Cryx from Maelstrom Games – Warmachine

Warmachine from Privateer Press was originally released in 2003, and it did catch my eye back then as it looked like an interesting steampunk-esque skirmish game with a low figure count and some nice sculpts. Unfortunately the cost of the large metal warjacks and the lack of local opponents nixed my desire to play the game when it came out.

Skip forward to 2011 and it turns out a lot of the Warmachine figures are now resin, and after discovering Daniel and Chris have been playing it for a while I decided to dive in and give Warmachine a try. Chris also took a couple of us through a few demo games of Warmachine vs Hordes and it seems like a nice fast evening game at the low point values.

Daniel recommended ordering over the web from Maelstrom Games in the UK because of their low prices and free shipping. So for a total of $77NZD I ordered the resin Cryx Battlegroup and a metal Pistol Wraith. Being new to Warmachine I have no idea if this is a viable force (one would hope the starting box doesn’t completely suck) but it does reach the minimum 15 points level.

Maelstrom were easy to deal with, sent me email notifications of the order progress and the goods arrived nicely packaged and undamaged a week later. So I’ll happily recommend them to any other New Zealand gamers looking for a discount web store.

Assembling the figures was straightforward, although the resin material Privateer use is a little different than I’m used to. It doesn’t file well, and under a Dremel tool tends to melt fairly easily so it must have a pretty low melting point. On the plus side it’s also easy to reshape in a cup of boiling water. This turned out to be important as I had to re-shape Deneghra’s spear which was noticeably curved.

Having assembled this Cryx group to a playable state, I look forward to losing repeatedly to Chris and Daniel for the next year of gaming nights…