Review & Unboxing: Warzone 2nd Edition Starter box

Last week I got my much anticipated starter box of Warzone 2nd Ed from Prince August, and quite cheap as well, especially when choosing the Swedish version (or Spanish). €33.80 for those versions or €39.95
for the English one is a steal really. Not only if you are interested in the game and the IP but if you just want a lot of really nice models for a cheap price, to use as Imperial Guard for example. When the box arrived it was a little mangled on one side but otherwise the it was in good condition and when we open it up there's a lot of stuff.

History
First a short history lesson. If you are a regular reader of this blog you should know this already but if not, Warzone is a tabletop miniature wargame just like Wh40k and the like. It was produced by the Swedish company Target Games who later also made a fantasy based miniature game called Chronopia. Warzone was actually the main competitor to GW's Wh40k back in the day and still has a big following all over the world. Target games later got some major economical problems and the rights to the Warzone brand were acquired by Paradox Entertainment in December 1999 in the wake of a complicated restructuring of Target Games and its child companies. After this Warzone pretty much died, the license went to other companies (Excelsior and later Fantasy Flight games) but without any real success.

That is about to change hopefully with the Prodos version called Warzone: Resurrection and their successful Kickstarter which I'm a proud contributor too as well.

Contents

But let's rewind again. This box is the starter box for the second edition of the game, and now we will look on what we get in the box.

You get three books in the box, on called Chronicles of War (fluff, 48 pages), The Rules of War (the rules, 64 pages) and one called The Forces of War (94 pages) presenting pictures and rules/stats for each army in the game. All of them are full colour except the rulebook and I don't really think it needs to. The quality of the books is high, sure you see that the layout is from the nineties but that isn't necessarily a bad thing for a nostalgia junkie like me.

Some of the artwork is just amazing the main reason I got into this IP in the first place. The pictures is good and the miniatures are nicely painted, although some of the actual models really shows their ages and the quality is really up and down. That doesn't matter much for us though as the models we get in this box is some of the better ones sculpted for the system. I won't delve deeper into to the actual rules for this edition as I haven't played it my self.

There's the history of all the Mutant Chronicles in the Chronicles of War book, including for each of the factions. There's not as much fluff as in the old RPG books however but you get the most important parts. Some fluff was changed in this edition though, something many disliked back then. It will be interesting too see what route WZR will go with, I think back to 1st ed.

Anyhow all the books looks nice and is fun to read trough. We also get some more stuff in the box so you can start up a game as soon as you have put together your miniatures, this includes many different cardboard templates, counters and markers as well as the really important bit. The two D20 dices.

You get a large bag in the box with all the sprues, one sprue per model. Eighty in total.

You get a whopping eighty miniatures in this box, a lot of the has the same pose but remember this box is from 1998. The actually sculpt quality is really great for it's time and I think they have aged really well over the years. Above you can see the different sprues you get, you get four sergeants and four heavy machine gun specialists for each faction and the rest is normal soldiers with two poses for each faction. The miniatures looks really great and is sculpted by Bob Naismith, one of the sculptors who made of the original Space Marines.

Compared to today's miniatures they do lack details, they are there but quite hard to make out as some things like holes in the helmet masks disappears when you paint them. The design is great though and the models has a lot of character  They are easy to assemble even if the weapon arms can be fiddly to get right sometimes. They do have mould lines but they are not difficult to cut away with your modelling knife. I I have one complaint it is that it's hard to remove the model from the sprue without damaging the shoulderpad a little. This isn't a major problem though as you hardly see it when it's painted, an easily fixed with green stuff If needed.

Here are three of the Imperial Army Regulars, just under coated with black and dry brushed grey.  Also changed the bases for 30mm lipped bases, as WZR will use these. 

Bauhaus Ducal Militia, one of the normal soldier, one sergeant and one with an heavy machine gun.

The first painted miniature by me.

Conclusion

If I got this box in 1998 I would have overwhelmed I think, and I still think 15 years after that this box is really great and with great value. You get three really nice books, all the things you need to play the game with templates, rulers, D20:ies and what not. And on top of this 80 great looking miniatures that you can use in this 2 ed game, your WZ:R game or even 40k or any other Sci fi game. If you aren't interested in the IP or the rules (shame on you) or already have them and just want the models Prince August also sells just the bags of miniatures, so that's Bag of 80 Plastic Soldiers for only €24.94. A great deal if you ask me. I choose the box though as I wanted the rest of the stuff as well.

Rating: 4 out of 5

More nostalica, the stuff was even delivered in Target games boxes