Armoured Syndicate El Toro

Megaton Games is going to launch Armoured Syndicate later this year, and already had a few models out at last years SPIEL in Essen.

Armoured Syndicate is a postapocalyptic game in 32mm scale, covering wasteland survivors and industrial mechs, that are repurposed for warfare. One of these mechs is El Toro from the Cuervos Muertos faction (spanish for Dead Crows).

El Toro is a resin kit and comes in a cardboard box with solid wrapping (everybody loves bubble wrap!). The parts are still on the casting sprue and bagged. Along with the parts comes a very solid base and an instruction leaflet.

The parts are complete and cast is crisp. Flash is minimal and only a few minor casting problems, like small air bubbles or offset. Prior to the build process i washed the parts in lukewarm soap water, separated the parts from the casts and sorted them, to make sure the kit is complete. By pre-sorting the parts, i divided them into "building groups" that would later be assembled to the complete model.

Starting with the groin, which was quite easy to build, as it only required the back armour. Smaller pieces can be added simply with superglue, but bigger parts need pinning, so think about drilling them before hand.

After the groin, i assembled the upper body. I left the head unglued until the final assembly, as i wanted it to face the same way as one of the weapons, to bring more dynamic into the pose. Once again, smaller parts glued to a bigger part, not a big problem.

Next up the weapon arms. With the ball joints you have room for posing here, i decided for more or less straight spreaded arms, as the major position would come by the shoulder joint. Currently both hands have guns, maybe later they will add close combat weapons or bigger weaponry, so it might make sense to magnetize these parts.

A bit more difficult were the legs, as the ball joints give you once again a lot of flexibility, but you have to keep in mind that the hips are connect to the pelvis. So if these are not on the same height, the whole posture will be tilted. I assembled the ancle armour to the legs and the cables as well. The feet were pinned to be easier assembled.

After the glue settled, i connected both legs with pins to the pelvis.

Step by step the assembly continued. Rests and other smaller structures (like dice) are helpful to support larger parts while the glue settles.

El Toro is huge, really, really huge. He solidly fills the scale and towers above other 28-32mm miniatures, like Infinity or even a Space Marines. To continue, he easily dwarfs even Warmachine Warjacks.

A view around the finished model.

Conclusion
Building a kit with so many parts and of this size is a bit of a challenge. But with patience and preparation (washing the resin and pinning) you get it done. It is more difficult than assembling plastic, but it is so more forgiving than building a kit that size made from pewter / lead.

The kit costs around 55 Euro, that might not be cheap, but remember it is a almost 4 Inch / 10 cm high miniature and compared to Warjacks or Infinity Tags (both of with costs around 35-40 Euro) it is quite fair. The casting is solid and the parts are quite massive, this gives the whole kit a good weight (might be tricky while building) and with that, a certain haptic feedback on value.

If you're looking forward to get your hands on one of these, check out Megaton Games, or use the chance that they will be at Salute 2016 in London, booth TL 16.

Link: Megaton Games