Sunday 26 May 2013

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.





4 comments:

  1. choice=chance?

    Rules 2.0 was just recently released via pdf to the kickstart backers. It doesn't solve all the problems in my opinion.

    The pieces become flexible in hot water, which appears to be the only way to assemble some. Boil water, hold the pieces in, fit them together, put in cold water to set their position.

    Those mold lines! I have not broken the code on how to remove them. 2@#T@@#@^$%#@(I$

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  2. Dear Mike
    I didn't mention the mold lines in case it looked like I was over critical but I gave up trying to remove them and painted them out. The resin is horrible, like trying to work with polyethylene.

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  3. mold lines is what killed my enthousiasm for that game. that was the first boardgame that advertised the models as a selling point and they were unassembled and unfinished. a very bad first impression knowing it came from Studio McVey.

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    Replies
    1. I think that is what threw me. Studio McVey equals quality and these aren't. On the other hand I suppose if one says I get 50 models at £1 each then thay are value for money even when one dumps the game.

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