Unboxing The Edge Kickstarter by Awaken Realms

Back in March 2015 a company called Awaken Realms launched a kickstarter for their proposed game 'The Edge' This is a skirmish level wargame in 35mm scale (so slightly larger than 40k) Not sure why they went for this scale, it limits your options for using the minis for other games or other minis for this game. I didn't really have any interest in the game itself but the concepts and sculpts looked pretty cool so I backed it for the miniatures. All the miniatures are resin, cast in-house by the company.

For a kickstarter the miniatures came out very close to their estimated delivery, just a month or two late. So let's look at the contents! The kickstarter had 3 factions, Chapter (knights, angels, shields, crossbows and stuff), Demons (horns, spikes, big red dudes :D) and Faceless (Kind of remind me of some of the enemies from the Gears of War series but a little more skeletal) I ended up going for the Chapter starter set and added an extra Purge Doctor. I'm going to show the models in this article and compare them to the sculpts/concepts we were shown in the kickstarter.

This all came in a rather nice metal tin with the Awaken Realms logo on the lid, a nice departure from the standard cardboard box!

Opening the lid and removing some bubble wrap gives us the first look at the contents, all individually packed in plastic resealable bags.

First up let's look at the Purge Doctor. This was an add-on mini I went for, it reminds me of the Tallboys from Dishonored (see pic below) and I love that game.

Here is a sprue shot showing the components.

Here is a partially assembled shot (I've left off the side shields because it's too fragile to blu tack together.)

And here is a rear shot, minus the shields and some hosing. The mini is a really nice sculpt. I'd say it looks perhaps a little fragile for a gaming miniature, the rear arms for the shields are quite delicate and I'm not sure how I'm going to pin it at the moment. There is not too much flash on the mini but there are quite a lot of resin plugs that needed removing. The most unfortunate ones were directly on top if his head (this will require a lot of work to smooth out, it would have been better if they had the head as a separate piece with the plug on his neck like most companies do) and plugs on the inside of the shields (can see this on the right hand shield in the first shot, they were pretty awkward to remove) The model itself is almost identical to the sculpt we were shown in the kickstarter.

Up next is the miniature that was given out for free to anyone that backed a starter set. It's a Rha'zack Mercenary. No idea where it fits into the game, it comes with all 3 starter sets so I guess it can be used by anyone. My initial though on seeing the sprue was that it's unusual seeing a hooded cloak separate from the body, it goes together fine though it just surprised me. One arm holds a sort of icon staff and the other holds a reversed sword. I like the bodysuit, gives it a kind of Mass Effect feel. Once again there was slightly awkward resin plug on the hood of the cloak that will require a fair bit of tidying up

Here is a mostly assembled front and rear shot, along with the initial concept art/sculpt. The hood of the cloak is lacking in detail (and also very thick at the front compared to the concept/sculpt) I like the changes they made to the trousers though, changing it to a full bodysuit.

Up next are the snipers. Two mono-pose sculpts carrying futuristic crossbows. I think these have turned out pretty poor compared to the concepts. The details are quite soft and there is a lot of flash on them.

The resin above the miniatures are actually the crossbows, it was hard to tell because of all the plugs and flash on them. I actually found it tricky to tell what was supposed to be excess resin. Here is a shot of what I think is the trimmed bow:

These weren't really massively desirable miniatures for me, they just came with the box. They're definitely the weakest miniatures quality wise.

Up next we have the Holy Knights. Slightly larger than the snipers, the dynamic poses (even though again they can't really be changed) are pretty cool. Sadly they don't seem to have come with the scenic bases we were shown in the KS sculpts so you'd have to make your own bases, this isn't much of a problem for me but still worth noting. Here is the sprue as a whole, showing the 3 different sculpts:

Here is the front and back of one of the bodies, the detail is nice and far less flash than on the snipers.

And here is one of the miniatures put together. I'm not sure if I got the right shield, there's no way to know which shield is made for which mini without trying them all out so some experimentation is needed. I think these 3 are really nice sculpts though.

Next are the Pilgrims. Four different sculpts of guys carrying long chainblade staffs. Looking at the sprue there is some bending on the staffs, unfortunately this is pretty common with resin and can be straightened out with some hot water or careful hairdryer use.

The sculpt quality is ok, not as bad as the snipers but not as good as the knights. Once again we have the unfortunate resin plugs on top of the heads and some large plugs on the feet that need to be carefully removed. The models also have some unfortunate flash (see below for the backpack shot)

Here is one assembled, I'm not sure if I got the right staff for the right body (the bent pole made it tricky to tell)

Finally we come to the big finale. This was the sculpt that really made me back this kickstarter. The Angel of Death. He's big (60mm base and nearly stands as tall as an Eldar Wraithlord) Here is a look at the sprues:

And the body itself, really nice detail on his armour and around his face. Once again there are some awkward plugs to remove (I actually snapped off a bit of his toe trying to remove the huge ones attached to the feet, it can be fixed with putty but it's still annoying)

His weapon is a giant chaintoothed scythe, can also see the hood for his head (again plug on the top grr) and a couple of bits of cloth for his loincloth.

Finally the wings and backpack, a lot of resin plugs to carefully remove. Detail is ok, I think it could have been crisper though.

Here is the assembled body (I've left the wings off because I couldn't get the whole thing assembled with blu tack to hold together!) The loincloths don't fit to the body that well, there will be some putty work required.

And here is the sculpt we were shown in the KS for reference:

That's it for the miniatures, the remaining components are for the game which I'm not interested in but I'll show for completion. First up a deck of cards:

Some wooden blocks

Some rather nice resin crystals (not sure if I'll find a use for these but they're really nicely sculpted)

and a small A5 rule booklet

Final Thoughts:

It's not a bad first effort for a company, there are some quality issues with some of the miniatures and the placement and number of the resin plugs is quite poor and means you need to do a lot more cleanup work than you should. If you compare the quality to companies like Kingdom Death and Twisted then it falls short in my opinion. Fortunately the worst affected miniatures are the ones that appealed to me the least.