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I think the difficulty is just more noticeable because of the lack of enthusiasm, it's not like Im thinking I can't wait to get a game so assembling these will just fly by, it's more, eh, I could start these I guess, or just play something better.

They have a lot of pieces with a lot of connection points, so at least in my experience, it's a matter of cutting dozens of connections off, then trimming all those connection points, then assembling all the stupid halves (found more on the RDF stuff) and letting them set, then assembling from there.

I'm sure some master modelers probably have it down to a fine science in an assembly line style arrangement, but as someone just building 2-3 figures at a time, it's enough effort to be kind of a pain in the ass.

If people think the game is of unparalleled quality, it might be worth fighting through. If people aren't all that in love with the game, it just becomes yet another barrier to entry.

The models being time consuming and the game not exactly flooring me, I'd much rather spend my free time painting Shadows of Brimstone figures or tweaking Netrunner decks. If one of my friends found a burning passion for it, sure, I'd put in some time rounding out my forces. As it stands, the three of us have had our figures for at least 4 months and have collectively built 25 of them, and as far as I'm aware 0 games have been played.

Individually, no, they're not hard. Maybe 15 minutes to cut one out, do some basic cleaning and put together.

But multiply that by 12-15 just to be able to play an undersized starter game (1/2 of one of two forces needed to play), and it becomes a nightmare. Like I said, for the base box + bonus bag for a Battlecry, it took me somewhere around 2-3 weeks to get them all put together, working 4-6 hours a night. And that doesn't include painting them. By the time I was done assembling, I was sick of the whole process. Didn't want to paint them, much less play.

In comparison, I had my Warmachine/Hordes stuff, for 5 armies, together in two nights, with enough stuff together to do a test game the 1st night. I'm a slow painter, and I had my first two opposing forces painted up within a week.

<EDIT> The 5th army is a skorne battlebox, which I just finished putting together a hour or so ago.

 combat engineer wrote:
Are they that hard to assemble?

More like they're really annoying to build, TBH. I've assembled about 10 destroids/VFs for Battletech, and... well, I still have a pile to go and no motivation to continue.

OTOH, I just assembled a whole eisenkern stormtroopers box yesterday, and the assembly process was much more enjoyable.

Just finished painting my Defender box and the legs where especially annoying. Somehow I managed to glue them the wrong way on the Defenders. No way I'm gluing them right now that the minis are painted.

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Just finished painting my Defender box and the legs where especially annoying. Somehow I managed to glue them the wrong way on the Defenders. No way I'm gluing them right now that the minis are painted.

M.

That's a common mistake apparently. One of the very first pics of assembled minis from someone who had his first contact pledge shipped first did the same thing.

I feel better now

M.

 combat engineer wrote:
Are they that hard to assemble?

As posted above by folks who actually assembled them, they're just noticeably harder than minis of the same size and harder than they should be. If space marine models had split every limb into two pieces each and the head into three pieces, they'd still have a parts count lower than RDF minis. If you've already had your enthusiasm dulled by the Palladium's douche moves (which is admittedly subjective) and the two year delay in fulfilling the kickstarter completely (which is objective), that added effort compared with pretty much everything comparable in your pile of hobby shame puts it alot lower. Is it impossible or do you need advanced hobby skills not possessed by all but the hardest hardcore modellers? No... but I'd say they're the most unnecessarily complicated set of gaming sprues I've seen in 20 years in the hobby. If you don't mind clipping carefully (because you can easily break them and not the sprue), trimming, and gluing three separate tiny pieces to make a space marine sized head for a model, it shouldn't bother you.

I have as yet to play a game myself. Not from a lack of wanting to, but from the lack of time to do it. I have gotten maybe 5 games of 40K since it released, and my armies are built for that. The lack of local gamers are a hindrance to gaming in general, the 45+ minute drive to the nearest shop is another. My wife has absolutely no interest in gaming, beyond simple puzzle games, and the occasional Facebook game.

I have at least been gaming for a long time, and can tell if I will like a game by reading it's rules. I would place this game above both Warhammer games, and below the Attack Wing games in how easy it is to learn, and how it would play in general. Roughly the same as Warmahordes, though with slightly larger armies at the moment. The quality of the rules in general is not bad, not the greatest, but they are better than both Warhammer games, but not as good as the Warmahordes games. So if you like Warhammer games, or Warmahordes games, then the rules are not the problem you are looking for. Had PB released the Female Powered Armor and the other Valkyrie types, especially the Super, at this time, the armies would look a lot more similar to Warmahordes in overall numbers. The splitting of the game into 2 waves really does hurt the overall game balance. The game really needed to have more items go out in wave 1 than what did ship. Here is where PB really dropped the ball with this, and every time they try to fix it they kick it away from themselves.

 warboss wrote:

 combat engineer wrote:
Are they that hard to assemble?

As posted above by folks who actually assembled them, they're just noticeably harder than minis of the same size and harder than they should be. If space marine models had split every limb into two pieces each and the head into three pieces, they'd still have a parts count lower than RDF minis. If you've already had your enthusiasm dulled by the Palladium's douche moves (which is admittedly subjective) and the two year delay in fulfilling the kickstarter completely (which is objective), that added effort compared with pretty much everything comparable in your pile of hobby shame puts it alot lower. Is it impossible or do you need advanced hobby skills not possessed by all but the hardest hardcore modellers? No... but I'd say they're the most unnecessarily complicated set of gaming sprues I've seen in 20 years in the hobby. If you don't mind clipping carefully (because you can easily break them and not the sprue), trimming, and gluing three separate tiny pieces to make a space marine sized head for a model, it shouldn't bother you.

In my experience some badly placed air vents made it real frustating.

M.

I assembled a Forge World Spartan a few weeks back. Assembly was annoying due to the constant hot water heating of resin. I just ordered a starter set for this game. I am only doing the UEDF side, the Zentraedi stuff is going to someone else. I guess I will need to a space out my buying IOT take my time and carefully assemble this stuff.

Mat

From what folks have posted, the plastic parts fit together well and you don't likely have to heat gun the bits. I guess that is a benefit of the limited poses they have despite the parts count.

From the very few models I've build, the tooling seems excellent - almost no warping, and the seams (although awkward) are far less gappy than they could have been, so long as you cleanup and dry fit everything first.

However, the part layout and sprue design make that far, far hard than should be the case- you can get good models built, needing little more than a bit of surfacing putty to hide seams, but it will take patience and time. This took about an hour and a half to assemble (using the box instructions which really aren't very good):


Makes me sigh, as I'd love to do these on commission, but I now know they'd be prohibitively expensive - around 15-20 hours of work for a squadron of 4 (12 pieces), just in assembly. Ugh.

Looks good!

One and a half hours to assemble? That's pretty insane

Sining wrote:
One and a half hours to assemble? That's pretty insane

That is with very careful clean-up.
I spent around 20 minutes and compared to winter, it will show.
Nice edge highlighting on his, getting sharp lines on the wings is harder than I thought.
Notice no missiles on his, this adds much more work trying to make it look right.
Tempting to put the missile type on the stand for esthetics.
Winter sure makes commission work tempting.
Wonder what rates are for painting touch-up (revamp??) hehe.
Never mind the tiny decals.

 combat engineer wrote:
Are they that hard to assemble?

No, not really.

If you have the pictures, and don't mind doing a little prep, it's not difficult compared to building the Dark Eldar from the 40k 3E starter box..

In my case, I didn't even have the instructions, working off of memory and web pics.

 Talizvar wrote:

Sining wrote:
One and a half hours to assemble? That's pretty insane

That is with very careful clean-up.
I spent around 20 minutes and compared to winter, it will show.
Nice edge highlighting on his, getting sharp lines on the wings is harder than I thought.
Notice no missiles on his, this adds much more work trying to make it look right.
Tempting to put the missile type on the stand for esthetics.
Winter sure makes commission work tempting.
Wonder what rates are for painting touch-up (revamp??) hehe.
Never mind the tiny decals.

Yeah, that's with very careful cleanup and includes the surfacing putty time; the missiles are actually pretty easy (my fighter mode valks will all carry missiles) and don't add a lot of time. My hour and a half does not include the paintwork - just up to getting the basing material on ready for priming.
The majority of issues are present on the gerwalk / guardian mode (which is why it was the first one I did, just so I know what's what) - the arms and legs and fuselage top/bottom seam.

The engineering / tooling on the sprue is pretty good from what I've found - parts do line up properly and aren't malformed, but its easy to damage them by clipping too close, and some of the injection points are in awkward places.
However, it is the part breakdown (ie the model design) that lets things down.

Battroid mode similarly has issues with the legs and arms. Top tip - build the upper torso and arms and legs separately - don't glue the torso onto the legs until after painting (it's simple to pin).

Fighter mode, the leg halves have reasonably simple seams, as does the upper/lower fuselage.

The vernier thrusters on arms/leg rears are awkward as the seam runs right through the middle (meaning you have to clean up an edge inside a rectangle less around 1mm wide). It would have been better to run the seam at the side of those.

Just waiting for the Canada Post person to deliver. Does anyone have any idea when the Monster is released? I would love to build a Daedalus attack board.

Wave Two currently has a non-public (as in not official, only shared with people who talked to them at Adepticon) target of November 2015.

Comparing against last year's time line, I'm not optimistic.

 Forar wrote:
Wave Two currently has a non-public (as in not official, only shared with people who talked to them at Adepticon) target of November 2015.

Comparing against last year's time line, I'm not optimistic.

They also said november in the podcast linked earlier from adepticon so it is officially on the record direct from the horse's a.. I mean mouth albeit in a tentative TBA WIP *subject to change* we hope sort of way.

When dealing with Palladium products, draw a line on a sheet of paper. At one end, write down "Now" and at the other write down "The Heat-Death of the Universe".

The time is PROBABLY between those two points, and that's about as accurate as anyone is likely to get until the things are made ships are on the water container is at port container is through customs container is in the warehouse shipments are loaded shipments are on the boat the box is at your door.

The sad thing is, that's about the experience for the RoW backers of this campaign with delays of some variety (not all of them directly attributable to PB) at each of those steps.

Ah, good to know. Having suffered through a few podcasts about the project in the past, I'm wary of giving them any more time on the matter.

Not that we should hold them to anything. It's all an estimate, just be happy that we get our stuff in one I mean two, gak I mean three years. Maybe.

And it arrived. Wow. I am overwhelmed by the amount of sprues. The UEDF stuff has a lot of parts.

Recommendations:
1. take your time - you likely won't build it all in one night (or you have one heck of a long night ahead)

2. one sprue at a time - lots of parts, easy to mix up

3. don't cut until you're ready to build - the VF arms are paired.

4. build Zentradi stuff first - it's easier

5. Valkyries last - they have the most parts, easy to mix up and confuse

6. get out your emery board and sprue nippers - there's a little prep on each model.

7. Testors gel cement in the orange tube - it is a "hot" cement that welds the stuff together, for minimal seam issues

8) have green stuff for the leg gaps. Paint won't cover it up, it will actually make it more apparent

9) use the assembly instructions on drivethrurpg.com, not the crappy instructions that come in the box

10) The valk battloid canopies are easy to miss - double-check the sprue layout from above to find them

11) don't glue the gunpod into the fighter mode until after you've painted the fighter; in fact, it's better to glue it to the "swoosh" and just set the fighter on it.

12) the antenna on the front of the recon pod doesn't fit, no matter what you try.

13) Don't use the swoosh, you're a big boy now, get flight stands from a third party.

A friend pointed me towards these, and I have nothing but good things to say about them.

Quality magnets, well protected for travel, a reasonable price especially considering where they shipped from. More expensive than a set of Litko pegs, but I'm a fan overall.

Though I did get 16 of them (2 sets) back when I planned on having 13-15 VTs.

Only having 9 makes them... not quite as necessary in those numbers. Oh well, I suppose I'll have extras for Rick/Roy and whatever Super VT's I end up keeping.

I've got them all constructed from wave one and have started the dubious task of painting. I don't see myself getting fancy with the bases. Partly because of the possible space battlefield idea but more because I just don't want to spend more resources and time on a game that will likely only get played once or twice a year.

Well, I glued on the "swoosh" and figure a matt black is what they get.
You know, for that straight out of the box experience...
The gun pod is no big deal to do but not gluing down other than on the stand is the way to go since the "handle" will hold the model (good practice!).
The clear acrylic may be the way to go due to the varying environments: I saw some fighter stands with blue sky and clouds, it may look odd in space.