Fallen Frontiers Kickstarter from Scale Games Unboxing - Ares vs Sayx

Welcome to our unboxing of Fallen Frontiers from Scale Games. I've been waiting on this one for a while as it was a Kickstarter, but it's finally here and it's so pretty! In my pledge I went for a game box containing Ares and Sayx, with additional combat forces for both factions.

A warning - this post is really image heavy. Like, 250 images image heavy.

The back of the box details all of the content that you could have in a basic box - in reality you choose two of the four factions.

After removing the bubble wrap from inside the box, this is what you are met with - a load of bags, sat on top of everything else. 

Everything modelwise is split into bags - units come in bags of 5 then characters and heavy weapons are either in 4s or 2s. You can also see that there are two different colours in there - Ares are grey, Sayx are blue, which makes it easy to play straight out of the box (once you built everything).

FF tape measure, which is fabric as opposed to metal, and some dice.

The cards in the box. Each faction has a deck, then there are couple of smaller bundles. The KS page shows that KS backers should receive silver backed cards, but all these ones are backed with a galaxy effect and the logo. There are also unit specific cards in the unit bags. 

Posters!

Backer certificate - no 2 of 500.

Rulebook, pop out card scenery (quite heavy card, similar in weight and thinkness to the box) and tokens.

I'm now going to work my way through both factions of miniatures. I'll start with Ares then have a look at Sayx, working my way through starter box content to additional stuff with Ares, then additional stuff to starter box stuff with Sayx. I'll be showing off one bag of each unit that I have - I'll not bore you by showing the 4 identical bags of Ares troopers - one bag should be enough for that ;)

Here's what each bag contains - miniatures, individually bagged so you get the right components with the right mini, bases and any relevant unit cards.

First up - Ares starter command units. 

Bitsie, Operator 31

All of the miniatures I received have clear indentations and pins where components should go. Some are square, some are round. As you can see below, they're fairly obvious and should make assembling the minis really easy.

Blaze, Operator 10

Ares Officer

The biggest problem I have with the Ares models shows itself quite visibly here - mold slippage. Pretty much every other area of the casts in the whole box are great. Minimal mold lines and flash, really crips details, easy to use pegs for assembly, then you get to the mold slippage. Quite frankly, it brings back memories of finecast Space Marines, and they're memories I'd rather forget. The heavily armoured Ares troop legs suffer the most, but it does also affect one or two Sayx pieces. 

Heavy Weapon Guy

Ares Troopers

Each Trooper comes as a body, gun and head - All the helmets are the same, as are the guns. What I do like though, is that there are a mix of troopers that are left handed and right handed so they aren't all identical.

Ares Light Infantry - Comparing these guys to the regular troopers is like comparing Imperial Guard Stormtroopers to Space Marines in the difference in bulk.

 

This pose looks a little dodgy with just the body, but looks a lot better when the gun is added.

Ishann "Operator 472" - Posed a little differently to how he is in the artwork on the KS page in that he is holding his rifle in front of him rather than slung on his shoulder.

Brett "Operator 79"

I also picked up a second Bitsie, who is in a slightly different pose to the first one. 

As a bit of an interlude between factions, here are the resin bases and scenic stuff that also came in the box. 

5 Bases - one with each faction symbol and a generic one.

Each base is also has this printed on the bottom of it. 

Now that the mid unboxing interval is over, here are the Sayx miniatures, starting with Bianca Carlsson.

Jason Ramires

Axl Verner

Sayx Troopers

Assault Troopers

Nightstalkers. These guys were one of the best looking units in their artwork, but they changed between then and the renders into clunky looking folk in heavier armour than the lithe assassin types they looked like previously. It's hard to see a complete picture in the images, thanks to the arms taking the shoulders with them so each body has a big triangle cut out of each side where a fair amount of mass should be. That said, the female minis look a lot better than the renders did, though the blokes will probably need assembling for me to see if they look better in the flesh. 

The last bag - Sayx Command stuff. Starting with the Sayx Officer. 

Heavy Weapon Trooper

Tarko Stahlen

And finally, my favourite miniature in the entire Final Frontiers range, big or small - Dianne Tianseen (also got the big version of her and Bianca stashed away somewhere).

If you've made it this far down, congratulations! One thing that wasn't in the box but was included in the pledge was a painting DVD. According to Scale Games, this will apparently be made available to backers digitally instead. 

With everything being resin, it will all need a bath to remove the release agent and with so many pieces all singled out for specific miniatures in individual bags, I'm thinking of just washing them in the bags to keep them from mixing parts. I've also picked up a couple of packs of clear card protectors to through the cards into, though when I'd ever get chance to play this I don't know. 

What I do know is that overall I'm really happy with the quality of the product that I've received and once the digital content gets sent through, I can call this another Kickstarter successfully completed.