Miniature Review #1 – Moonstone by Goblin King Games
Well lets try doing this which I feel like ^_^
I recently brought some figures for Moonstone, a miniatures based card game. I don’t know much about the game itself but appears very much like Wildlands by Martin Wallace (published by Osprey) in that you have skirmish warband, players compete in collecting a certain object type (In Moonstone’s case, the Moonstones) and combat isn’t done by dice rolling by card play. While Moonstone’s hype tries to say how Unique this is, like I said, seams alot like wildlands to me.. Might look into a starter set sometime (I think you can get pretty much everything you need without that as you can just buy some figures, by a card deck and kit-bash the rest but not 100%. Starter Sets for games which just give a collection on basic stuff can be nice at times).
But I’m not reviewing the game, I’m reviewing the Miniatures cause short of some modern board games, any game with miniatures which you can buy on their own, can just be used as a source of miniatures for anything you want them for (I say short of some modern board games cause… yikes, I’ve got and seen some games where the miniatures are a weird scale which is pretty much ONLY used for that game). So I’m reviewing the figures. I had seen some of the figures and decided I liked some of the designs and ideas so might get them as would be fun and might have some use for them. I’m sure you know what that’s like.
Because they are sold in small sets, mostly about 3 figures for ‘normal’ size ones, I had to buy some figures I wasn’t 100% interested in. I brought the ‘Dark Deeds’, ‘Wyrdwood’, ‘Boris, the Bunny Summoner’, and ‘Knoll’.
First up the packing. The boxes are pretty nice. Features what looks like a few back ground images with images of the characters in that pack put over them. Clearly shows the game name, set name and i think faction type. I say I think because without playing the game or knowing some bits, I can’t 100% say. boxes are a bit over sized as they are 150mm by 100mm by 50mm and the figures aren’t that big. There are also cards which aren’t that big. But on the whole, it’s not bad and there is good internal packing I’ll get to in a bit. Main problem with box oversize is for retailers. takes up more shelf space. Minor point for buyers, I brought them from the official website, I don’t think P&P price was bad BUT with oversize box means it can affect P&P costs making them more then if the box was scaled to size, but the box size might also be to be able to fit any figure in the range to keep a standard box size. Sometimes a smaller box set can cost the maker more.. also with each box size the same, it’s the same die-cut, which is probably a standard size anyway.
back of the box shows digital renders of the figures a brief bit about the game with url and what the set contains. no bio, no character fluff. Not a huge problem but there you go. First complaint would be no sculpture name, no artist name. That’s kinda personal preference though and we still aren’t in an age where people really care about the creators (Side note: see why creators left Atari during Ray Kaisers period).
Moving to the insides, nice packing foam, Mine have two types, a grey softer foam, and a blue-green slightly harder form. No mixing within the packs but between packs. Cards for the character in-game are nice card stock, loose in the pack but that’s no issue, they are pretty nicely protected by the box and foam. Figures are in a resealable bag with lipped plastic bases. It uses a 30mm lipped base as a default with some bigger sizes for bigger figures. All bases are slotta which MOST of the figures appear to me but some aren’t so will need filling. This is no major problem, I quite prefer the slotta bases with the thiner knockout so they are solid unless you cut out the knockout but they appear… rarer to get for some reason, so no problem.
Still haven’t gotten to the figure themselves eh?
Right. It’s not fully openly stated but the miniatures are resin, pretty good resin with a bit of flex. They appear to be resin cast, which I would expect. The spur supports are pretty good and have small-ish connectors so you don’t have huge damage points when you cut off the sprue, though I do think I might have lost a tiny bit of the wing of the ‘Banshee’ from the Dark deeds set. Minor, wouldn’t notice unless you knew it was meant to be there. Another thing which isn’t openly stated but these are clearly digital sculpts. As a result, some surfaces are a bit smoother and more ‘perfect’ then you would expect from a hand sculpt, and there are some small bits which can be tricky, but the slight flex with the resin does decrease the chance of quick braking you would get with a non-flexing resin or most 3D print resins.
There is little flashing on the ones I got, but the odd very small bit so I’m not sure if they were cleaned up first or just used steel moulds or something which just have little flashing (not saying all steel moulds have little flashing but they appear to have less then a flexible mould like silicone). Problem with the small details on this front is the small amount of flashing. There was a tiny bit on a sword for the ‘Iris and Hellebore’ figure from the dark deeds set. the sword is very thin as they kinda more go for ‘realistic’ proportions then the standard ‘heroic’ proportions (though not as realistic as some I’ve seen) and with the flexing, a bit of care was needed to try to clean up the flashing on the sword without trying to brake it. As I don’t want to break my figures, I’m not checking how much flex you can get ^_^ Well.. quite addendum to that, I just left my desk, came back, moved Knoll and I think I caught a small part which snapped off.. have to glue that back on when I figure out it’s location.
Most of these are multipiece models which being resin, I can see why multi-piece in most cases on these figures, though some could have been easily done as a single piece metal from my limited experience. Each piece goes together well with little gap, as would be expected from a digital sculpt as it’s much easier to handle the keying. The Knoll figure is kinda the worse with the keying because he has two horns which are pretty damn thin and the connection for the right one is weak so it’s a bit fiddley.
There is one sculpting issue which.. I’m not quite sure why it’s like that. Boris comes with 3 ‘Murder Bunnies’. With how small some bits like the sword on the faeries is, there ears are really weird. One of them is in a jumping pose with the eyes flat against the body, which is fine and makes sense, but the other two, there ears are sculpted to be flat against each other which gives them a bit of a weird face on appearance. Like I said, with the thinness of the sword in the Dark Deeds set, I don’t personally think it’s needed for casting or support. Unless they are resin from a steel mould. If they are from steel, that might give the reason because you don’t get the flex. In fact, the more I look at pieces and how they are cut up when they are multi-piece.. They have to use a steel, or some other non-flexible material for the mould itself. If it’s steel though, the question is also why not use Plastic over resin? while it doesn’t normally do detail as well, it CAN, and the mould could probably have been used for plastic as well as resin. I would be injection moulding. Does make me wonder just what they used. Anyway, also a minor issue with the ears is they are pretty flat together in that there isn’t much of a clear spilt down the middle so they kinda look a bit weird as if they just have one giant ear. I do have a smaller Metal Bunny which you can see the flat plane but the ears have a better sculpt so they don’t look so weird, though are pretty close together, there is still clearly two ears. So for me, that is a bit of a let down on the sculpt. The rest is fine on the Bunnies.
Figure prices aren’t bad, not the best, so not metal prices, but £34 for a pack of 3 normal sized figures + cards (one each). you see what I mean, not metal price? that’s like £11.30 for one resin figure with plastic base and card. That’s the high end in my view. But I’ve seen and paid that kinda price a the high end for a board game like miniature game from a small-ish company. For Army builder stuff, no chance with that price. For metal? piss off.. seriously, there is no reason 1 single metal normal sized 28mm metal figure should be £10+ or even that high.
The website does show the example photos as well as digital render of the model itself (which is the same render which is on the box) which is good, problem is when you look at the examples, take Boris there, his bunnies don’t have big fancy wood stuff for the bases. you just get the Bunnies and him. No problem as it’s kinda a glamour shot anyway, but I can see how some people might be expected a tiny bit more if not been in the hobby for a while. As these example photos aren’t on the boxes, that’s no real problem.
Would I buy more of these minis? without playing the game.. maybe. the price to say, £24 for 3 (making £8 each) and I would be far happier. So as this is the first ‘review’ lets work out a summary:
- Sculpt: 4 out of 5 – nice design, a bit smooth softness you get with most Digital sculpts but not too bad, details are crisp enough where they need to be.
- Price: 4 out of 5 – Price is the high end of acceptable in my view, but acceptable. Would prefer to knock them down like 1/3rd
- Quality: 4 out of 5 – Nice grade resin, nice casting, card and box quality nice.
- Extra Details: 3 out of 5 – No fluff on the figures ‘character’, no sculptor name, no information on figure material, no reference to it being a digital sculpt, doesn’t state it’s mostly a multi-part model which needs to be put together.
Final score: 3.75 out of 5
I’ll just explain my categories as this is the first time. Sculpt is on the sculpt itself, the details, the design, etcetera. Price is how much it costs for what you get. Quality is the quality of materials used in everything from the packing to the figures themselves. Packing isn’t the be all and end all as long as it does it’s job. Extra Details, well, the extra details bit is more personal taste but surely, that’s the point? ^_^
Some of these issues with the extra details are fixed with the website. It does give a bit of fluff and state resin multi-part figure.