Iron Empire Mecha 2 and Mantic Musings

What's better than an Iron Empire Mecha?

Why two Iron Empire Mechas!  The second of three rolled off the line today after some major construction mishaps.... I managed to drop the thing during assembly and accidentally batted it across the room while trying to catch it.... making a small drop into a long journey.











The beast broke apart as expected but the bad impact angle caused half of the Halo to snap off and those tine little resin support struts were a booger to reconstruct.  Its together now so I'll try not to repeat that particular bit of drama in future!

Number 3 is coming along which will finish up the unit.











Here you see the pair escorting Hilda.










 I'm leaning towards calling these mummy driven mecha "Ushabti" in keeping with my Necrontyr theme.  These are great Tomb Guardians and life support systems animated by the will of Necrontyr nobles who have aged well beyond their normal span of years.  These heroes are trapped within the life-giving shells and have been maintained for centuries in the twilight land between life and death.




 Over the Holiday... and really a bit before that... I got involved in a ton of Mantic Kickstarters.  I've always been attracted to Mantic because of the price point but had been afraid to get much from them because I'd heard horror stories about the tremendous amount of clean up they required.

I bit the bullet and went in for Abyssal Dwarfs and then Regular Dwarfs and then.... Warpath and Deadzone... DoH!
 Anyway after looking over the minis I was very pleasantly surprised!  The minis were great quality, the casting was relatively clean, and certainly no worse than average... the material is solid and dry to the touch.  It took primer very well so I'm not anticipating any problems with paint adhesion..  all in all I gotta say these are ace models and a great value for money as well.








I got in about a dozen games of Kings of War second edition over the holiday and now feel like I've got a grasp of it.  The rules are very fast playing and easy to learn.  I think they are a bit too streamlined for my preference, but not a lot so and I think a few house rules would make them just the right amount of fiddly... for example there are no formation changes in KoW.  It would be pretty easy to add that to the game and bring the complexity level up to my comfort zone.  Also there are only about six spells in the magic system... its a very tight system and that would be harder to mess with in terms of balance.  I approve!  Mind you I'm a 3rd Edition WHFB player at heart so all of my fantasy armies are built with the idea that they'll be used in that game as well.

Finally... Our friend Ed let us know that we'd missed out on a pile of expansions for Firefly the Board Game!  For Christmas we got ourselves that big pile and are busily working our way through them!  Zoom Zoom! 

See it set up on a 6x4 table... lots of board and just enough room for all the card decks.


All is shiny in the verse!