic bag.

Opening the bag I find two smaller bags (which have the Q-Building S and Q-Building L), the parts for the Q-building XL, and a sheet of paper.

On closer inspection, the paper doesn't have any instructions, just the contents of the set. After a quick online search, I found that Bandua Wargames have provided some great assembly videos on their website. Here's the one I looked at for the Q-Building S
http://www.banduawargames.com/en/designed-for-infinity/4431-q-building-s.html

So I get to work on the Q-Building S, laying out all the pieces to ensure everything is there, and to make it easier to find everything during assembly (this is what I do for IKEA furniture as well).

After about 5 minutes, referring to the online assembly video, I had the pieces dry-fit together. I hadn't used any glue at this stage, just to ensure I got the assembly right and that the pieces fit together as shown on the video.

Here's a photo with a 28mm miniature for scale. It would have been better if I used an Infinity model, but we're currently moving house and my Infinity models are in one of the many unlabelled boxes somewhere.

Here are some close up shots of the detailing on the MDF.

Conclusion

I'll post up a full review of the product after I've got all the whole Q-Buildings set assembled, but for now here are a few thoughts after unboxing and playing around with the product:

Online assembly videos are awesome, and I found them much better than following instructions on a piece of paper
I think the detailing on the MDF is quite good, but I guess this is subjective. I prefer simple looking terrain for Infinity, to make LOF issues easier to resolve and to keep the focus on the beautiful Infinity models
The plastic bag packaging seems a bit flimsy, but I guess as long as the order comes boxed it shouldn't be an issue. I had three sets in a single order, so that was sent together in a box

So that's the unboxing done - so far I'm quite happy with the product but I'll do a full review of the Q-Buildings set once I've got all the buildings glued and assembled. I'm keen to see how they stack on top of each other, and how they go stacking into each other too.

Sync out.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

[Pan Oceania] Military Orders - Palbots

Sync out.

Friday, May 31, 2013

[Pan Oceania] Military Orders - Special Ops Captain Reynolds

Being a huge Firefly fan, I couldn't help but paint this model in the above scheme! It's a huge leap from the studio colours from Corvus Belli, but I wasn't really too fond of the Pan Oceania Special Ops model - so I thought I'd get creative.

Sync out.