Review: Dark Age Outcasts Starter Box

This is the first of two starter set reviews that I'm going to be doing for Dark Age. The outcasts are in fact the newest faction in Dark Age, well... until the Core were released that is. So they should in theory be the most accomplished of the miniature ranges on offer in Dark Age. Also they're the faction that I chose to go with, mainly on the back of the Mongo miniature, which sadly isn't part of the starter set. As with the Dark Age Apocalypse Rulebook and the Dark Age Forcelist Book, this Outcast starter set was sent to me as a review copy. So make of that what you will.

Product description

Well inside the box you will get 8 miniatures in all, 3 Scuts, 3 Wasteland Warriors, 1 Bully and 1 Brute. These will range from single one off sculpts, to some multi-part miniatures with some quite small details. The miniatures are made from a white metal and all in all there are some 27 components, ranging from huge hulking bodies to teeny tiny knee pads. Some of the pieces are really small so be careful when extracting them from their various packets as it's quite easy to drop them or have them go shooting off, forcing you to spend nearly an hour on your hands and knees searching for a tiny knee pad, that when you find it you aren't even sure where it's meant to go... not that this happened to me of course. Ahem. Any way, you also get seven 32mm round lip bases and one 40mm round lip base, as well as 4 character / unit cards, helpfully for the units in the starter box.
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Review: Zombicide

There are many regrets one can have in life. Not having the guts to punch a school bully in the nose, I did by the way, then his four friends jumped me and I got a bit of a kicking! Not talking to that smoking hot girl at the bar, because well, you know... look at me and then look at her!!! Plus not being able to get in on the Zombicide Kickstarter action, damn it! That's probably the worst one for a geek like me. I watched the first of Cool Mini or Not's Kickstarters religiously from the off. I probably checked back more often than those of you who had actually pledged. Unfortunately I was completely and utterly broke at the time of that campaign, and had been hit by so many unexpected one off bills that my meager funds were depleted even further. Life can sometimes be a really, really cruel experience you know, because literally two hours after the Kickstarter had finished somebody purchased a whole heap of painted mini's off of me and I was more than flush enough to have funded the Kickstarter... oh cruel fate why do you mock me so? So I guess I missed out on all the free stuff and special miniatures, but hey, at least I get to play the game now. Right? Any way here's the games video from the Kickstarter campaign.

Product Description

The Game comes with 71 plastic miniature, there are six handily colour coded Survivors, which leaves you with 65 zombies of varying types. These are 40 Walkers (normal zombies), 16 Runners (48 hours later zombies), 8 Fatties (erm... fat zombies) and 1 solitary Abomination (think the Tyrant out of the Resident Evil games). You also get 9 large double-sided map tiles, if you're familiar with Super Dungeon Explore you'll know what to expect. You also get 110 mini-gaming cards, the same sort of small card you get with Fantasy Flight Games stuff, there are 42 Zombie Cards, 62 Equipment cards and 6 Wounded cards. There are 6 Survivor identity cards, to help keep track of your survivors progress and 6 red D6. You also get a plethora of the usual chits and gaming tokens. There is quite a bit of 'stuff' in the box.

You get a hell of a lot.

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Dark Age Story Competition Prizes Turn Up

Yay!!! Competition Swag.

Well it's exactly like the headline suggests. I've got those prizes I told you guys about in my Dark Age Story Competition Article... except I have more than I originally thought I would:

• Dark Age: Devastation (expansion rulebook)
• 1x CORE Pathfinders
• 2x CORE Rends
• 1x blister of CORE Menials
• 1x Skarrd Nightmare Juggernaught
• 1x Skarrd Abomination

Yep you read that right a Skarrd Abomination has been added to the pile of swag that I've got to give away for the story competition. So hopefully that will give you guys further incentive to get your entries in to me here, so far they've been a bit slow, but I'm hoping that's because you're all taking your time to perfect your stories! I hope.
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Review: Dark Age Apocalypse Forcelists Book

This review should have gone live yesterday, but I was trying to cheer a friend up who suffered a bereavement, so apologies for that. On Tuesday of this week I reviewed the Dark Age Apocalypse rulebook, well today it's the turn of the Dark Age Apocalypse Forcelists book. It's a far bigger beast than the core rules, and is far more filled with that lovely fluff that many of us so enjoy. As with yesterdays review, this book was a review copy sent to me free of charge, I'm making this clear just for the sake of full disclosure, so you can judge my review with all pertinent information at hand.

The cover art in all its gory glory!

Product Description

As with yesterdays review of the Dark Age Apocalypse Rulebook, the Forcelists book is a full-colour hardback rulebook, that comes in at a whopping 356 pages long. That's a pretty hefty tome if you ask me, and it is a very heavy book that you really won't want to be carrying around with you to clubs and tournaments. The pages are yet again satin finish... mmmm... satin... I'm still a fan of satin finished pages. The pages are this time crammed with fluff and some utterly fantastic artwork, plus there is a veritable bucket load full of unit profiles and rules. Everything currently available in the Dark Age universe in fact. If you like your games to have a strong and detailed background, history and setting then this book certainly ticks that box. Obviously it also provides the Forcelists for the games five main factions, the Forsaken, Skarrd, Brood, Outcasts and Dragyri.
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Review: Dark Age Apocalypse Rulebook

Dark Age has a pretty visceral look about it, which isn't surprising considering the game was inspired by the Artwork of Brom. Speaking of Brom there is currently a highly successful Kickstarter campaign running for the production of a book of his works. The game tries to take his macabre and twisted creations as inspiration and then turn them into a brutal experience on the tabletop. As always I'll fess up right at the start, this product was sent to me free of charge to review after I did some research for an article introducing the game on this Blog. I wasn't sure I was going to like the game, but hey I thought I'd give it a blast as so many of my readers had asked me to take a look at it for them. Truth is I was reluctant to spend my money on it at first, so getting some review stuff really helped. I mean I have a lot of games to play right now and adding another didn't seem like a wise idea at first. Now? Well read on to see what I think of the game now.

Product Description

The Dark Age Apocalypse Rulebook is a 96 page full-colour hardback rulebook. Although there is a brief amount of fluff at the start of the book it is unashamedly full to the brim with crunch, or rules as 'normals' refer to them. So in effect it is 90 pages crammed with ways to play games of Dark Age, right from the basics as you'd expect, up to a full and extensive campaign system. The pages are a satin finish, and long-term readers of this Blog will know just how happy that simple pleasure makes me... yeah I'm a bit obsessed with my satin finished pages. I never claimed to be 'sane'.
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Relic Knights update and Crusader

Right I know a few months back I said I wouldn't be doing the whole Kickstarter update thingy... and I still maintain I'm not! But, I feel as a games pimp and undeniable bad influence on all of your bank balances it is my honour bound duty to inform you all that you currently only have 40 hours or so to get in on the Relic Knights Kickstarter. That my friends is not an awful lot of time to grab yourselves some sugar coated anime fun. If it helps convince you further, I myself have pledged at Saviour level to get two starter factions myself. I've even decided which factions I'm picking, I'm going with Cerci Speed Circuit and Black Diamond. Here, have a look at the bargainlicious deal that is the Saviour level deal:
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Relic Knights Kickstarter!!!

OK, OK I know I said I wasn't going to cover anymore crowd funding projects on this Blog, but it's closing days of this pretty darn successful Relic Knights Kickstarter, and I just wanted to remind people of its existence. I'm sure the vast majority of you already knew about it already, and I'm sure those of you who want to have already pledged, but it can't hurt bringing it up again can it? I was actually just starting to pull together the strands of a 'Game That Intrigues Me article' when the Kickstarter actually went live and I thought "huh, what a coincidence". I'll still be posting that article eventually, just when I have a bit more info and time to do it now as there is more and more information flooding out about the game now. For now how about watching the promo video for Relic Knights:

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Sedition Wars Kickstarter update

Before I leap in and tell you all how insanely successful Sedition Wars has been with its Kickstarter campaign I'm going to fill you all in with a bit of news about various other projects first:

• The Tentacle Bento not Kickstarter manage to raise $48,500's, which given the furor surrounding the project and it getting unceremoniously dumped by Kickstarter is actually really quite impressive. So Soda Pop Miniatures should be proud.
• The Gruntz Barracks Army Builder Indiegogo campaign finally finished on $3,981's. This wasn't as good a result as I thought it would have been when I first backed it. I've already covered many of the reason why, but perhaps the biggest reason was that the community already knew about this. Yeah that's right, it's a free to use Gruntz Army Builder... nerd rage building!
• Mantic Games put on a real growth spurt towards the end of their Kings of War Kickstarter to reach $354,997's. I think that goes to show there's a bit of love out there for Mantic Games.
• With two days left Avatars of War have finally managed to breach their $20,000's target to reach $26,085's with their Dwarf Army Indiegogo campaign. So there's still time to get in there and bag yourself some plastic Dwarf swag. I'm really pleased they managed to get this funded.
• Infamy Miniatures Indiegogo Project has already been funded with 8 days still to go, but then again they did set themselves a very modest target of only $750's. They do though stand now at $3,140's, If you haven't checked their campaign you really ought to, especially if you have a soft spot for steampunk.
• The final campaign I want to tell you about isn't a miniatures wargame, it's a computer game of a miniatures wargame, Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire Indiegogo Campaign. This is the sort of thing Crowd Funding was made for, a project that wouldn't normally get off the ground with conventional funding... and it's struggling to get off the ground with crowd funding too it seems. In 14 days it has only managed to raise �4,755's of it's $35,000 target. There's still plenty of time for it to reach its goal with 26 days left to go, but if it is to succeed it'll need a serious growth spurt soon!

So that should wrap up all of the crowd funding projects I've mentioned in the past. Only a very few of them are still going and I'm really pleased to see that most of them are going to be funded. Why? Well it's not just because it means more cool product will be released, it's mainly because you are funding peoples dreams. These projects are somebodies hopes and aspirations for their own life and what they want to do with it, and by funding them you really are helping somebody somewhere live their dream. That's the best reason to back a crowd funding project I can think of. Now onto the big dawg...
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Now that's what I call timing!

  
 

Hey look at that! I go and do an interview with Rob Lane with regards to his fabulous BaneLegions range and get a lot of American's excited... AND... then Cool Mini or Not announce they'll be stocking the BaneLegions range. Coincidence? Well actually yes it it is I had absolutely no idea this announcement was forthcoming I promise you. However, for those of you across the pond who contacted me to ask if there was a retailer in the US... well here you go! Cool Mini or Not will be stocking the entire range for your purchasing pleasure. Enjoy. Peace out!