Rogue Stars Official Miniatures. Scale Comps and Review

North Star Rogue Stars Official Figures

Osprey's Rogue Stars has been out since December and following its fan Facebook page and thread over at the Lead Adventure Forum (LAF) the seems to generate a decent initial interest and modest following. Nothing like Frostgrave, but if I remember correctly it took Frostgrave close to the year to build up its momentum.  I'm liking Rogue Stars, the game myself quite a bit and at this point, now that the official errata , quick reference sheets and rosters are all released, its good time to give it try if you have the interest and have not yet.

L-R  North Star, Reaper, North Star, Reaper, North Star, Mantic

I wasn't going to pick up any of official miniatures produced by North Star ( and I believe all sculpted by Mark Copplestone) mainly because the initial reports on the figures people had in hand were not good, even thou painted production figures looked great, pics of miscast figs with tons of bubbles and flash is not somewhere you want to put your time into with metal figures.

Of course there was also the fact the I am swimming in miniatures..while Sci Fi is probably my least crowded genre I've still got lot I wont be using and alot of that has to do with Scale. which prompted the Scale pics.  Reports of bad casts, no scale pics to be found  with other miniatures I use, and that I am have too many miniatures I wasnt going to use already. Didn't exactly bode well for me buying any.

Above line up with  Reaper's popular Nova Corp, 2nd from Left.

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After playing the game for a few weeks in my free time, The pics from the rule book started growing on me, and since I basically run a store on ebay selling in its majority all the miniatures I never got around to using or from games I was no longer interested in, my 2017 Miniatures "IN" was only at "2" and my "OUT"  through ebay sales is at around 70 . I figure it was OK to pick up some models.
And I am glad I did!.


Crisp casts, some flash (mainly pour spurs,) no massive mold lines , bubbles of mis shapen or deformed casts, The only downsides for me are cast bases which I hate..(and which as you can see I always cutway) and scale isnt perfect for my uses but damn close.

L-R, North Star, Reaper, North Star, Mantic, North Star, Mantic

Admittedly  I am pretty militant about scale , I  use Reaper's chronoscope line and Mantic's Deadzone figures for my Sci Fi projects as I like what they do, all they all tend to run in the over-sized 28mm category. when you are dealing with Aliens you get a lot more wiggle room with scale variations and while Humans are of course every shape and size imaginable when I put a put a bunch of Hasslefree or Hersey figures up against my Reaper stuff , they dont look to me like cool "Tom Cruise" sized humans they just look weird..

So despite my box of Hasslefree, Hersey and AE bounty Sci Fi figs in the eBay shop pile, I am happy to say North Star's Rogue Stars figures wont be joining them anytime soon. as you can see they fit right in with the figures I use, I dont think some of the bigger aliens could be a bit bigger, but of the 8 figures I bought ,I like them all enough to paint them.

Big Guys, L-R   Mantic's Teraton Shock Trooper, North Star's Turtle Alien, which I wish was bigger, North Star's Lion man Alien , again wish it was a little bigger, but not as big as Super Sized Teraton in Power Armor by Mantic

The figures recently went through a repackaging at North Star. there are selling them in pairs as opposed to single figs , probably to move some of the figs that werent selling, but if what I read is correct they'll all be back for sale tomorrow. In conclusion, I didnt have any problem with these miniatures as far as poor quality and the scale works for me, it was also a quick ship from the UK here to Michigan (about  10 days)  So I have to give them a big thumbs up and call them a great addition to any sci fi collection, especially mine. I am sure I'll pick up a few more  once I make the room.

L-R  Mantic Plague Zombie, North Star,  MPZ, North Star, MPZ

                                 L-R  Mantic's KS super enforcer, North Star, Heresy, North Star, North Star, Hasslefree.                                                              The Hasslefree , and Heresy Figures shown here are much larger compared to most of their own lines. 

All North Star Official Rogue Stars Figures

Diehard Miniatures Kickstarter Review.

Last Saturday I received my Kickstarter Pledge from Diehard Miniatures a new company by sculptor Tim Prow, with Sculptors Chaz Elliot and Drew Williams..all guys with long lists of sculpting credits with A list companies like Reaper, Ral Partha, Wargames Foundry and Wizards of the Coast*, (*when they actually made good miniatures during D&D 3rd Ed)  These generic fantasy figures, were marketed as "Oldhammer" which has taken on several meanings over the years but basically if your into Fantasy RPG gaming, its the OSR (old School Rules) of wargaming, Miniatures wise it focuses on the classic age of Citadel Miniatures 1983-1987, but often includes later figures depending on what you are into.

Anyway. I really liked alot of these figures, So I went for the 10 figure pledge, they were pricey at about $8 USD a figure but that's on par with what I pay for premium new metal figures these days. With all the plastic figures out there in the $2-3 range, people like to get all worked up over figures at this price, but coincidentally I am currently painting some really high end plastics right now and they just don't compare to these Pewter figures so I wanted to review them publicly as they came out very, very good.

As for the Kickstarter campaign , it delivered in just over 6 months, which is the new record for any miniatures  related Kickstarter I have been involved in. Overall the campaign was flawless, as far as I can tell (there arent any outraged backers in comments section demanding blood, and that's kind of a new one compared to some of the stuff I have been involved in. ) The resulting figures are just lovely, Now, despite my 10 figure pledge , I did only end up with 6 Figures and 2 KS backer freebies. Because I choose 4, large figures, each of which counted as two choices.

I broke my purchases down into 3 categories, Heroes (2), Undead (2) and Monsters (2)

The figures are:

Human Knight
Hillsman ( half-giant)

 Undead Minotaur
 Undead Knight

Troll
Son of Slomm (chaos beast)














There all for basic fantasy gaming, they scale perfectly with lines like Otherworld, Reaper, and Citadel miniatures..so they fit right in with my core collection, I'll be painting some of  them up soon, some later as I need them. As I mentioned I received them Saturday and had them all modeled up and primed by Sunday evening.

Overall the miniatures where exactly as pictured or described, fantastic casts, very minimal mold lines , there was some additional flash on the larger models but nothing remotely problematic.
The only critique and its really a sculptors prerogative is the pose of the Minotaur was so elongated I had to put him on 60mm base and he's still hanging off, which is ok as he works as a large monster for games on a 60mm, but I kind wish I could have got him on a 40mm

That aside, I am quite happy with these and look forward to painting them, since I photographed a bunch of black primed models here, I've included some of the pictures from the KS so you can the models are exactly as advertised.

Diehard is doing another Kickstarter in October, not sure If I'll jump in or not as I'm on a KS moratorium for a good while, but what I see is on the Facebook page is looking really good.
If you missed the original figures first time around, I believe they will be available this time around
as well, check it out.

As for the final review, as far as Kickstarters go this one is 5 out of 5 Stars.

DungeonQuest

I've recently picked up DungeonQuest by Fantasy Flight Games. A remake of 1985's DungeonQuest as with all things FFG they try to make it bigger and better and generally it succeeds. The game has a great presentation, with a colorful and study board, chits, cards and miniatures. The object of game is navigate a series of individual rooms (tiles) to get to center of board (the dragons treasure room) collect as must loot as possible and get out before the sun goes down. (24+) turns.

Of course the Dungeon is filled with numerous monsters ,traps and obstacles..doing its best effort to kill you all the way along. Standard play is up to 4 players or solo. I've played about a dozen games now, 3, with 3 players and the rest solo. While this is a random beer and pretzels type game, there some strategic thinking going on for sure. The most contested issue with game is the new combat system which is a rock, paper, scissors (RPS) combined with "war" (the generic card game)..While I had few problem with combat, myself I have found a lack of clarity with the use of "power cards" (special cards each character or monster has, that gives them a special attack or ability in combat) to be slightly annoying. Also the RPS mechanic that every character has access to all three types of attacks (Melee, Ranged, and Magic) isn't very thematic in terms identifying with your character, I've found it makes combat too easy and everyone feels the same. While no one has survived in my multiplayer experiences yet..(very close), I have survived the solo game numerous times, thru luck of the draw and and having figured how to play the combat when drawing against a blind deck.

The back of the rulebook also provides numerous alternative ways to play which is always nice, I spent some time over this long weekend figuring out way to create an alternative combat system that makes each character and monster somewhat unique, cutsdown on the RPS randomness and give you a reason to actually try to escape (a little used combat option, I found in my play) I feel it fits the scope of the game nicely and works as an alternative play type. (particularly in solo play) Obviously if you don't play DungeonQuest this is of little interest to you so I am writing is as a separate piece in my "featured articles" sidebar.

In short FFG's new Dungeonquest is great game, while along the lines of Talisman it plays in a quarter of the time, and the learning curve is really like 5 mins..you can just sit down and play. On our last Club meeting 3 of us sat down for an hour or so and had a great time in Dragonfire Dungeon before hitting the 4 x 6's for some 8th edition Warhammer.

If you do play check out my alternative combat system there are still a 1000 ways to die. I'd just tried to make the combat a bit more interesting.