Battle of Alabaster Update

Forgot to put up the larger Strain models.

I came across this site by spiraling cadavar that had some WTF news.

The rules have changed quite dramatically already!!!

The troop cards are defunct.

So the troop cards and rules are obsolete only a few weeks after I bought them  at Salute??? This does not please me.

See the link above for details.

What is this, amateur night or something? I bought a product not a development project: at least I thought I had.

OK, I am not going to learn a new game system for a single game that is in a state of flux. Life is too darn short. I will keep the models but will dump the obsolete rules, defunct cards and warped boards.

Out of the Box Review - Sedition Wars: Battle of Alabaster

At Salute I was tempted into the purchase of a game of edition wars which was on offer for fifty of your English Pounds (down from £60).

Inside the box were:
50 highly detailed 28mm miniatures
50 scenic miniature bases
5 double sided full colour expandable game boards
60 page rules and scenario book
Vanguard and Strain stat cards
100+ full colour game counters

Fifty McVey miniatures for £50, how could I go wrong even if I threw the game away? McVey miniatures are of an astonishing standard. It sounded too good to be true. And alas it sort of was.

The miniatures are made out of a sort of plastic-resin and are warped. They do not go together well and need a generous finish of filler - see photos. The resin doesn't stick easily even with superglue and it doesn't cut easily. Add that to the warped fitting lugs and you have a difficult task.

It isn't helped that there are no assembly instructions. These can be found on the web but are not downloadable so I ended up juggling bits, glue and a Nexus 7. Three hands would have helped, four would be better. I got superglue on my Nexus screen. Fortunately it didn't stick permanently. The language was pretty foul by the time this lot were together.

On the plus side they are beautifully sculpted if a little unoriginal - space marines versus aliens.

You do get a lot of bits in the box including sheets of expensive die cut counters.

Battle for Alabaster is essentially a Space Hulk type game played on beautifully printed two-sided boards. But herein lies another issue.

The boards are badly warped and I can't unwarp them. They just slide over each other unless 'taped' down in some way.

The models really are well sculpted and paint up nicely despite the filler. They are well suited to washes having lots of sharp-edged indentations

 The rule book is nicely colourful if a bit poor quality.

Now I have not yet played so I cannot comment on that but I do have a couple of observations upon reading  through the rules.
1. They are not an easy read. It took me a couple of read throughs before I grasped the basics.
2. This is more than a simple space marine alien game. It is more like a horror game. Marines and civilians get infected by nanospores from dead monsters and turn into zombies which morph through various stages into monsters. One criticism is that I was not convinced that the monsters have a convincing morphological theme linking the steps.

This product is another Made in China job and I'm afraid it shows. The component quality is unacceptably poor. On the other hand it is fairly cheap.

I guess you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Sedition Wars: Giant Mutie

I painted up one of the Sedition War Strain models from Studio McVey to test the colour mix. This was a pig of a model to put together, more about that in a later review, but it paints up well.