The aim of the Kickstarter was to fund production of both the Alliance and Nexus Starter boxes. I went for Alliance, while Necropocalypse has previously painted up a Feral Nexus he received in his Model Box monthly subscription.
The Alliance Starter set consists of 5 detailed, 35mm scale resin miniatures, their stat cards and a quick start rulebook, all sandwiched safely together between some foam. As with Knight Models and their 35mm scale miniatures, the 35mm scale here feels very close to GW's heroic 28mm, so don't be put off by the the seemingly large difference!
The miniatures are digitally sculpted before being 3d printed and cast by Zealot Miniatures. The digital process works really nicely with the Alliance set, keeping all the armour crisp and clean.
Starting off, we have the model that attracted me to the project in the first place - The Gunslinger. He's a 3 piece, no nonsense space cowboy/bounty hunter type badass.
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| The bottom of his jacket |
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| Pistol arm. |
As you can see on the LMG Trooper, there is some flash on the models along with a few mold lines, but for the most part they're in easy to clean places so shouldn't be a problem to remove.
After the LMG Trooper comes the regular female trooper. She comes in three parts, with the head separate to the body (and then the gun arm). Without the head and any other models for context, she's not immediately recognisable as female - no molded boob armour chest plates here! Instead she is wearing the same armour as the others and you then start to notice that she's slightly less chunky than the two male troopers, in both pose and torso width. With the added pixie crop hairstyle, you definitely get the feeling of soldier first, woman second, which fits the feel of the squad.
The final male trooper rounds out the regular grunts, another clean sculpt.
The final member of the party is the Outrider Scout, a masked and cloaked individual armed with a sniper rifle and tactical rock. There is no gender listed on the Kickstarter page for this individual and with the female trooper being as close as she was to the look of the men and most of the distinguishable features of the scout being shielded from view thanks to both cloak and mask, it's tough call on whether to go male or female. The legs are a little chunkier than on the female trooper, so I'm going to edge it towards male.
The Outrider Scout comes in 4 pieces - legs, torso, head and pistol arm.
Slightly strangely, both the torso and leg sections have negative peg impressions, though the fit isn't affected by this.
Some slight pitting on the cloak. but overall the quality of the casting has been excellent. Thumbs up to Zealot Miniatures!
The Outrider's head - a slightly Adeptus Mechanicus vibe with the combo of hood and mask.
When I backed the Kickstarter, I backed it because I get enjoyment from feeling like I've helped a new company that is finding it's feet to move forward, along with liking the clean look of the Alliance set. I wasn't quite sure what I'd end up doing with them as I'm unlikely to play the game itself (I haven't had a game of anything since June!) so they were probably just going to be a painting project.
However, since the campaign concluded Games Workshop released their Imperial Agents Codex and with it my imagination started running away with me at the thought of a combined Imperial Army. In the Imperial Agents book, if you take an Inquisition warband formation, you have to have at least three acolytes to an Inquisitor. Not owning any GW acolyte miniatures to go with my couple of Inquisitors, I now have some that fit the bill perfectly!
Icarus Miniatures are currently still in the fulfillment stage of the the project and delivered my pledge in the expected delivery month (a highly unusual event, even more so as last week's KS arrival was also on time!), but if you fancy picking up some of these guys at retail, you can find the Icarus store on their website, or go like their Facebook Page to keep up to date with their goings on.
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