After getting very excited about plastic squares and little connectors, I actually started looking at the models that came in the wave 2 care package,
I'm not going to fill the blog up with pictures of the models as various other blogs on the net are doing a great job of showing these off,
The models that caught my eye were the Asterians which is a bit of a surprise and normally I avoid skinny elven types, however for what ever reason I really like them and the rules for the faction/army are really nice, So I decided to get these sorted out for the campaign that I'm running at the Phat Cats,
So in about a week or so I've managed to get the following done,
5 cypher's with noh rifles, 5 with charge gloves, 1 force rifle, 2 black talons, 1 sky razor, 1 missile launcher, 1 fission beam, overseer, prime and 2 drones with options for shield generator, plasma vortex and fission beam. Including the Asterian merc I've the best part of 300 points and as deadzone is based around 70 point missions its a tad overkill as usual!
5 cyphers with noh rifles one of the troops that you can take,
5 cyphers with charge gloves, the other troop type, combat specialist but with a 5+ combat stat and a 3+ shooting stat I don't see these being much use on the table top once they go toe to toe with plague dogs, swarms and stage 2's. Shame really as the poses are very dynamic
the black talons, a rare choice and with some very funky rules
The specialists, Missile launcher with AP4, force rifle designed for suppression and a fission beam which it it hits with a 3+ shoot stat is very dirty!
On the right you have the overseer which to date is the only leader model that the Asterians can field and at 25 points its a big point sink at 70 point unless your playing the larger point games, he has no real shooting weapons it all about buffing the force with his command points and can activate a whopping 7 models a turn!
The other guy is the prime, a pure close combat chap with an energy shield,
The sky razor, one of the coolest looking models that mantic have done personally, and I was expecting it to be aright pain in the arse to put together but to my surprise it went together with not major issues what so ever!
These are the cheapest models in the army at a mere 8 points so I'm hoping that mantic release these as single models as you can only get them in the reinforcement pack at the moment,
and finally onto the drones, I've also painted the fission beam turret I simply forgot to snap a pic.
these guys are interesting that the survive is 6+ so not particular good, and the various weapons that they are able to take gives you a nice bit of variation, the rules that these guys run with are quite nice with the gun platforms getting sentry which after reading the rules is a great rule and the shield generator seems to be a mastercard unit for keeping your firebase alive from all the gunfire.
Asterians look like a tricky force to play with the high points cost of the models you'll always be outnumbered unless its enforcers in peacekeeper armour!
The other thing I've noticed is that as they have construct they are always classed as alert so carn't be pinned however they are not able to go engraged and don't have brawler so if you fluff your roll the combat based guys are only on base dice after the first round of combat.
Add vulnerable into the mix where you only have to do one damage point rather than 2 to drop them they could become a very hard force to play if the enemy are totting lots of AP2 weapons.
The actual models themselves are quite nice, and the clean up wasn't too bad compared to some of the other mantic stuff in the past, when warpath goes live then I'll be having to make a hard choice of what faction to focus on as the Asterians are at the top of the rule of cool list.
