I recently acquired a Dark Legion army for the game Warzone at a discount from a distributor we order from, and thought I'd give it a shot.
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| The whole shebang. |
Now, I haven't been the most pleased with Prodos' sculpts. I Kickstarted Warzone years ago and got some Brotherhood figures that I built, painted, and played with. I found the material tough to work with, the casting sub-par, and the detail too much and too small, making painting a chore. I wrote this off as working through some kinks in the Kickstarter process, and happily bought a Capitol starter set, which remains unpainted to this day.
I noticed one thing as soon as these Dark Legion boxes arrived at the shop, and that was new box design. In fact, a lot of them had the Warzone Resurrection 2nd edition logo on them. When I opened the boxes I noticed that the material is markedly different than anything I've seen Prodos offer in the past. Instead of clipping the pieces off of these huge trapezoidal pieces of resin, they were separated and in baggies. The material was tougher, more defined, and grey as opposed to this powder blue.
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| Necromutant Squad |
Overall I'm much more impressed with these figures even though there are some odd casting mistakes such as this:
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| look at that flash under the arm. That's the opposite half of the arm showing through. |
I want to raise another point as well. That of bases. Warzone Resurrection uses round-lipped bases, the same ones Warmachine/Hordes, Dark Age, and many other miniatures games made after 2003 use. I'm not a huge fan of these. My issue with them is one of aesthetics: a base is a way to present a model. It is often done up to bring cohesion to an army, and it's a platform that keeps the model from falling over. A lipped base encroaches on that space. What do I do with the lip, paint it the same color as the material and thus have this strange-looking blobby hill that the model is surrounded by? Do I paint it black like many studio painters do and have this donut-shaped edge encroach on the model? It's constricting, and I've actually gotten tired looking at these bases.
My solution was to go with beveled bases. You'll recognize these as the ones used by Games Workshop, Corvus Belli, and Target Games back in Warzone's 1st and 2nd editions. GW actually has a huge assortment of round and oval bases in their web store, so replacing 40mm, 50mm, and even 80mm bases is a breeze. The one sticking point is 30mm bases. The round-lipped bases are a unique size. Most model manufacturers make a 25mm base 'cause it's an inch. Boom! Easy. Most models' footprints take up an inch of space. Lately GW has even been producing 32mm bases, but there's the problem: it's too big.
If I ever wanted to play in tournaments or against people outside of my Warzone gaming circle (currently there's three of us) it may cock some eyebrows that I'm putting some models on bigger bases. Some might think I'm trying to gain an advantage by doing so. While I don't see myself doing either of these things anytime soon, it'd be nice to give my army some flexibility. The worst that could happen is that my search yields nothing, I go for 32mm bases and the world doesn't end.
Then I stumbled upon Armskeeper. No link is provided because their website is non-existant. A Google search revealed that they make 30mm beveled bases, and that while they're not available through our distributor (they may not even make them anymore), they're readily available through Game Kastle in California. I try and avoid online shopping, but when I do I try and order from brick-and-mortar stores. They sent them to me lickity-split, and for cheap considering I'd be paying for shipping from the US into Canada. I got them in under a week, and they're perfect.
So here's my first squad all assembled. I'm not going to work on too much more right now. I just moved into a new place, and I'm actually waiting to see if I get accepted into an even newer place, so I may be moving again in a month. I'd hate to have any models of my great new army damaged or lost in the move.
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| Lookit those beautiful, simple, bases! |
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