I had a very gaming birthday this year, as not only did my awesome fiancé get me a tonne of Magic cards, he also presented me with a Premium Shaltari Mega Army complete with aluminium case. As I had a 1,000 point game planned to occur over the weekend it was time to get a wiggle on and start putting these babies together!
Not having the time to assemble everything, I decided on my army list first, then only worked on the items I needed for yesterday’s game.
The Braves were ridiculously easy to put together. Snipping them off their sprues was a bit heavy on the clippers, because the sprues were thick and these are the only metal minis in the whole army, but the figures themselves required zero clean-up. The bases had some minor flash and sprue that needed quick pruning.
Spirit gates were more fiddly, but still assembled in a matter of minutes. Some light cleanup with a knife was required, but it was absolutely minimal effort compared to your average Citadel model.
The Eden gates took the most time, largely because some of the resin was slightly warped and needed resetting with hot water. There was a lot of flash that needed scraping away, but this was easy peasy. The main problem was that the tips of the struts were merged in to the sprue joints so much that it was impossible to see where the struts ended and sprue began. As a consequence I cut too much off, and had to go digging among my offcuts to find the matching part, glue it back together, recut it in the right place, prune it down to the right shape, then assemble the gate.
Once I’d done this with one gate, though, I knew what to look out for in the remaining two.
The Coyote and Ocelot were joys to assemble. I really love these little walkers and definitely think they’re the most appealing models in the army.
All in all I assembled:
- Six Braves stands
- One Haven gate
- Three Tomahawks
- Two Yari with Microwave guns
- Two Spirit gates
- Three Eden gates
- Two Warspears
- One Coyote
- One Ocelot
in the space of two and a half hours, and that’s including time to rectify my snipping error, and be excruciatingly anal about flash-pruning. An entire playable army, ready to roll the same afternoon. The resin’s even a fairly bright white-grey colour, so I didn’t feel quite so bad about playing unpainted minis.
The only thing to be wary of is how soft resin is compared to plastic. If you’re used to carving away at a mini to get it to where you want, you’re going to slice up your resin like a serial killer. Be gentle; that’s all it takes.
Troo Grit 
Sounds cool, I have a cousin that used to collect the intricate Warhammer models and paint them. I’ve always been intreagued by these kinds of games. What “brand” does the Shaltari belong to – is this Warhammer or some other franchise?
The models are very nice, and I like the floating “ships” and walkers too!
Shaltari are one of four armies in Dropzone Commander, which is a new game by a new company, Hawk Wargames.
Most importantly, you can have an entire army the size of the one in this post for about £70. Or with a custom-cut foam carry case for just under £90.
Great little article! Looking forward to seeing these painted!
The primer is in the post! 😀
It’ll be a weather-permitting job, though, as the only space we have for priming in is the back garden, and the weather’s currently alternating between snow, wind, rain, or a combination of all three.
Tempted by the Scourge for DZC, but have too many projects on the go at the moment. Maybe next year.
I wanted to be tempted by the Scourge, but I just disliked too many of their models. The new Annihilator looks like fractal made from Alexander McQueen shoes.
Hmm. Haven’t seen that one yet. I was just tempted by the gribblies.
I always love gribblies 😀
I’ve had another look at the scourge range and I still think they’re lovely – I even like the new Annihilator! Each to their own, I suppose
Absolutely 🙂