Firestorm armada- first look on Sorylian starterbox

Hi,
today I'll show you some pics showing contents of starter box for Sorylian collective. This is one of basic races in "Firestorm Armada"- a spaceship wargame by British company Spartan Games.
First of all, short introduction into game mechanics. All systems created by Spartan Games are very similar and easy to learn. They rely on number of six-sided dice. Weapons, shields and ship crew characteristics show how many dice you have to throw during the test. In most cases result of 4+ means success. Some effects can influence your throws, for example shooting through gas clouds gives -1 penalty to throws (instead of 4+ you need a 5+), shooting through bigger meteor fields halves the number of your dices, etc.
Players activate their squadrons in alternate order, meaning that the first player moves, fires and takes whatever actions with his one squadron, then the second player does so, and so on until all squadrons were activated- after that another turn starts.
For more detailed information about game rules feel free to read .pdf rulebook available on the PRODUCERS WEBSITE.
Ok, now to the mentioned starter- Sorylians are giant space lizards! (how awesome is that?). They are higher than men, muscled and wear scales! Although from natural behavior they're very cautious and peaceful, their ships are very fast and maneuverable. Thanks to highs speed ships, and big bodies of their warriors, they make very good boardings of enemy vessels. Most of their weapons are very deadly at close ranges.

In the box, you will find 10 ships- one big battleship (14 cm length), 3 cruisers (9.2 cm each) and 6 frigates (5.8 cm), some paper tokens, assembly guide and ship characteristics.

Tokens and characteristics were printed on good, thick shiny paper. There's not much to tell about them, they look nice and won't get damaged easily.

Flight pegs for ships are made of transparent plastic. It looks quite nice, but unfortunately sticks weren't made with sufficient precise- their diameters vary a bit from each other and from holes in the bottom of ships. I had some problems with putting them in bases and in models. Drilling bigger holes won't make anything better, because you will have big clearance and model won't be stable. As I talked with friends who bought other races, they all had the same problem in their boxes.

Finally the main part of the starter- models.
Hull of each ship was made from good quality resin and engines from well known metal. Cast is very nice and all, even finest, details were carefully shown on the models. Most of things fit together well. Below you can see comparison of all ships with GW high elf.

Unfortunately I got wry battleship and one frigate. All models, except those 2, were straight and without any flaws. Those faulty models were highly curved (I can't show you how did they look, because I took pictures after I repaired them). I had to put them in boiling water and carefully straighten them- it took some time, but it repaid.

More models:

 

Despite few downsides I'm contented I bought that box. The game is fun, models after some work look really nice and lets be honest... space lizards rock!!

Hope I helped someone with this short "review" and thanks for reading,

Czys