My review of the Warmachine Two Player Starter box (Updated)

So, I purchased the two player starter box for Warmachine, mainly for the Khador stuff, but I wanted to see what the Menoth stuff was like as well. Figured I would do a writeup of my thoughts on it, since I've had it for almost a week now.

Since I found someone that wanted the Menoth stuff, and was interested in me painting it, I now also get to paint all of it, too

The contents:
When I first got the box, I was surprised at how thin it was! With what they included in it, I was expecting it to be about the size of a Land Raider box. It ended up only being about an inch thick! I pulled out the contents, and it was nice to see that everything was packaged separately in little sealed plastic bags. Well, all except for the two Khador warjacks, which were in one together. The mini-rulebook is really nice, though Privateer Press has always been good with their printed materials. It also came with a few dice, a flimsy plastic ruler (the only thing I found to be not worth including), a starter guide to Warmachine, a quick guide to the rules, and the stat cards. They also included the paper templates so that you don't have to buy the plastic ones, but the plastic ones being included would have been nice... Though, that would have probably made the price above 100 bucks, and it's still a good deal if you end up wanting to buy the plastic ones. They also included a small (I would assume) version of their magazine, No Quarter


Assembly:
Considering that there were 17 minis included in this box, assembly was a breeze! Took me about 4-5 hours total to assemble and clean all of the flashing and mold lines, which surprisingly were mostly on the Khador 'jacks. The shocktroopers were mostly free of mold lines and such, the cinerators had some but mostly on their shoulder pads. I had a few head scratching moments with the Cinerators, mostly the shoulder pads for the unit leader... There were 2 pieces to each shoulder pad, and since they didn't include instructions to putting the minis together, I wasn't 100% sure of what the extra pieces were for until after I had already put it together and realized something was missing. Thankfully, they were easy to remove at that point, as they didn't have enough contact between points for the super glue to completely hold them together. Other than that, the only other complaint.. if you could call it a complaint... is that the swords of the Cinerators, the staff for Scorcha's blade, and the staffs for the shocktroopers tended to be bend out of shape something fierce from the relative confinement in the packaging. A bit of hot water and a few minutes of reshaping was enough to get them close to what you would expect. There was one unexpected piece in the box, and that was an extra arm that was floating around loose for the Repenter. I had thought the bag for it had opened, but when I got into it, realized that it was just an extra bit.

One extra thought: If you already have a Juggernaut and Destroyer for the Khador faction, and still want the other minis, and you eventually plan on getting Torch and/or Black Ivan, or want one or more of the upgrade Menoth kits, these are the same style plastic 'jack kits that you would need to use those upgrade kits, so it's nice to be able to upgrade them if you want! My Destroyer is now a Black Ivan (I already have Torch). That's probably my favorite part of this, and one reason I was sold on it!


Painting:
The paint-ability of these mini's isn't much different than the old metal versions, at least I haven't seen any differences so far. Some of them have some spectacular detail, like the High Exemplar. I also really like the fact that Scorcha actually seems to look more lithe, definitely a lot better of a sculpt than the original one with her hand in the air! I'll take some decent pictures before I do much more and post them in this post.


Playability:
Not really my forte, so I'll leave that to those who've played more than me. Seems like they are pretty solid units all around, with some cool stuff, especially for a starter kit.


My verdict:
All I can say is that the value of this box is unbelievable, especially if you can get someone to split the box with you. I think that the upgrade kits can add a lot more value to it, since you can make the warjacks bigger and better for a marginal increase in price (though not enough to counterbalance the savings in model costs alone). If you are looking to get into Warmachine and like Khador or Menoth to start with, this is a GREAT way to get started on the cheap, even more so if you know someone who wants the other faction.

Nice Thorough write up. Thank you!

So, I FINALLY finished painting up the miniatures from the two player box, and figured I'd post pics.

First, I finished the Menoth minis. This is new for me, because I actually used white as the main color. I've only painted small sections on some minis in white, so doing the main color as white was a challenge. Overall, I think they turned out ok, but I really need to clean up my fill in process for it.



And here is a closer shot of the 'jacks:



On to the Khador stuff (which is my main army). First, an overall shot of all of the battle box minis:



An up close look at Scorcha and the upgraded Destroyer that is now Black Ivan:



And, since I already had a Man-O-War Kovnik for my Khador forces, I put him on a base like the rock bases I put the other Man-O-Wars on, so this is a close up of them together:

Looking good!