Beware the Arrival of "Mars Attacks!"

If you stop by here with any regularity you already know that I'm a big supporter of Mantic Games. It all started with Dreadball for me, but since that original Kickstarter campaign I've ended up supporting several others. One that I didn't pledge for was Mars Attacks!

When Mantic released their plans to put out a game based on the Mars Attacks! license via Kickstarter, I wasn't all that interested. Not having been a fan of the trading card games or other related materials, my exposure to the license was solely the Tim Burton movie. I remember at the time that I really didn't like it, so I glanced at the campaign a few times, then let it pass.

Shortly thereafter stuff from my way-larger-than-it-should-have-been Deadzone pledge started showing up and I pretty much forgot all about Mars Attacks.

Fast forward a few months and images and videos for the game start popping up. I like what I'm seeing, and since I already own Deadzone, I start thinking that I should check this game out. Long story short I ended up ordering the pre-order bundle directly from Mantic, which shipped about 10 days ago and landed (literally) on my doorstep yesterday.

I had a chance to crack the two boxes open and check it all out. The figures look surprisingly good for the material they're using and I'm sure they can be painted up quite nicely. I spent a bit time putting together the scenery from the base box and ended up with a pretty decent table layout (shown below). Ironically, with all the scenery I have for Deadzone, I've never actually built anything...I had this stuff for less than 4 hours before I needed to put it on the table.

The models and the scenery pieces will need some scraping to remove mould lines and some burrs. Additionally, some of them are bent over pretty badly and will require the hot-cold water treatment to sort out. I also wish that there some more intact wall pieces, as the amount of rubble provided really doesn't work in my mind with how much damage you're actually seeing on the walls. All that said however I was impressed with the package.

This one might actually jump up in my painting queue pretty quickly. Those martians need painted so that I can attach their cool little helmet domes! In retrospect I do wish I'd backed the campaign, because I could have gotten a LOT more cool stuff for the money I spent on this set. Ah well, can't win 'em all...