It’s the new year and I trust Twitter to work correctly as much as I trust myself in a Greggs not to buy a steak bake so I’m going back to using my blog for all the little posts and updates. Enjoy!

After my New Year’s celebration in Middlesbrough, the traditional New Year Shawarma and a drive back to Leeds, my original plan had been to assemble and at least undercoat the figures from the Phaseline BPRE box in preparation for their first game tomorrow during our traditional New Year’s gaming session up North at the home of the Creative Regular Opponent (previously seen in Operation Carronade and the General d’Armee-ing). We’re doing a smorgasbord of games (with other titles such as 0200, What a Tanker and Battletech on the table) so I decided that we could easily fit a short night raid into the day of gaming.

However, my plan was scuppered when I started going through the Hongbin guys and started finding issues with the figures – mould slip, failed details and air bubbles that completely destroyed part of some figures’ feet. I’d be unhappy if these were from basic models from Spectre, but coming from a premium box at a premium price, this is really concerning. I need to check the state of the rest for a full picture but Echelon has already said they’ll replace any figures that have issues. I’ll report more when I get through and work out the next step.

Looks like my regular Opponents tomorrow will just have to use the basic figures I already have painted. This is a shame as I really like the look of the new guys – the PKM team especially has some cool elements that I find neat, such as the bag of spare barrels on the assistant. Plus, more full auto support weapons are always handy.

UPDATE: New details over on the follow up post, click here!