Droideka Destroyer Droid Model Kit Review (AMG)

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This Star Wars Legion review focuses on your favourite and mine... Droidekas! These little chaps come in boxes of two which contain both a deployed and rolling version (for a total of four miniatures) in the box as they switch between modes for faster travel in-game. I'll be judging these miniatures as a unit of 2 even though I have two sets in my photos.

Look and feel (5 / 5)

Ever since I watched that hallway scene in the cinema as a teenager I've loved the destroyer Droid design. That alien insectoid look is so unique in a franchise where most Droids have traditionally been bipedal. Even their arrival, rolling in with a heavy metal ringing sounds is instantly recognisable.

And with that in mind, it was great to see that the model kit contains a deployed and folded up, rolling version for each of the two Droids in the set. There's something very cool about seeing the deployed vs travel mode next to each other - I think it allows you to imagine that iconic transition with its clicking and clacking. A bit of mind theatre has always endeared me to a great model kit and these miniatures are definitely a great kit.

These Droids ooze alien malice from those creepy little eye stalks and the proportions are perfectly screen accurate. I really appreciate the incredible levels of micro mechanical detail in this design, especially as the designer could have skipped parts which might be obscured from a single view. The layered details such as cabling and mini pistons really add depth to what could have been a ball with spindly uninteresting limbs!

The end result is a set of miniatures which perfectly capture the onscreen visuals in both forms. Perfect execution.

Functionality, Cost & Quality (5 /5)

Despite the very tiny components and contact points, the miniatures still feel like robust gaming pieces when assembled while not compromising on aesthetics to achieve a solid build.

In general, the quality of the kit is excellent, having made the transition to hard plastic in this new iteration, benefiting from the extra fidelity in a similar way to the other kits I've already covered.

Although these miniatures are available via the starter set, I feel that their standalone boxed set is actually pretty reasonable for what you get. A solid kit either way!

Construction (5 / 5)

I've seen people struggle with this kit previously due to the small thin components. I didn't actually have any issues with the build although I will say that it's worth dry fitting the parts before adding any glue into the mix as the level of mechanical detail in these miniatures can make it difficult to identify the contact points!

My other top tip is to make sure you only clip one arm off the frame at a time as it's easy to mix up the parts if you're not careful. Cleaning up such thin parts can be a horrific experience, but luckily mould lines and flash were minimal on both of the sets I assembled. This may change in the future with mould wear on the production line, but the AMG kits have proven pretty consistent in quality so far.

As long as you take your time and aren't too heavy handed with the thin cables and eye stalks, this kit is a breeze!   

Kit posing and options (5 / 5)

In short, there are no build options in this kit. You get two sets of sprues to assemble two deployed and two folded up rolling Droids. There are two poses in the deployed mode, but the difference in pose is so tiny it's barely noticeable!

The poses are pretty static, but this isn't really much of an issue given the source material. Destroyer Droids just slowly bumble forwards on their stumpy peg legs with their arms in a shooting position in the movies, so dynamic posing was never really on the table! The head is also in a fixed position by design, so no movement there either!

Where I feel you do get a little bit of variation is with the rolled up versions which do not have a specific connection point for the base. This means you can position each Droid slightly differently in wheel mode! It's surprising how much these little nuggets do actually look like they're rolling along when looked at as a unit!

If I had to nitpick, it would have been nice to have more optional poses, but I don't see myself owning more than four, so this really is a non-issue!

Final Score & Comments (5 / 5)

A clean sweep makes me feel like a lazy reviewer, but I promise that I genuinely looked for pitfalls when working on these miniatures and was pleasantly surprised not to find any little niggles!

I thought I'd mention the carapace of the Destroyers - I experimented with lots of different colours and paint types to get the perfect sheen. Ultimately, things like contrast over silver or multiple colour washes either didn't give the effect I wanted or simply didn't register on such a small surface. In the end I went with Copper paint from Darkstar's Molten Metals range. I gave the carapace a light wash of Nuln Oil to accentuate panel lines then added some verdigris for some visual interest.

Out of all the Droid kits I've assembled so far, these guys were far and away the most enjoyable to assemble and paint. If you're a Separatist at heart or are just into the prequel movies, this is a must have kit!

B2 Super Battle Droid Model Kit Review (AMG)

Kaiju Country Home > Model Kit Reviews > StarWars Legion Kit Reviews > Separatist Alliance Kit Reviews > B2 Super Battle Droid Model Kit Review (AMG)

This review will cover the new iteration of the B2 Super Battle Droid miniatures for Star Wars Legion by Atomic Mass Games.

B2 droids are available as a standalone box or as part of the excellent Separatist Alliance starter set. Mine came from the starter set, but the miniatures are exactly the same as those in the standalone boxed set.

Look and feel (5 / 5)

These big metal bruisers look absolutely amazing. They have that lovely chunky upper body and skinnier looking limbs that give B2's their iconic silhouette. Their proportions and out of the box poses are fantastic, with their sleek, sharper Cylon-esque armour plates marking them as a clear upgrade on the standard B1 Droids while maintaining some of their visual cues in foot shape and circular joints.  

These miniatures translate every part of the B2 Droids from the screen to the gaming table, not compromising on the design in any way. If you like the prequel movies and Clone Wars aesthetic, look no further than these heavy hitters!

Functionality, Cost & Quality (5 /5)

These miniatures are super high quality, with very clean lines and crisp details. In terms of cost, I feel that they are a little overpriced, but if  you are picking them up as part of the Separatist starter set, then they work out a lot more reasonable. Having said that, with the currently high oil prices pushing up the cost of plastics and logistics for all products, Star Wars Legion still remains a lot more accessible in terms of cost than other game systems such as Warhammer.

In term of functionality, these guys also hit the mark quite nicely, with the standing figure fitting their base footprint almost perfectly to avoid those annoying storage bumps and knocks. Interspersing this with kneeling figures helps to give the unit some height variation in the unit, again helping with storage and fitting miniatures in close proximity on the battlefield.

My only concern with these miniatures was their top heavy design and comparatively small foot connection to their bases. Happily, these concerns apply a lot less to these guys than it does to the B1 Droids as they a comparatively more flat footed in their poses giving great base contact for glue.

All in all, this is a polished, excellent product which is available at a respectable price point.

Construction (5 / 5)

This kit was an absolute breeze to assemble. Much like the glow up on the B1 Droids, the plastic quality and sprue layout made these exceptionally easy and very enjoyable to put together. They require minimal cleanup although you will want to keep an eye out for some mould lines running down the centre of some armour plates. Anyone who has assembled plastic miniatures will be anticipating this and I'm happy to say it's less of an issue than with some other miniature ranges.

With all of the Droid kits, I found that it was best to fully assemble the miniatures, tacking them to their bases with a tiny spot of super glue, prime them en-mass then remove and texture the bases separately. With most miniatures it isn't an issue, but with such small feet, I didn't want to risk burying their little trotters with texture. This actually made the basing process very quick as I textured, painted and added tufts to around 80 bases in a couple of days! The fact that the B2 Droids are mostly silver made painting them from a silver basecoat spray super easy! The 56 B1s on the other hand... **shudder**

Kit posing and options (4 / 5)

I won't labour over this point, as I covered it in the B1 review - the options in this kit are good, but with a couple of extra weapons to give your unit variety in the game, but again AMG didn't include standard versions for all Droid in the box. I know this is probably me a me problem, but with the cost of the kit and the unit upgrade limitations, I still feel this was a bit of a blunder that could have been avoided with a couple of extra arms on the sprue.

As mentioned above, the out of the box posing of the Droids is excellent and given that they are mass produced units which benefit from a unified look, re-using poses isn't much of an issue here, especially if you the swap arms and bodies from a second box if you don't want exact duplicates.

Final Score & Comments (5 / 5)

Overall I think this kit is worth of a five out of five. It does exactly what it set out to do, avoiding almost all pitfalls of a miniature kit at this price point. My only grumbles weren't enough to drag the score down to a 4 as for the most part I loved building painting and just looking at these miniatures. Of all the Separatist units, I'd happily paint more of these guys in a heartbeat and I cannot recommend them highly enough for anyone starting a Separatist army!

B1 Battle Droid Model Kit Review (AMG)

Kaiju Country Home > Model Kit Reviews > StarWars Legion Kit Reviews > Separatist Alliance Kit Reviews > B1 Battle Droid Model Kit Review (AMG)

This review will cover the basic B1 Battle Droid miniatures for Star Wars Legion (not the specialist add-on which I'll review on their own if / when Atomic Mass Games decide to re-release them).

Firstly, the B1 droids are available as a standalone box or as part of the exceptionally good value Separatist Alliance starter set. To remain fair and objective I will base this review on the standalone box as I also want to do a little comparison between the older retired Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) versions and the newer Atomic Mass Games (AMG) version.

Look and feel (5 / 5)

First up, these droid miniatures look absolutely brilliant. The proportions are perfect and the details such as panel lining are spot on when compared to the film and TV characters.

The iconic standard E-5 blasters from the movies are perfectly recreated in this set. In addition, two troopers are also armed with iconic special weapons from the Clone Wars animated series; the E-5C heavy blaster rifle and E-60R rocket launcher. Again, both weapons are faithfully translated from the original designs.

My only very minor issue was with the squad leaders who, beyond a pair of binoculars and rank colour markings, don't stand out from the squad too well. I don't really think this is an issue with the kit itself though as the mass-produced droids are supposed to look the same in terms of lore - it's just that translating them into miniatures as characters comes with that little niggle which people might find annoying during games (not an uncommon issue and certainly not only for this IP!).

If like me you've always wanted to recreate the massed rows of mechanical troopers from the movies, look no further than this boxed set!

Functionality, Cost & Quality (5 /5)

The new AMG kit generally wins out against the earlier (now discontinued) FFG version of the humble B1 Battle Droid.

Although the newer version of this kit is undoubtedly more expensive than the previous version, you do get marginally more for this comparative rise in cost.

You now get 15 B1 droids (including 2 special weapon troopers and 1 squad sergeant with binoculars) in this boxed set whereas you received only 9 with the same options in the previous set.

The rise in price doesn't just cover the additional figures, but also a massive production uplift using higher quality, more durable plastic and a complete redesign of the sprues. Uniquely, this kit had a complete overhaul with the advent of the new edition under AMG whereas the majority of other kits, while benefiting from better plastic and packaging were effectively the same design.

While QC is generally excellent for the contents of each box, a couple of things niggle at me - the decision to no longer include assembly instructions in the box, instead making them all available online as a PDF download. While it's not a big issue, it baffles me why they still opted to include a large flier with a QR code in the box pointing to their site which could easily have had instructions instead!

The second niggle is the inclusion of gaming cards in every language. I get that they did it to make shipping logistics easier for non-English speaking countries such as Germany (so they are produced in a single batch rather than for each country individually), but it just feels incredibly wasteful that you throw away the majority of the laminated cardstock that came with your minis. The saving grace here is that the reduced supply chain links probably reduce the carbon footprint of the business far more than the environmental cost of the additional cards.

Even though I feel like this kit isn't massively overpriced compared to the older version, I do feel that it should have been slightly cheaper given the availability of B1 droids in the far more cost effective starter set.

Construction (5 / 5)

Firstly, the redesign of the kit means that the individual droids are so much quicker and easier to assemble than the previous version for a number of reasons!

New AMG Sprue

The new sprue layout is much more compact, making better use of the space - the part identification numbers are very easy to see and the parts themselves are laid out in logical groupings. I.e. both arms for droid A are situated next to each other in the correct numerical sequence. It's intuitive and means you can pretty much build the miniatures without instructions.

The other tooling update is the inclusion of sprue stacking locators. The little male plugs and female sockets in the corners mean that the sprues can actually be pressed together into a kind of protective frame around the miniatures and are just immensely satisfying if you're a design nerd like me! In practice it stops them being crushed in their packaging and they can be stacked handily as you work through the build.

Old FFG Sprue

As you can see, the old sprues had so much wasted space within the frame that they could only fit two or three droids into almost twice the space of the new versions. Although the quality of plastic was not terrible, the fidelity of the miniatures is a little better in the new version, with things like panel lining being slightly deeper and sharper. This makes it easier to pick out details with less effort.

The next main point is the actual miniature design from a build perspective. Aesthetically you would probably struggle to see the difference between the two types once painted unless you knew what to look for. In practice, the build process is radically different.

New AMG Sprue - leg construction 

The leg construction on the new droids is actually very clever. By splitting the thigh in half, using a recess and tab, the leg assembly is now a breeze. Likewise the head now comes attached to the neck with a locator block which fits into the body.

Old FFG Sprue - leg construction

On the original sprues, the legs came with a very small hip joint and semi-circular tab on the pelvis. When dry fitting the parts, they go together ok, but as soon as you apply liquid poly, those tight tolerances melt the tabs into an oval and cause the legs to move about while the glue is setting. Because of the shape, this can also cause air to become trapped behind the peg making the hip tab pop back out a little. You can work around this by allowing the air to escape with a small cut, but this should probably have been incorporated into the design.

The other insanely frustrating thing in the old kit was the decision to make the head in two very small parts which then attach to a tiny neck connection point which can re-split the head at the joint when applying more liquid poly.

I was so glad to see these issues addressed with intelligent design in the new kit and I can't heap enough praise on the designers for these changes.

Kit posing and options (4 / 5)

Having picked holes in the old design, I now want to make a slight u-turn to point out that while extremely frustrating to build, the natural connection points for the head and legs meant that the older kit was far easier to re-position for poses outside of those originally intended by the kit designer.

For most casual model makers this is absolutely no issue at all, but for anyone who wants to add new poses to a squad, you will need a bit more experience in kit-bashing to make minor posing changes. This particularly applies when re-posing additional droids to stand on the hull of an NR-N99 Persuader class Droid Enforcer.

Persuader droid tank with extra passengers

Another small gripe is the fact that you are limited to a few poses within the kit although swapping the arms and heads for a little variation is easy enough. Generally speaking, this will only ever be an issue if you make say... 56 B1 Battle Droids, but who would be silly enough for that right? Right?

My main issue with this kit (which is a common thread for these expansions) is that whilst they do contain 2 special weapons and a squad leader, they don't contain regular blaster rifles for these troopers, so you can't just add 15 regular droids to your force to bulk out squads. Even more annoying is the fact that the game limits your squad to one of each special weapon choice, so one of your clankers is always getting left at home! I feel that this was a bit of a miss which could have been avoided during the redesign.

I also believe that the missing options from the old B1 specialist sprue such as the sniper variant and radiation gun should have been added here for extra appeal as a standalone kit and additional value for money.

All things considered, I think for the average model maker, the new kit is a massive upgrade and only those who specifically want to heavily convert droids with new poses should look to the discontinued versions.

Final Score & Comments (4 / 5)

Even though I've only scored this kit as a four out of five, I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who loves Star Wars Droid miniatures. The only caveat (and the reason it ended up as a 4 / 5) is that if you're going to buy some basic B1's it's a lot more cost effective to get them as part of the Separatist starter set!

House Raven Acastus Class Knights

 House Raven Acastus Class Knights

If you've looked through my blog previously, you've probably seen my Knights of Corbenic (tied to the Fisher King) which includes a heavily converted Acastus Knight Asterius on a very heavy scenic base (Quake Hydra). He was made primarily for display and wasn't really what I had in mind for my more functional House Raven Knights.

I have two Acastus Knights for my House Raven force and I decided that although I would tweak them, I didn't want to heavily convert them or their bases as they would need to fit in with my other Knights and be suitable for use at Titan Walk games where I'd need to move them around frequently.

Both Knights of my House Raven Acastus Knights were pre-owned and refurbished, given new life with some minor repairs, pose changes and a sprinkle of upgrades.

Siegebreaker

Siegebreaker is my Acastus Knight Porphyrion and was the first of the two Knights to be completed. By the time I was working on him, I had already built an Acastus Knight so was familiar with the chassis. As a kit, the Porphyrion is pretty straightforward to assemble, but due to the arm construction, you can get a lot more poseability from the Asterius. Despite this, I really do rate the Porphyrion kit quite highly and would recommend it as the best titan scale entry level model in resin.

I built my Porphyrion in a more static, planted position without much in the way of dynamic posing. It's effectively a mobile super-heavy gun platform, so it wouldn't really look right in a running pose!

In terms of changes to this kit, I replaced the flimsy railing on the carapace with a more substantial scratch built styrene version as resin railing are just horrible. They're incredibly hard to clean up are always warped and snap so easily that I decided completely replacing them was the best plan.

I also replaced the dorky looking bowl head from the kit with a smaller Questoris one. This required some alteration to the body in order to accept a different head, but with a small amount of sculpting I think it worked out really well.

The final modification was the levelling of the dual arm cannons. I really didn't like the staggered gun barrels, so I sculpted a small armour block to bring all four barrels back inline. This may not suit everyone, but I am a lot happier with how the model looks compared to the original kit.

The final little flourish was the addition of a large metal skull to the Knight's carapace rim which would symbolically tie him nicely into the Legio Metalica / House Raven alliance.

In terms of the painting, I followed a very similar scheme to my other smaller Knight classes, but due to the sheer amount of armour panelling space available on the miniature, I was able to add quite a few extra decals like some extra symbols either side of the face plate and a whole host of kill markings and honorifics on the arm guards.

Osiris 209

This Knight is an Asterius like my previous build Quake Hydra. Like the Porphyrion, I was never happy with the head of this model kit and so sculpted a new one which looked smaller and more in scale with my existing Acastus Knight while also still feeling aligned with the Mechanicus aesthetic.

Unlike my other Knights, I didn't want to use a classic face plate, but a more abstract glass fronted dome - I wanted it to look almost like a one-way mirror and I think the final effect was quite satisfying. I deliberately leaned towards the shape of Robocop's Ed-209 when making this face plate as a little nod to one of my favourite big screen robots.

I took the painting of Osiris' carapace in a slightly different direction to my other knights as I wanted him to look different to the Porphyrion. As large centrepiece models, I felt like the Acastus Knights could have some different symbols and patterns as long as they remained within the bracket of the House Raven colour palette.

Early on I'd decided that I wanted the Conversion beam cannon arm's cowlings to sport the distinctive House Raven hazard stripes in black, yellow and white. As these represented quite a large surface area, I decided to forgo the normal carapace stripes in lieu of a large unique cog symbol to give a bit of balance to the scheme. My worry is that it may end up looking like a deck chair with too much striping!

The colours of the cog symbol mirror those of a normal House Raven Knight, just in a new and interesting arrangement. As far as the painting process, I drew and cut out a template from layered masking tape which helped me keep the edges of the design nice and sharp!

Even though I wanted to keep the bases fairly level, I did add a dead House Malinax Armiger made from spare kit parts to the base. This was a little poke at one of my buddies (and regular opponent) Luke who runs a rather lovely House Malinax Knight force alongside his Vulturum Titan Legio. You can see some of his lovely engines here: Son of Xana

House Raven Cerastus Class Knights

 House Raven Cerastus Class Knights

My three Cerastus Knight chassis are all built from plastic Lancer kits. I would like to add other Cerastus types to my collection in the future, but initially I decided that Lancers would best fill my need for a fast moving, hard hitting flanking force for use in mass titan battles.

The plastic Lancer kit is absolutely brilliant, giving a lot more scope for pose adjustment than the original Questoris kit which could only produce a single leg pose out of the box. You can achieve some really dynamic poses from the basic Cerastus kit which has clearly benefited from a decade of plastic R&D!

The main conversion I decided on from the start was an insert for the energy shields. I wanted them to be transparent textured energy shields rather than solid plating or the lightening strands I've seen used before. Leaving the shields empty never sat well with me as they're supposed to be mid-battle not powered down in dry dock!

I will detail the process of sculpting and casting the shield inserts in a future post as it was a more involved process than it looks!

For now, I'll go through each of the knights individually - I cranked all three out in a matter of weeks as I wanted them ready for my Chillcon display back in March. This included the shield manufacture from start to finish, so I was really pleased with the final outcome!

Arben

Arben has a custom head which I built to look closer to a Mechanicum knight like the Atrapos. I've honestly never been a fan of the standard Lancer head, so this was an easy target for conversion!

Arben has a mid-thrust pose with his lance fully extended and his shield arm held back as a counter balance. Although I tried to keep the placement of decals and colours to roughly the same positions as my other House Raven Knights, the difference in Cerastus place size and shape meant I had to tweak things slightly. I added the maker stamp to the rear right shoulder panel on all three knights to try and give some consistency. 

Binant

Binant was the lucky recipient of a classic resin Forgeworld head which I traded for with a buddy of mine. I also had a couple of leftover Knight Magaera shoulder pads that I thought worked really well with the oval shape of the head an the overall Mechanicus knight aesthetic I was aiming for.

I wanted to really push the kit's poseability to its limits so I tried to capture a running pose with the weight of the body forward of the legs and arms as if the Knight is fully committed to a full tilt charge a bit like a Naruto run.

To further exacerbate the feeling of movement, I heated and bent both the arm and crotch banners so that they looked to be flying out behind the knight, the speed of his charge causing them to flap in the wind.

The wide open pose and single foot on the base made this model tricky to balance - I added plenty of slate to the base to ensure that it wouldn't topple over. It's a bit of a pain to box up for events as the reach of the shield and lance arms are huge compared to a Questoris Knight!

Epal

Epal completes the trio Lancers; again I created a custom head for this knight with a single large cyclopean eye which was partly inspired by Crimson Typhoon from Pacific Rim. Epal is unique insofar as his stripes run straight up his carapace rather than the typical arrow shape that House Raven uses.

I was a little apprehensive about this style choice, but I think the diagonal chest and crotch plates balance it out and are familiar enough to mark him as a member of the unit. I also think that this pattern suits the closed forward facing pose, giving a feeling of forward momentum to a more static pose. By contrast, Epal's pose makes him much easier to pack!

Out on the Tiles

Here are a couple of images from the Titan Walk in July when my terrible trio had their first outing. They threatened the enemy flank and spent a lot of time hiding, but ultimately didn't get the chance to engage the enemy. Next time I think I'll play them much more aggressively as although hiding kept them alive, they also didn't draw attention away from my other engines.

Regardless of their performance on the day, I was still very happy to see them on the gaming mat!