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Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User




I get most of my minis from Kickstarter projects, which for whatever reason don't seem to have a lot of assembled PVC sci-fi at a sweet price point per sculpt. Three high-value pickups were Sine Tempore, Chronicle X (resin+HIPS), and Zombicide Invader.

Any other large-scale, high-quality PVC sci-fi sets out there, preferably in a KS style big box production? Looking for good PVC, not the flimsy army men stuff in tubes on Amazon. I'd be fine w/ quality pushfit like Wrath of Kings, but would prefer to avoid sprues, resin, and metal.

CMON's Cyberpunk is out there, but a large # of its minis look like bystander NPCs, and I'd prefer a combat-focused set. Thematically like WH40K or Infinity.
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

I don’t know if Sedition Wars is till available, but for a while you could buy a whole box for less than $20. The minis were PVC, but required some assembly. Really nice Sci Fi designs.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/08/23 16:45:45


   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User




Ahh, forgot to include Sedition Wars. I have a copy, and a few sculpts were indeed quite nice. Great value.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






Have you looked at Diemension Games' Deep Madness game and expansions? It's basically a lovecraftian deep / undersea base mash-up with sci-fi leanings, published in a CMON / Zombicide style. Miniature designs aren't all up to CMON standards, but there are a lot of good ones in there, particularly for mutated monsters. It was published as a KS project; I don't know what it's current availability / ebay pricing is.

If you can stomach assembly, as all the figures are multi-part, you could also keep an eye out for Mantic's Project Pandora, which I think was their first Sci-Fi boardgame. It's their version of Imperial Guard types vs. Space Skaven, with sculpts by Remy Tremblay of Rackham fame. If you can work with Sedition Wars - which I agree, was excellent and worth the trouble of cleaning up to paint - the quality of the mini plastic / casting is equivalent.

Also sculpted by Remy Tremblay, and containing the highest quality cast, pre-assembled PVC miniatures I've ever seen, is Fantasy Flight's (I believe out of print) Gears of War boardgame. My primary critique would be that miniature variety could have been more expansive, but it's a great set.

I can't recommend, as I do not own, Modiphius' Siege of the Citadel Mutant Chronicles KS boardgame and its expansions. I posted a request on Dakka about a month ago asking for comments on the miniature quality, but no one responded. As far as I can tell from Google searching for review commentary, the plastic / casting quality is not on the same level as CMON or the other games mentioned above. It is, however, currently being sold by Modiphius at a discount, to the consternation of former KS backers. There were also apparently issues with mold afflicting some cardboard gameboards. So I don't know enough to recommend it (and what I do know suggests proceeding with caution,) but it might be worth taking a look at as it ticks some of your boxes (large sci-fi set with lots of minis, all preassembled). A final thing to be aware of is that for some of the PVC minis in the set, better-cast iterations in resin were sold by Prodos / Archon games before they lost the license. If you want the very best versions and don't mind working with resin, those would be the ones to seek out.

Dakkadakka: Bringing wargamers together, one smile at a time.™ 
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User




- Deep Madness has interesting art, but I'm more focused on "warriors with a variety of guns and sci-fi weapons" right now.

- Mutant Chronicles looks good, and the price is right, unfortunately they want $100 to ship to USA.

- Archon does good resin, but handling resin makes me nervous (small kids) so I'm focused just on PVC/ABS/HIPS.

- Gears of War is a good call, although the game has held its value so the cost per useful mini is a bit high.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/08/23 20:55:06


 
   
Made in us
Brigadier General






Chicago

Until the scale change in 2021, Heroclix were all around 34mm (1/48). Quality varies, but many are pretty darn good sculpts and affordable.

Dig through Troll and Toad and see what I mean. The number of great figs for less than a buck is amazing. Lots of NPCs, troopers, cops, etc, in addition to heroes. Just pop off the clix bases

I generally game in 28mm, but I populated a 1/48 train table with Heroclix.
https://chicagovalleyrailroad.blogspot.com/2021/12/heroclix-cheap-painted-148-figures-for.html?m=1


Also, Reaper Bones Chronoscope sci-fi is 32-35mm and is generally affordable.

Chicago Skirmish Wargames club. Join us for some friendly, casual gaming in the Windy City.
http://chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/


My Project Log, mostly revolving around custom "Toybashed" terrain.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/651712.page

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https://chicagovalleyrailroad.blogspot.com 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






 Eilif wrote:
Until the scale change in 2021, Heroclix were all around 34mm (1/48). Quality varies, but many are pretty darn good sculpts and affordable.

Dig through Troll and Toad and see what I mean. The number of great figs for less than a buck is amazing. Lots of NPCs, troopers, cops, etc, in addition to heroes. Just pop off the clix bases


I just wanted to say that Eilif is spot on with this recommendation. Heroclix started out with terrible sculpts, but they got a lot better. If bad paint jobs / mold lines hold you back, know that Clix can be effectively and relatively easily stripped of all paint using acetone, and then have their mold lines trimmed off with an exacto knife like any other PVC figure. First, snip the figure free of the polystyrene black heroclix base, which will dissolve completely into messy paint-like sludge in acetone. Then, after soaking the figure for a short period and using a toothbrush to get rid of extra paint, wash it thoroughly with soap and water. Getting the timing right on this can take a bit of practice, and leaving it in the Acetone for too long will cause the details to fray and ruin the figure, so its best to try this first with a couple of cheap figures you don't care much for. Done right, you will lose none of the detail, which is often revealed to be very impressive beneath the caked-on factory paint jobs. At that point, you have a PVC mini that's ready to be mold-line trimmed, primed, and painted, which is as good as any you will get in any boardgame set (and in some cases, better.)

Expensive heroclix collector's pieces at ridiculous prices? They exist, but you can ignore them. There are hundreds and hundreds of Heroclix minis, and there are commons and uncommons with great sculpts and sci-fi designs that you can buy for $1 to $2 apiece.

But you want Sci-Fi, not superheroes? Not only are many of the (often more obscure) heroclix characters from Marvel and DC quite easy to use as generic sci-fi troopers, aliens, robots, and monsters, but there's also haloclix, which largely consists of power-armored sci-fi troopers and alien troopers armed with sci-fi weapons. Any of the many iterations of "Master Chief" would look great as a generic sci-fi visored, armored trooper. (Haloclix will often run you a bit more than $1 or $2, but many great figures can be had for $5 or less. They'd make fine troopers in any sci-fi setting.) There's also Gears of War clix, although those seem to be harder to find / pricier than Haloclix, and it's comparatively a very small set.

Check out this General Zod figure, which Troll and Toad had for about .90 cents when it was in stock (it's usually not hard to find cheap on ebay also.) https://www.trollandtoad.com/heroclix/man-of-steel-gravity-feed-singles/general-zod-003-man-of-steel-gravity-feed-dc-heroclix/1028568 Having stripped it of paint, I can tell you the almost H.R. Giger bio-mechanical detail on this figure's armor is truly intricate, with no Kryptonian letter symbol on the chest. There's very little about this figure (based on a modern comic book iteration, not the classic Reeve movie Zod) that ties it to Superman or DC comics. It's just a great design and a great pose of a very sci-fi looking guy holding a gun, with a terrible all-black paintjob that's pretty simple to remove.

Or take this Haloclix drone with plasma pistol, which is available for a little over $5 at troll and toad: https://www.trollandtoad.com/heroclix/other-halo-10th-anniversary/drone-plasma-pistol-007-halo-heroclix/321850. Great detail, great design. In fact, it's one of the best individual "flying alien trooper with a gun" figures I've encountered. Be careful of those antennae if you ever buy it and strip the paint, though, and remove the transparent wings before dousing the figure with acetone. Those antennae tear off easily (a problem I've encountered very little of overall after stripping the paint from at least 50 heroclix figures), and the wings will discolor and become opaque if you soak them in acetone.

Overall, the figure's a bargain. And there are many more great sci-fi things available at similar prices and cheaper throughout the Heroclix line. It just depends on how willing you are to sift through a lot of spandexed hero figures on sites like trollandtoad, nobleknight, and coolstuffinc, to find the sci-fi gems you're after.




Dakkadakka: Bringing wargamers together, one smile at a time.™ 
   
 
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