The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

A Review Package from MaxMini.eu

So back in February, I was contacted by the MaxMini.eu guys. They asked if I'd be interested in previewing some of their upcoming releases, and since I'd been really happy with the stuff I've bought from them in the past, my response was an enthusiastic yes.

Fast forward to today, and a package arrives in the mail all the way from the moon Poland. Needless to say, I was more than a little excited to tear into this thing and see what's inside, and hopefully the MaxMini guys don't mind if I share the contents with all of you. I'm about to sound like a gigantic shill, I'm well aware of it, but they didn't ask me to write any of this and I do very genuinely love the work these guys do.

First and foremost, I received one of the prototypes of their 'Wunderrocket'. I first saw their previews for this model a couple weeks ago, and I was more than excited about it, since it looks to be a fantastic proxy for a Pulsa Rokkit for Apocalypse.

The main thing that always staggers me about MaxMini stuff is how much cleaner their casting work is compared to other companies. Last year, I ordered a bunch of Ork Nob-sized pirate heads and their Post-Apocalptic Big Guns to use in Flash Git conversions, and I was startled to discover that there was basically no mold lines, flashing, or cleanup required on the stuff I received. The same can be very easily said for the stuff I received from them today - while not completely perfect, their stuff is giant pogo-stick leaps and bounds better than stuff like Armorcast. Even a company like Forgeworld, which survives with ludicrous detail for ludicrous prices, produces and sells a lot of pieces that require considerable effort to repair into the product advertised in my experience.

To that end, all of the photographs of the stuff I received depict product that has not been cleaned up at all - I basically just removed these parts from the box and grabbed my camera.

So, let's return to the Wunderrocket. Przemek, the MaxMini.eu representative that sent me this stuff, advised me that the rocket I've received "has been cast in a sample mold, so the main 'body' of the rocket has been cast slightly differently than the one from the production mold". If you notice any significant differences in details between what I'm photographing here and what MaxMini.eu currently has up, I think it's probably attributable to that - because shipping from Poland takes as long as it does, they sent me one of their preproduction kits to play with.

You can see the parts breakdown here. The parts are keyed to fit together in a very simple manner - it's hard to get it wrong. There's two top covers that plug into the main, cylindrical body of the rocket; one resembles a large antenna rig, which presumably would suggest a remote control for the rocket, and the other is a cockpit-esque hatch that would conceal a pilot. The ramp is cast as one solid piece, which is actually fairly technically impressive from a mold-making standpoint. You can already tell from this picture that the quality of these casts is pretty damn high - there's nothing flashed, broken, mangled, bent, or bubbled. In fact, the kit fits together without any glue:

This is dry-fit together with zero glue, and really looks just great. My Big Mek is in the picture for scale purposes, and to admire the construction. You'll notice that the one thing that appears absent is a turbine to plug into the front of the engine on the tail, but I expect that's absent just because they hadn't had the time to get the molds together for that part yet. It's certainly not a big deal for me, since I can manufacture my own fairly easily, and I've no doubt that it's remedied on the actual kit itself. That said, though, this thing fits together seamlessly, and there's hardly any flaws anywhere - the only thing I've noticed is a very tiny miscast on the second picture above, in the thin 'casing' that goes around the gauges and dials on the side of the rocket, but I imagine that's simply due to how thin the part is and it's not a hard thing to fix. Certainly nothing like having to drop your Forgeworld model in boiling water to straighten it out!

MaxMini's current pricing on the Wunderrocket puts it at around $50 USD, which means for Ork players it's something like the cost of a Battlewagon or Deff Dread. Obviously, cheaper would be lovely... but speaking from experience playing Apocalypse, I would almost always rather spend the $50 on one of these Rockets instead of a Dread. Pulsa Rokkits can be ridiculously useful in a large game.

The Wunderrocket wasn't all I received from the MaxMini guys, however. They also pitched in a "Confession Machine", an interesting terrain item that looks right at home in the 41st millenium.

I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to use this for yet, but I'm thinking it might be a good element to include in a diorama or large display base, since pegging it onto an ork vehicle or the likes seems wasteful. Perhaps I'll loot it and use it as an objective marker?

I also got a handful of small, assorted bits to play with.

Obviously, I'm very excited over the hammers and pirate orc heads. Since I'm working on a 'Saladamneders' army, I need all the Thunder Hammers I can get, and these things look right at home being swung by power or terminator armor. The orc boy heads are also pretty fantastic - I already have a larger set of the Nob ones for when I make flash gitz, and I think I might save these three for the orks that will have to be crewing their very dakka-laden Battlewagon transport. I hope that down the road the MaxMini guys consider making some bodies to go along with these heads; right now, Micro Art Studio produces the closest thing to "Flash Git" bodies wearing long coats with their Orc Body set, but these are only Boy sized, and proppa Flash Gitz need to be almost the scale of Nobz.  You'll also note a couple of other bits there, including one of MaxMini's "M-guns", a trio of "Steam Knight Helmets", "Fallen Legionnaire Helmets", "Feral Heads", and some of their "Skulls" bits. As with the other photos, these are all of bitz that are straight out of the package with zero cleanup - you can see why I love MaxMini's quality control. If those hammers had been from anyone else, the wires on them would have been a disastrous, miscast mess.

So, yes, in summation I have nothing but glowing things to say about MaxMini.eu's work. I'm not ashamed to say it. Obviously, I hope they focus on making more... 'post-apocalptic', or scrap-built wargear so that I can incorporate it into my greenskin army, but for those of you working on weedy forces like the Imperial Guard you really can't go wrong either.

A quick note to Chrome users

It's been brought to my attention that The Warforge's gallery features have not been playing well with Chrome, despite working just fine in Internet Explorer and Firefox (and other browsers). I've looked into this a bit, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to fix the problem myself, and since my browser stat logs show that a bunch of you are using Chrome, I thought I'd address the issue.

The good news is that Google's fixing the problem themselves. The gallery problem has been fixed with the latest BETA version of Chrome. As of 2/8/2010, the latest stable version of Chrome is 4.***. The latest BETA version is 5.0.317.2 Beta. You can download from Google at http://www.google.com/landing/chrome/beta/

Basically, the takeaway from this is that when Google has it's next version release, everything will go back to normal - the issue is with the browser and how it reads the gallery code, not the code itself, so there's little I can do to alleviate it with my current web coding knowledge.

Sorry!

Game on!

So I managed to get out for a game today for the first time in... well, months.

I took some assorted pictures of the game, just for the fun of things. We both took absolutely silly lists - I took a bunch of warbikes with Wazzdakka, stormboyz, a pair of kanz, and a looted wagon, and he took two trukks, a looted wagon, a burna boy squad, a boyz squad, and a nobz squad with a boss.

 

I soundly lost both games, but I think it was more to do with my lack of familiarity with all the fast attack stuff I had on the board. Also, Nobz are impossible to bring down.

Activate cloak-ing!

Here's a bit more on the Librarian, now tentatively named Aduro Terranum after the DakkaDakka.com forum member who suggested it; apparently it's some rough latin for the expression 'To Light The World Aflame', so it seems appropriate.

I found a cloak, courtesy of the... well, very, very, very old Von Carstein model from 4th edition WHFB. I certainly wasn't playing back then, but I picked this up off eBay on a lark, and I'm glad I did - it fits the back of Terminator armor like a glove.

 

A little dremelling in the small of the Terminator's back was needed, right below the vents, to get the cape to sit properly, but it's just the right height and width to go there. It splays out more to one side than the other, but I think the asymmetry adds a bit of interest to his pose. I'm currently picturing the left arm swept out, like he just swung it around from the front (which would work nicely with the cape). On the base, there'll be a ring of fire encircling the front left quarter of the miniature, gaining height as it nears the cloak and his hand. It's hard to explain, but I have a pretty clear image of it in my head, so you may just have to wait.

I'm hoping this miniature firewall on the base will be acceptable to most players as a storm shield, because the pose I'm picturing wouldn't be too hospitable to me strapping a shield on the left arm. We'll see!

Housekeeping

This is just a general notice that I've finished updating Wordpress and all of the related plugins I have running on The Warforge right now. As far as I can tell, everything went smoothly, and everything should be working as intended. If this isn't the case, please let me know so I can address the problem!

Charity Case

My good friend Mike has just informed me that he's currently trying to rid himself of a pair of Warmachine lots that include a fair bit of Mercenaries. Having seen and handled these in person, I can vouch for two things:

1. These models are actually very nicely built and painted.
2. Mike can't take flattering miniature photos to save his life.

As a favor to him, I'd like to direct your attention to these two auctions, which you can find HERE and HERE. The starting bids on these things are really ridiculously generous, since there's a ton of warjacks in each listing.

Give 'em a look!

Not quite a legion yet!

My first order of the Legion of the Damned's come in, and I'm working on cleaning up the metals and removing those godforsaken mold lines and flashing. I thought I'd show you guys the big pile of crap I've been able to amass over the past month:

I did manage to get my hands on a lot of old Legionnaires - the ones from 3rd edition. They're slightly smaller in size than the current edition of marines, but I figure if I lump them together in their own squads nobody'll be the wiser. That, or I can put them in vehicle hatches or the likes, where they'll end up making the vehicles themselves look a bit bigger by comparison!

There's a couple classic heavy weapons in that bin - the shoulder-mounted heavy bolters, lascannons, that sort of thing. All of them are the Legion versions, so they have skeleton iconography all over 'em. I think it'd be a pretty cool look to bring this kind of shouder-mounted retro weaponry into a newer, modern army style.

Savage boyz almost ready for paint

So I've got myself a full mob of 20 shooty gits here.

Just need to add straps to the masks at this point... then I think it's time to paint. I'm going to get some use out of my airbrush by spraying them a bone white or khaki base color, since I figure most of them will be wearing the standard, desert-ish snakebite garb.

Gribblies on E-bay

I had a couple people express interest in all of the nid bitz as a lot, but very few made offers or went anywhere - mostly just people kicking the tires, I suspect.

Accordingly, I've just gone ahead and thrown the entire lot of Tyranid Bitz up on e-bay. Bid starts at $50, and shipping's free. I encourage all of you to bid!

More updates to come later today. Some of the Salamanders may hit auction as well, and I certainly have some projects to update.