The day is here – Spectre has released the figures they have been teasing and previewing for the last few weeks.
So we have the SWAT Team, we have the Criminal Element Gang and we have the Heist Crew. We also have a resin Bearcat for your SWAT team to ride around in, making this one of the largest releases Spectre has done for a while.
There are a few interesting things to point out with this release. The first is that these figures are not being released in metal – instead, each set includes the line “These Miniatures are cast in high-quality resin in the USA by Blacksite Studios at their facility in Texas.” Now I know people get spicy about resin vs metal (even back to Spectre’s launch there was the first Militia/Task Force releases that trialled resin before returning to metal) but there is a pretty major positive to this – it’s one less part of the fulfilment chain that is outside of Spectre or it’s partners. Blacksite is also a known producer of resin products, having released several games such as Lunar and Don’t Look Back (among others). I haven’t personally had hands-on time with any of it but from the people I’ve talked to I’ve heard good things about it’s quality. It will be interesting to see how far this fulfilment partnership goes – having the figures made cast in the US should hopefully present the ability to reduce postage costs for the gamers stateside if they also started acting as a postage hub. No change has been mentioned about it yet, but there are plenty of comments asking for it already!
Then we have the bundles – there are three at the moment: one with the SWAT and Bearcat, another with Criminal Element, Heist Crew and the old Criminal Element Heavies squad for a criminal gang, and the final set being all the brand new releases for the collector. As well as giving you a quick way of getting all the products in your cart with a single click (always dangerous this close to pay day), it does give a decent discount for those wanting everything.
Also of note, Spectre is actually out in Texas with the team at Blacksite Studios. As well as showing off Spectre figures all over the boards and trying out Lunar, they have also got into some playtesting of the next set of Spectre Operations rules.
Good news for us, we actually got a sneak peek of one of the playtest missions they played. It continues to bring up some interesting concepts, including hints of a campaign system with the Operation Web. There are also little hints of tweaks for the style of game played, although it will be interesting to see if that’s a GM thing or something included in the ruleset as various modules covering Law Enforcement vs Black Ops or similar differences. The overall description of the mission sounds like it’s going to be a whole other game compared the Version 2, so I’ll be standing by as Spectre reveals more.