Unboxing: Heavy Gear Blitz Northern Starter Army

   
   

Its a shiny box! The second best kind of box...

OK so yesterday I was a total hussy and gave you the merest glimpse of a lovely pair of... boxes! But today I'm going to give you a better peak at both of them. First up is the Northern Army Starter Kit. Now when I first looked at the game the price of the starter army kits on Wayland Games did make me wince just a little bit. If I'm honest it still does to a degree, but not because I don't think what's in the box isn't worth it, but because I think it'll put many people off of trying the game out. There's no easy way around it Dream Pod 9 though, or fans of the game. Personally I wouldn't call them 'Starter Kits' but army deals, as that's kind of what they are. I'm not going to talk about how much TV (the points values used in Heavy Gear Blitz) is in this box, I'll leave that for the full review, but this is a really good basis off of which to build an army, in fact it's pretty much 'done' with this box if you want it to be... you won't though once you see the Shiny mecha! What do you get in the box though? Lets take a look:

Ta da!!! The box is well packed and crammed with stuff.

First out the box are a 'lurid' yellow tape measure and dice. Nice! They're certainly distinctive.

There are two boxes liked this crammed full of bits. I'm not opening them though...

...because I'm worried about losing stuff. This is the second box, and as you can see there's lots of stuff

beneath those boxes is this rather nice letter, telling you about the game and where to start. Nice touch!

Finally we have the new Field Manual and Locked & Loaded, both are a good size for transporting. I approve.

Taking a look inside Locked & Loaded we see it's a Black & White version.

Obviously I'd have preferred colour but it's clear and well laid out, which is the main thing.

So those are the pictures of what's in the boxes. But what about an 'actual' list of things? Oh OK go on you've twisted my arm:

• 4x Jaguar Gears
• 4x Hunter Gears
• 2x Grizzly Gears
• 2x Drones (recon & demolition)
• 4x Lurid Yellow D6's (well they stand out!)
• 1x Lurid Yellow Measuring Tape (just so you don't lose it)
• 1x Locked & Loaded Core Rulebook (5.5" by 8.5" Black and White)
• 1x Field Manual Rulebook (5.5" by 8.5" Black and White)

There are also a host of optional weapons... erm... options (not the best sentence structure there) as listed below:

• 2x Snub Cannon (girls at bars carry these)
• 4x  Light Autocannon
• 4x Medium Bazooka
• 6x Medium Autocannon
• 2x Heavy Guided Mortar
• 2x Heavy Autocannon
• 2x Ant-Gear Missile
• 8x Light Rocket Pack
• 4x Medium Rocket Pack
• 4x Deployable Pack Gun
• 10x Vibroblade

As you can see the box really is crammed full of goodies. Having had a fiddle about with them so far I'd say that both the Jaguar Gears and the Hunter Gears are about the size of a plastic Games Workshop Space Marine mini, or thereabouts I guess. The Grizzly's though I'm saying are probably going to be a fair bit bigger than a Space Marine. Not by huge amounts, but certainly noticeable. So for 10 high quality metal mini's with loads and loads of weapons options, plus two rulebooks I'm going to say it's not actually bad value for money at £78, now I didn't honestly expect to be saying that. It's still a hefty entry price compared to some games out there, but it compares favourably with HoMachine I guess and looks positively frugal when compared to the cost of getting a new 40k or Fantasy army, the mere thought of that fills me with dread now! So there you have it, my first Heavy Gear Blitz unboxing, and I've liked what I've seen. Peace out!