Unboxing: Assassinorum

So we open the surprisingly heavy box and we find:

The weight of the box is in these really heavy duty card game boards.

These look really sturdy, and I'd imagine they will stand up to quite a lot of play. Despite the fact that they don't have 'jigsaw' lugs to join the boards together, their weight and size will help prevent the boards slipping hither and thither.

And a solid set of counters.

But the meat of things is, of course, the 23 miniatures. In value for money terms, this works out at just over £3 per miniature, which seems pretty good when compared [what I imagine to be] Games Workshop's pricing, and isn't too bad when considered miniatures more generally. But imagination is deceptive, especially when you are trapped in the past. 5 Chaos Cultists? £6. 10 Chaos Space Marines? £23.50. And so on. And, of course, in the Assassinorum box you don't get to choose which 23 miniatures you get for your cash. So what do you get?

Well, you get three sprues of Chaos Cultists:

A Chaos Space Marine Sprue:

A Chaos Sorcerer Lord/Terminator Lord Sprue:

And, of course, four individual Assassin Sprues (each standing on their own bit of scenery):

These are standard contemporary GW sprues, which means lots of bits and bobs, assembly required. To my mind GW have missed a trick here. If they had produced push-together miniatures, people could buy this game for casual gamers, and even dedicated hobbyists could be playing the same day that they buy the game. As soon as a game needs glue, clippers, &c., you've got a game that simply will not sell to casual gamers, and if it does, it will sit, unassembled and unplayed in a cupboard. I know that in recent years GW have sold push-together Chaos Space Marines, and so it shouldn't have been too difficult to find that compromise between accessibility (getting the game up and running on the day of purchase) and miniature quality (the taste of the plastic crack that keeps 'em coming back). Ah, but I'm not in charge of GW's strategy department - if I was their stores would at least sell FFG Warhammer licensed products.

But then I can (only just, admittedly) remember when all these shelves were Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest, and when White Dwarf were a general roleplaying magazine. But tell that to the kids these days...

We'll have to wait until I get back from my work trip to the States to get these little men put together and on the table.