Wrath of Kings: Unboxing the New Goritsi Starter
I backed the Kickstarter for this one after being really impressed with all the Wrath of Kings stuff I saw at the CMoN booth at Gencon 2013. My own rewards are still on their way, but in the meantime I have this starter that was sent to BoLS. Each of the game’s five factions will get one like this. They come with between 24 and 30 miniatures. You’ll always get four leader models and two specialists, but depending on the faction you’ll get either 24 32mm rank and file infantry, or 12 of those and six larger ogre/troll sized ones. All of them carry a $70 MSRP. Given that some of the leaders and specialists are fairly large, this seems like a pretty solid deal.
The box is filled to bursting with all these little baggies. Each mini gets a bag all to itself.
These lovely vampire ladies account for half of the minis in the box. These Zeti Wardancers are one of the two Goritsi Rank 1 infantry choices in the first wave of Wrath releases. The Ravenscar Mercenaries are the other option and are not included in the starter set. There are four each of these three sculpts. Here are some close-ups.
Love the expression on this one.
They all have very similar weapons, so I’ll only do a close-up of one.
To lead the War Dancers are these two Dancing Masters. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to truly accept a Dancing Master that isn’t Syrio Forel, but these two look pretty cool.
To make sure that these two have more to distinguish between them than just the masks, they have these different swords. It’s really more about the elbows than the swords. One will hold hers crossed in front and the other at her sides.
The other unit in this set are these werewolves: the Skorza Skirmishers. These are the Rank 2 infantry option for Goritsi. There are a few distinctions between Rank 1 and 2 infantry. You can only field one of these guys for every two Rank 1 infantry you might have chosen otherwise. That means they should be about twice as good as Rank 1s with more, more wounds, sometimes more attacks, and probably some cool abilities as well. This means they’re also a lot bigger (at least all the Rank 2s we’ve seen so far) and on medium bases. That’s why there are only six of these guys. Unlike the Wardancers, all these guys are at least slightly different – although for some of them it only comes down to the weapons they carry.
Because of the peg system used on these guys, it’s really easy to hold them together even without glue.
Here are some close-ups.
This Skorza Alpha is the leader for the Skorza Skirmishers. The set comes with two of these guys.
Here he is all held together.
Another giant wolf, the Shield Breaker is a Specialist rather than a leader. That means his focus is more on hitting things than well… leading. He can also scare enemy models and make them lose attacks.
I really love this guy. I love his crazy spade and his completely unnecessary smokestack and tubes.
The Scourge Hound is the other specialist in this set.
And of course, here she is assembled.
Finally, here’s a size comparison with one of my old renegade marines on the far right.
You’ll surely have noticed that this set is the same PVC plastic that we’ve been seeing more and more of from so many different companies lately. I was a little hesitant to back this product at first because of this, but the production samples I saw at gencon changed my mind. Having the actual models in hand I don’t regret my decision at all. Some of the problems with PVC are here, but they are minimal. There are some mold lines here and there but I didn’t notice anything too gnarly. The detail is really good too. I did my best to make it show through on all the pictures, but photographing tiny plastic can be tricky, and I don’t know if I did all of these figures justice.
I also think the benefits with PVC really do shine on these. Most people really dislike the stuff (I will freely admit that a really good polystyrene kit always wins) but the advantage it has (in addition to being cheaper to manufacture) is that it can make more three dimensional shapes since it’s bendy plastic and more irregular shapes won’t break coming out of the mold. I don’t think those War Dancers (who happen to be my faves of the set) could have been done with Polystyrene. Not the way they look now anyway. Of course if there’s anything I’ve learned from painting so many PVC figures is that if you take the time to clean them, they paint up as good as anything. And I am looking forward to painting these.
~The Nasier box will follow soon. In the meantime, lets hear everyone sound off about Wrath of Kings!
