Death World Basing Kit Unpacking & Review

Over the weekend I picked up GW's new Death World Basing Kit and since the product description on their website is on the vague side I thought I would post a more complete break down of what's in the kit. First off, the kit comes in a sturdy plastic case with an easy to remove lid and compartments for the components - a thoughtful feature.

The set's real selling point is the sheet of brass etched jungle foliage. The single sheet contains 16 large palm leaves, 7 large fern like branches, 13 small ferns, 5 leafy vines and 14 thorny vines. These are all nicely detailed, but for the cost of the set it would have been nice to get two sheets considering the rest of the kit isn't terribly impressive.

Which lead us to the low point of this review.  There are two bags of different sized gravel in the set. While convenient, you can scrounge up free rocks just about anywhere.  Insert your own McKayla Maroney is not impressed meme here.

Next there are two bags of resin pieces. Most of the sculpts have been reused from other GW sets. Many of the smaller pieces consist of skulls, spiders and small leaves. There are three pieces that incorporate the Venus fly trap plant from the Catachan heavy weapon team.  Additionally, some pieces include battlefield debris such as a las-gun and a musket. The set includes three square pieces for fantasy bases which use various bits from the stegadon kit.

Four large resin pieces are included for bigger bases. These include a large log with a skeleton wrapped in spider webs, two pieces of Lizardmen ruins and a boring 40mm round base with a fly trap plant and Space Marine helmet.

The resin pieces are convenient, but are likely not going to be worth the purchase if your bits box is decently stocked.  Conversely, if you're looking to deck out an entire army with temple themed bases, this kit won't have enough supplies for your project.  The flat bottom of some of the resin pieces are rather thick, which means you'll have to put in a bit of work to get the piece to blend into the base your working with.  These criticisms aside, the quality of the resin casts are excellent.  The details are crisp and there was not a single poorly cast piece in my set.

Outside of the brass etched foliage, this kit is nice, but hard to justify the $33 price (which is why I bought mine for $24.50 - thanks FLGS Black Friday sale!). If you're really desperate to get the foliage, the kit might be worth it to you. I have not been able to find another good set, aside from a store in England and I'm loathe to order things internationally.  Overall, you should be able to get some mileage out of the kit to spruce up the center piece models in your army - characters, monsters, elite units and the like.  If that's your goal, then I'd recommend the set.

Golden Skull Painting Contest 2012

This past weekend Games Workshop's L.A. Battle Bunker (which is in Orange County) held their annual super-hobby-gasm weekend, which included the 3rd annual Golden Skull painting competition.  It's like the Golden Daemon, except that people like me actually have a chance to win a prize.  Speaking of which, my Saurus Calvary won first place in the fantasy regiment category and my Albino Suarus Lord won first place for fantasy singles.  I'm told I have some engraved trophies coming my way, how awesome!  The store did a great job of organizing the painting contest, which was more streamlined from the past two years.  More coverage can be found on the store's facebook page. 

Here's the overall winner, a murderous Wall-E:

And first place 40k squad: