Saturday, 30 May 2015

Unboxing Terminator Genisys Miniatures Game

I acquired this at the UK Games Expo...


It's a miniatures game based on the upcoming Terminator Genisys movie and has been produced by Alessio Cavatore's River Horse games company. I should also thank Gareth White for his demo and the other gentlemen on the stand whose name I rather rudely failed to ask...sorry about that. As with such things I've decided to do an un-boxing feature on it...

Editors Note - You can get larger versions of the smaller pics by clicking on them and they're all high enough resolution so you can copy them to your own PC and zoom in should you so desire.

It will be of no surprise to you that the game comes in a box...


The box comes with everything you need to play the game with the exception of a friend to play against...you'll need to kidnap acquire one of those on your own...

You get a double-sided fold-out mat on which to play (it's a paper one not a neoprene 'mouse-mat' style one but is more than adequate for use), counters, dice, some card-stock barriers for terrain and of course models. As I recently got a snotty comment saying there was no scale reference on a picture of a play-mat I posted in an article I've left a measuring tape next to this one.

The Play-Mat.
It has a different picture on each side for use in different scenarios.

Counters.
They'll need punching out from the card and are double-sided so I've taken pictures of both sides. This also includes a number of pieces that you use to determine ranges of weapons so there's no need for a measuring tape. These sheets also contain some pieces that can be slotted together in order to create some obstacles for your play area.
Here's those terrain pieces I mentioned in their assembled form.

Dice.
You get two each of a number of types of dice as more powerful weapons require dice with higher numbers as they have a higher potential damage output. You also get a single 'Fate' dice that controls how many models you activate. Additionally there's a sticker sheet so you can mark which models use which dice if you wish 
The 'Fate' dice is six sided. One is marked 'Fate' and the others have either '1' or '2' on them.

Rather handily there's also an instruction book, a quick start guide referred to as 'Fast Play Rules' and a reference card.

Instruction Book and Fast Play Rules.
Here's the front and back of the rule book, the aforementioned Fast Play Rules and some sample pages. The rulebook has plenty of diagrams to give a visual guide to compliment the written rules and quite a few movie related photographs to get you in the mood...
...and the reference card...

Of course it's the models that I guess you're most interested in. You get five sprues of Terminators adding up to ten standard terminators and five crawling ones as well as four sprues of Resistance Soldiers equalling sixteen models with a variety of weapon options.

Here's a picture showing both sides of the sprues should such things interest you and then we'll look at the assembled models.

There's been some criticism on a few of the various forums about the overall quality of the appearance of these models but you need to think of them more as game pieces than centrepiece miniatures in that regard. The detail is more than adequate for their intended purpose and the named models have far more detail on them should you wish a painting project. Additionally they really need to be painted to be appreciated. The resin character pieces are very nice actually...I'll show a picture of one of those towards the end...

All the plastic models in these pictures are simply clicked together with no glue used. I've provided front, back and side views of each model and some variant pictures where different arms can be attached to the same model.

Terminator Endoskeletons.
There's only two different poses on these but as they're mass produced killing machines this is entirely reasonable...

Terminator Crawler.
No variables with this guy...

Resistance Soldiers.
There are four different bodies for these. One of them has a choice of two arms (the bodies and arms are clearly labelled with an A, B, C or D on the sprue)...
 ...and the other three can take any of the remaining ones.



The box set also comes with a single metal miniature of Kyle Reese.

As I mentioned earlier there's some special character models available in resin that have far more detail on them. Here's a particularly good example...

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

5 comments:

  1. Wow- that Arnold model looks official!
    That's an amazing sculpt. Simply amazing.
    Jeez- Reese died in the first movie. Linda Hamilton shoulda been the Hero character, actually...
    :)

    It looks cool, man. Despite having the silliest name ever.
    'Genisys.'
    Sigh.

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    1. Overall it's a nicely put together 'play out of the box' system. Not sure how well it's balanced yet though as I've only had demo games.

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  2. Hi, Alessio here – great unboxing!
    I just wanted to chip in to say that the reason why Arnie model looks official is that... it is!!!
    We did have a few similar comments at the stand during the Expo, which is funny, as some people thought this was another case of 'not-Terminator lookalike stuff...'
    Not this time. River Horse has got the real licence from Skydance and Paramount for Terminator Genisys - the new Terminator film out in July, so this is an 'official' product and (sadly) we do pay real royalties to our licensor! :-)

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    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed the article and thanks for the clarification.

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  3. Did you every get any games in with this? Its become one of my favourites after I discovered it recently (thanks to a big discount from Warlord). It rewards building some of the other models for variety.

    I'd be curious to know what you thought of it.

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