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We unbox like it’s 1999, opening a factory-sealed copy of VOR: The Maelstrom. (Featuring Ral Partha pewter minis.)

Cool! I was a fan of this as it had some cool ideas and sculpts. It's too bad that the creator was ahead of the curve and tried kickstarting a reboot a year or two before it became popular in the industry.

Nice! I have that starter half painted on my project desk, that growler is almost as heavy as the metal dreads.
Yeah, I wish "Skuzzy" would give KS another try, at least for updated rule set and the fuller custom force creation set; though I suppose someone could reverse engineer some of it from the established lists.
I finally collected all the available forcebooks a few years back, and now that 3d printing is a viable thing, have a project in mind to redesign most of the units in a consistent scale. Half the Union units could counts-as tau or drop troop guard.

I thought the minis were out of print but I was doing an image search for the Ares mech suit and Ironwind popped up. Most of them seem to be still available. Most of the infantry haven't aged well though as they have those gawky 80's/90's proportions.

https://ironwindmetals.com/index.php/categories/cat-vor-the-maelstrom

Yep. Most of the zykhee/growler/shard sculpts still hold up nicely, but they're aliens. The ares still look cool.
The humans were all over the place. Even in that starter the Sgt model is closer to 90s 40k scale, but the rest of the infantry are almost a head taller and differently proportioned. There was a sniper woman character that looks like they forgot to sculpt her stomach before casting. I don't have any of the neo-soviet units but from what I gathered online and in the books some were more regularly proportioned, others heroic, the chemsprayer grunts might as well have been mutants, the power armor had big blocky shoulders that did not do the cover artwork justice.
There's a few units and most of the vehicles that never had art let alone models, but the game had sandbox appeal so I suppose converting was encouraged.
Though given the timeline between when they initially launched and FASA closing shop, I imagine tight budgets and deadlines player a role.

It was a real shame that Mike's KS for the re-boot of the game did not work-out.
Would have been great to have seen more sculpts for the range.
Loved the look of the Pharon and Mashers.

 PondaNagura wrote:
The humans were all over the place. Even in that starter the Sgt model is closer to 90s 40k scale, but the rest of the infantry are almost a head taller and differently proportioned. There was a sniper woman character that looks like they forgot to sculpt her stomach before casting.

Is it this one?



If so, it was based on a particular piece of art though I don't recall if it was in the core rulebook or the union faction book (or somewhere else even). It was accurate to the art in that gawky stylized 90s hand sculpted sort of way.

Yeah, that's the one.
The artwork is in the rulebook Union blurb section, which is also very 90s in style, but even there the waist isn't that disproportionate. Though both her and another soldier illustrated have crazy long legs.
That Paul Bonner cover art is probably one of my favorite 90s game titles, aside from setting the atmosphere, it only really uses primary hues in the entire piece, black, white, red/orange, yellow and minimal blue. Which visually connects all the subjects, but also is efficient for printing costs (back in the day).

My favorite was a simple interior B&W art of a trooper signaling an Ares suit to land (or take off?) vertically.

Clint Langley's art for the Pharon special characters is my favourite.

The Growlers (heh heh) are pretty much the prototype for Iron Kingdoms trolls.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Clint Langley's art for the Pharon special characters is my favourite.

The Growlers (heh heh) are pretty much the prototype for Iron Kingdoms trolls.

Yeah not surprising given that Matt Wilson was a concept artist and illustrator for Vor, so yeah there's some heritage there. Was always partial to the shard myself

I am sure that the female sniper was a limited edition figure that CMON did.
Would be great to see more miniatures for the range to help fill-out units and such.
So many cool idea's for this setting.
The shard and other factions would have been great to have had the special characters done as miniatures.Growlers are probably one of the closest to complete ranges.
The pictures of the Neo-Soviets in the force book are really good too.Love the background and terrain in them.Quite a lot of the Armorcast range used in the books.

Picked up a bunch of the old metals for half off at a games convention years ago when I was a broke student. They've seen service as an Enforcer gang for Necromunda mostly, but planning to paint them up for Stargrave and Stars Without Number. Their power armour dudes work well for "non astartes" power armour troops for 40K or other future settings, I quite like them.

 warboss wrote:
I thought the minis were out of print but I was doing an image search for the Ares mech suit and Ironwind popped up. Most of them seem to be still available. Most of the infantry haven't aged well though as they have those gawky 80's/90's proportions.

https://ironwindmetals.com/index.php/categories/cat-vor-the-maelstrom

You say gawky proportions, I had the thought that the Union infantry would make a great Imperial Guard stand in.

I will definitely check this out, I've always appreciated the VOR minis line from the periphery, grabbing a few items on clearance when it was dying off. The Aries suits are killer models, well worth it if you can track one down. I grabbed a few new minis recently from IWM, some of the sculpts are still terrific.

 Prometheum5 wrote:

 warboss wrote:
I thought the minis were out of print but I was doing an image search for the Ares mech suit and Ironwind popped up. Most of them seem to be still available. Most of the infantry haven't aged well though as they have those gawky 80's/90's proportions.

https://ironwindmetals.com/index.php/categories/cat-vor-the-maelstrom

You say gawky proportions, I had the thought that the Union infantry would make a great Imperial Guard stand in.

I will definitely check this out, I've always appreciated the VOR minis line from the periphery, grabbing a few items on clearance when it was dying off. The Aries suits are killer models, well worth it if you can track one down. I grabbed a few new minis recently from IWM, some of the sculpts are still terrific.

FWIW, I agree on the Ares. It's the only model I couldn't part with from my old Union and Growler forces. As for the infantry, I agree they make a good IG stand in and actually used some as such back when I was starting 40k back in 3rd edition. I suspect the wide variety of quality in sculpting is due to different sculptors as mentioned above in the thread earlier. Some like this rocket trooper are quite good and hold up



Whereas others like gorilla hands McGee here (who obviously skips leg day at the Union gym) don't IMO.



They both came out at either exactly or roughly the same time so it wasn't a big gap during which there was a jump in quality.

There are several people on the thread about Vor on the Lead Adventure forum.
It has even made me go digging for my figures and books .

I picked up some Growler's and will be priming them this summer. Fun models, hope to get a few games in.

Which ones? The razorbacks had the coolest models IMO. There was a special character that a local player converted that looked super cool though back in the day (it was some sort of older growler that was respected by all like a sage or something).

The special character might be the last of the Black Talon breed that is protected by the White Tusks.

 warboss wrote:
Which ones? The razorbacks had the coolest models IMO. There was a special character that a local player converted that looked super cool though back in the day (it was some sort of older growler that was respected by all like a sage or something).

Got one Razorback chieftan, several Bluefang onehorn's, a FIREGROWLER momma, and one other large model but I can't recall the name. Some pups as well.

Not sure how strong the local Vor scene is in my area though...so we'll see how much use they actually get.

manic _miner wrote: The special character might be the last of the Black Talon breed that is protected by the White Tusks.

That background sounds about right. Did he have a big wooden staff that he leaned on? I remember the guy had to green stuff that for his conversion but I don't recall if that was artistic license or him trying to match the image in the sourcebook.

weasel_beef wrote:
Got one Razorback chieftan, several Bluefang onehorn's, a FIREGROWLER momma, and one other large model but I can't recall the name. Some pups as well.

Not sure how strong the local Vor scene is in my area though...so we'll see how much use they actually get.

It's obviously been 20+ years but I do recall that you should be able to play different breeds together but there was some sort of benefit to going monobreed though.. possibly with the chieftain's ability? I'd be shocked if there was an existing active scene but you never know. Generally speaking, it's better to just set up a demo where you provide all the figs for both sides (preferably painted for additional eye candy value) on a busy minis game day at your local store. You'll be most likely to get "Hey, I remember Vor!" interest from passersby.

 warboss wrote:

manic _miner wrote: The special character might be the last of the Black Talon breed that is protected by the White Tusks.

That background sounds about right. Did he have a big wooden staff that he leaned on? I remember the guy had to green stuff that for his conversion but I don't recall if that was artistic license or him trying to match the image in the sourcebook.

The character is Blacktalon and he is leaning on a staff in the art work.Would be nice to see pictures of the conversion.

Seems to be a few getting into the game on Lead Adventure forum link to the topic below.

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=135393.0

There is also a post on page five with some downloads from when the old forums for Vor were up that some one has shared.FAQ's along with updates on some rules and a selection of small starter forces for each faction at 500 points.Got me started on the Zykhee one now .

 manic _miner wrote:
The character is Blacktalon and he is leaning on a staff in the art work.Would be nice to see pictures of the conversion.

Ok, so it probably was that character. I still should have most if not all the sourcebooks somewhere in storage so maybe I'll take a look this weekend if the mood suits. I'd love to show a pic of the conversion but it was more than twenty years ago and I can't even be sure if my cell phone had a camera back then, lol.