I’ve recently started to look into getting into some small skirmish games. several reasons being that the skirmish games are usually more in-depth (bordering on RPG) and more importantly are cheaper to field your forces. When you collect armies/forces for several different games such as the Warhammer, Warhammer 40k & Warmachine range, the desire to only spend a small amount of money and realise the full potential of a game becomes greater.
Enter MERCS. I acquired the MERCS rule book recently and loved the background and the skirmish style of play. I won’t talk about the rules at the moment until I’ve had a proper game with them. Suffice to say that I pick armies based on the fluff rather than the rules and the CCC (Commercial Corporate Continuity) and some awesome background and looked great.
Now that I selected my force, with MERCS being relatively new to the market there wasn’t much required for me to purchase. The box set for each faction comes with all the miniatures available, the profile cards and dice – everything you need to get the most out of your game (barring the rulebook itself).
The faction box set comes in a nice thin full gloss cardboard box. The theme colouring of the box is yellow which matches up with the CCC faction itself.
The interior of the box is a thin plastic divider which holds all the miniatures and dice in the grooves with the faction cards wedged into a thin slot on top.
The faction cards come wrapped in plastic. There is a card for each member of the faction team contained within the box set.
There are 10 cards included in the box set. 6 of the cards are profile cards for each of the included miniatures. These cards also act as measuring devices within the game itself.
Two other cards are scenery cards that act as scenery tiles to be placed on the board, perhaps as objectives or just plain sight blockers.
The final 2 cards are the faction image card (read this as a the pack’s cover card) and the rules synopsis card.
The cards themselves are full gloss high quality image cards, though considering these cards are used as measuring devices within the game, they are of a thinner card stock then what I would have liked. Protecting these cards is going to become quite imperative before actual gaming.
Included in the box as well is a small rules reference card which has the round-up information for each turn for the game itself.
The MERCS game runs on 10 sided dice. The faction box includes 6 of these dice coloured in the same color as the faction box itself. In this case they are yellow to match my CCC faction.
The miniatures themselves are very nicely sculpted. They are slightly smaller than the 25mm hero miniatures we have come to know (such as Warhammer or Warmachine). The proportions are all realistic and the poses with what has been released so far seem quite dynamic and real. I should also mention here that lipped 30mm bases are provided for all the miniatures.
The first miniature in the box is the demolition specialist. He comes in four pieces that can only produce one pose. The casting of the miniatures leaves very little flash or other moulding excess.
The next miniature is the Sniper. He comes in three pieces which produces only one pose. I find that the face of this miniature being more revealed (no helmet) is a little comical with his chiseled jaw line. Also when assembled, the miniatures tends to lean forward quite a bit, so some work needs to be done to the base to counter this.
The Assault leader only comes in two parts, the body and the back pack. I found that the rifle barrel tip was very delicate and actually snapped off. I replaced the miniature but found that the barrel tip was on this new miniature was just as delicate. It would have benefited this miniature if the barrel was larger. I loath to think how I’m going to transport this miniature around in foam protection without damaging it.
The Heavy Assault miniature comes in four parts. The chain gun, the backpack and the ammo feed. When assembling this miniature trying to get the ammo feed to connect to the correct spot on the back pack and the chain gun required a bit of trial and error. In the end I actually had to bend it significantly to make it fit. Whether this was a design fault or a bend/faulty ammo feed I’m not sure.
The Assault Trooper comes in four parts. There is two heads to choose from, one which has the helmet and without. This miniature’s parts all fit very snugly together and the post was very dynamic in the end. Again the barrel of the gun suffered the same issue as the Assault Leader in that it is quite delicate and bend very easily.
The final miniature is the Incinerator. Two parts for this one which included the body and the backpack with a long straight hose connection which you need to bend to fit to the flamer thrower when assembling the miniature.
Overall I found that the miniatures were beautifully sculpted and were very well produced (with the minor exception of the gun barrels). I like the fact that all I have to do is buy the rulebook, buy this box and then I’m ready to play.
There are more miniatures currently coming out for each of the factions, so I highly recommend that you have a look over at the MERCS website to see the other miniatures they have available.