Nuclear Renaissance A Review Part 1!

Hi!

As promised heres a review of the box set! Alas I still havent replaced my camera so am having to make do with using my webcam which is less than ideal!

I thought Id start out with the box itself and am pleased to say that its a rather nice, glossy piece that when opened keeps producing seemingly endless amounts of stuff! Im quite impressed by just how much stuff has been jammed into the box, and more importantly that its all been well bubble wrapped to stop the resin bits getting chipped or broken in transport!

The Box!

Size wise its somewhat smaller than the usual GW style starter pack and is of the same quality and thickness as the boxes produced by many of the better miniatures companies out there!

The box contains the following stuff:

4 metal figures
7 resin figures
3 small resin vehicles
2 medium resin vehicles
2 large resin vehicles
A 69 page rulebook
4 dice and several metal game tokens

The Rulebook!

Having not had much chance to read through it yet but it does contain all the rules for playing the game plus character and vehicle creation rules. The rules have apparently been simplified somewhat to remove some of the maths required in the previous edition but I will attempt to review them in more depth at a later date.

Some of the abilities have been removed from this edition but will be getting added to the planned supplement and as they were things like Ginger (its a gift!), I cant see it effecting the game too much. Also missing from this edition, somewhat sadly, is much of the background fluff. Theres still several pages of it but the previous edition had a whole chapter on the Nuclear Renaissance setting and its inhabitants. Hopefully this will be added to the supplement to but it would have been nice to get a bit more background reading material in the core rulebook!

Visually the book is really nice with sturdy covers and beautiful photos of the Ramshackle range and is well worth downloading for that reason alone!

The miniatures are a mixture of single piece resin and metal castings, apart from Gilgamesh Giggles whose gun barrel has been produced separately. All the figures have tons of character each of the gangs in the box are visually very different (there are three of them but more on that later!)

Gilgamesh Giggles!

The resin miniatures are almost free of bubbles (theres a couple of small ones here and there on a couple of them but they should be easy enough to clean up!) and the only visible mould lines are on the bases which can easily be cleared off. Although they are single piece resin castings they have tons of character and the sculptor has made the most of the limitations of the single piece castings.

The metal miniatures have more animation than the resin ones and are also nicely detailed, Scythetar (the guy with the scythe guitar) has some mould lines round his arms that will need a little cleaning and Grizelda (the girl with the buzzsaw arm) will need a little care with handling as shes only attached to the base by one foot and may snap off with too much rough handling.
Otherwise they are all really nice models and well worth the money!

The vehicles are particularly nice and range from small tracked bikes, to junker buggies, traction engine and even a bit of a behemoth!

The casts are clean and the bikes are single piece castings while the larger vehicles come in roughly five pieces each (main body and wheels/tracks) I really like the large, ramshackle look of them and theres plenty of variety to them as well!

Giggles Transport Grendel!

As already mentioned there are three gangs included in the box set:

The Giggles clan, a group of deranged souls who believe flesh is weak and that it requires to be rectified with plentiful pieces of grafted on machinery.

The Ironwall Wasters, a typical group of gangers who inhabit the wastelands of the Nuclear Renaissance.

The Society Against Mischief, a group of well bred ladies and gents from Bandlerd who aim to uphold the peace.

The three gangs all appear very different, the Giggles are all grafted to machinery to various degrees ranging from replacing respiratory systems to augmented heavy lifting gear and wear ragged plastic sheeting. The gang itself is formed of the following personalities:

The Giggles Clan (Left To Right: Vulcan, Asclepius, Gilgamesh, Levi, Grizelda)

Gilgamesh

One of the most heavily augmented elders in the Giggles Clan, Gilgamesh is pretty much nothing more than a wizened human husk encased in a huge suit of heavy armour (the armour itself is essentially a vehicle in itself giving Gilgamesh enhanced movement) Armed with a power claw and shotgun he is a bit of a monster in close combat and short range.

Grizelda

Armed with a powered cutting saw, Grizelda is the other close combat fighter in the gang.

Vulcan

A Flame thrower wielding type suited to skulking in cover before incinerating opponents.

Asclepius

The groups medic (or mechanic as the case may be) Hes been grafted onto a set of tracks giving him superior movement so he can quickly reach injured kinsfolk

Levi

A bard with an eclectic taste on music. Ranging from industrial noise to discordant blaring Levis music can be used to rally the Giggles clan!

Cleatus

The driver of the Giggles transportation of delight Grendel, Cleatus has been grafted directly into the beast itself!

Azozeus

Another crewmember of Grendel, Azozeus has had much of his body replaced with assorted grafts, not least of which are the upgrading of his arms to a pair of huge industrial lifting gear!

Grendel

Grendel is the Giggles transport. A big beast of a machine, Grendel has two crew and is equipped for hauling scrap but can easily mangle most other vehicles due to its size, bulk and industrial powered tools mounted on its rear!

I will cover the rest of the gangs in part two of the article along with a more indepth look at the rulebook!

All the best!