Monday 10 April 2017

Shadow War Argmageddon: terrain sprues explained.

Hi everyone.

I was very happy to receive my copy this morning and the first thing that struck me was that it was a much bigger box than I had anticipated. Same as Renegade and packed with sprues. A real treat so I hope they rerelease it for any that missed out. I'm not going to review the contents or the rules but I did want to take a closer look at the scenery sprue contents, as this had me a bit baffled from the start as it may have done others. It's much clearer now and hopefully will be for everyone after reading through this. 


There are 8 total sprues of scenery in the set, 7 of which are unique with one being a duplicate. They are seen in the picture below and have been labelled A-G to make things easier to follow throughout the article. What becomes clear is that you have essentially 2 of the regular release kits included in the set and an additional 4 sprues. In total you have a full range of the sector mechanicus sprues but it's not quite so straight forward as bundling 3-4 kits together. The other thing that becomes apparent is that the individual releases priced at £30 are made up of 2 sprues, whereas the £45 ones contain 4 sprues and thus are better value. Lastly, the only kit to contain a unique sprue not duplicated elsewhere (but included in shadow war) is the second sprue from the alchamite stack. (sprue E)

All 8 sprues

Here's a rundown of each sprue:
A - ladders and octagonal platform
B - smaller vent stack
C - ladders and struts
D - square platforms
E - large vent stack
F -  furnace
G - skull spider and 90 degree platforms


Ferratonic furnace
Alchomite stack

Ferratonic incinerator


Promethium forge


A summary of each kits compostion:
1. Ferratonic furnace (A+F)
2. Alchomite stack (B+E)
3. Ferratonic incinerator (A+C+D+F)
4. Galvanic magnavent (B+C+D+G)
5. Promethium forge (A+B+C+G)

From this we can see a few obvious things. Firstly, there are two categories of terrain: 2 sprue and 4 sprue. Secondly, as aformentioned, kit 2 is the only one to make use of sprue E. Thirdly, there's only one sprue difference between kits 4 and 5.  Lastly, Kit 3 is essentially a larger version of kit 1 and it could be argued that the SW:A kit is actually kit 2 + kit 3 plus a couple of extra sprues.

I'm very pleased with the purchase overall (which was even better with an RRP of £80 as opposed to the £90 printed in white dwarf. I'm hoping to wait until I have a few more scenery kits and my Space marine projects are out of the way before turning my attention to a sector mechanicus. (Summer of scenery Alex?) Hope this was helpful. Cheers.






6 comments:

  1. I started building my SW:A box last night. I'm basically just following the directions for the sub-assemblies in the box right now, because the full range of possibilities for these got kind of overwhelming. After I'm done with this lot, I'm sure I'll have a better handle on the various options, and then I plan on picking up a couple of Magnavents and Forges to expand my options and just go free-form on those rather than bothering with the directions.

    Also, it's a tiny thing, and I can understand why they didn't bother, but it would have been really cool if these had lined up with the Necromunda bulkheads. As is, each level of this set is like 1/4" short of two Necromunda levels.

    Still really excited to get a table's worth of this stuff together and get some real close-quarters action going on my gaming table.

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    1. Was actually wondering how they lined up with the old NEcromunda stuff so thanks for mentioning. I'm hoping to assemble some individual pieces into small sub assemblies and then see how it all fits together with some other admech kits to allow some degree of tabletop variation but without making it too fiddly.

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    2. It's absolutely designed to be built in modular sub-assemblies that you can rearrange each Game. Having messed with it some more, I'm planning on interweaving a bunch of single-level Necromunda Terrain so that there are fewer situations where a Model ends up partway up a ladder while climbing, since these ones are all more than 4" tall.

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  2. Hey thanks for putting this together - good read.
    I'm curious about how compatible these are with the Sector Imperialis kits like the manufactorum?
    For instance would you mind telling me what the dimensions of the floor sections on sprue D are please?
    Also what height are the stanchionson sprue C? Thanks!

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    Replies
    1. Hi pal. I don't own a manufactorum (yet) sadly so can't compare, but the dimensions you ask for are 60mm square or 60x120 for the platforms and 120 high for the stanchions. Cheers.

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  3. The height and width don't line up well with the Sector Imperialis terrain, unfortunately. As far as I can tell, the only things they really fit together with are the pipes and such from the Promethium Pipeline, Haemotrope Reactors, and VSG kits.

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