Boromite Force - Beyond the Gates of Antares

I had play tested the BGoA rules and since its release have had several more games, all those games have seen proxy figures used for the BGoA factions. As I do really like the rules (highly recommend them), I thought it best to paint up a store army. Based on the lack of interest and low sales of the figures, it seemed apparent that I should either paint up a Boromite or Freeborn force. Though as I already had two Boromite units done (from the playtest days), it was easy for me to choose the Boromite faction as the store army.

To the already painted units, I added another four to bring the force up to around 600pts. I was going to do a matriarch as well, but it is essentially another command squad though weak on firepower so skipped it (though see below for major gripe with Warlord games and BGoA).

I ended up with:
1x Overseer Command Squad with extra troops and plasma grenades
2x Gang Fighter Squad with plasma grenades
1x Work Gang with Mass Compactors and Implosion Grenades
1x Support Team with X-Launcher
1x Lava Mite Brood

Boromite Combat Force

 

For the command squad I purchased a couple of extra troops to bump the squad to five figures. I wanted the leader to stand out from the rest of the troopers and succeeded (to much in retrospect). I should have used his paint scheme on the lava might handler and just gone with a lighter green (yellowish) "skin" for the overall leader. Someone also pointed out that I have the superhero The Thing leading the Boromites :)
 

Reinforced Overseer Squad

The core of the army is a couple of units of Gang Fighters. It is hard to see in these photos but the exposed "skin" is less "green" than the green "rocky" skin. I used Necrotic Flesh spray from The Army Painter then "painted" the stone skin with Vallejo air color Green Zinc.
 

#1 Gang Fighter Squad



#2 Gang Fighter Squad

Nothing beats the close range fire like the Mass Compactors and so added one unit with them. For the "tech" bitz on the models, I went with metallic silver for most weapons and gold/brass for the trim and non-weapon bits. Hard to see but the Reflex Armor nodules are gold metallic.
 

Work Gang w/ Mass Compactors

You can just see a little bit of it on the X-Launcher support team figures, but to add "color" to the figures I went with a red accent. Any clothes were painted red and most of the pouches were painted in a red leather tone. I am contemplating painting the few "mortar" rounds/globes in a highly contrasting color, such as bright yellow.
 

X-Launcher Support Team

For my close combat "specialist" unit, I of course went with the Lavamites. Their three attacks at -2 to saves per model is going to be brutal when they close with he enemy. To go with their namesake, I pretty much painted them as lava! The handler was painted in my basic Boromite scheme, though as noted above I would redo him in the oranges red scheme to reflect how much time he spends around the mites.
 

Small Lavamite Brood 

Of course all models were completely dipped to darken up and "black line" the figures. I will most likely include one or two support units with Mag Light Support weapons (aka Machineguns) but will see what other release they do for the Boromites.

BGoA Gripe
Besides the price gouging of the Beyond the Gates of Antares figures, the most frustrating issue I have (as well as customers demonstrated by lost sales) with the BGoA miniature line, is the incomplete units included in a blister or box. The ignorance on what should come in a blister or boxed set is kind of staggering, in that it applies to almost every single blister or  boxed set they have produced so far.

Basically they never give you enough figures, weapons or drones to field a full unit. As an example, the new $32.00 Boromite Matriarch boxed set comes with the Matriarch, one guildless and two gun drones (about twice the size of the Spotter drone shown above). The unit could be upgraded with a spotter drone, two shield drones and two extra gun drones, but alas they don't includes those. I have had a customer put back the boxed set from the counter when he realized you only got two gun drones.

I could list the problems with each blister or boxed set, but alas it applies to at least 90% of their range. What Warlord Games seems to not understand, unlike say a company which does 15mm WW2, is that the majority of gamers want to buy the whole unit outright. The gamer will decide for each game whether to field the unit at reduced or full strength or somewhere in between, but at least he has the option if he was able to purchase the whole unit. It also doesn’t help when say they release the Concord Drop Squads but no Command Drop Squad that you must field in order to include Drop Squads in the army!

The larger impact of this practice is that the whole game of BGoA has the feeling of being incomplete, disorganized and poorly thought out. From a commercial stand point it is making it very difficult to sell the game and figures (as well as the prices) at the store, even though the rules are excellent.