[From the Workbench] Super Dungeon Explore

Due to turning 29 this month, my wonderful missus picked me up a copy of Soda Pop Miniature's Super Dungeon Explore. A cool retro 8 bit gaming style board game that comes jam packed with miniatures.

One of the things that is of note with the game, is that this is a taster of what is to come from the Soda Pop Relic Knight's Kickstarter as that will ship with similar plastic miniatures.

I had spoken to a friend who already owns the game and he felt the plastic was similar to that used by Privateer Press, which troubled me a little as I am not the biggest fan of the fibrous resin like nature of that particular medium. I would argue the Soda Pop plastic is a little tougher (perhaps due to the die used) and cleans up a little more cleanly than  the PP stuff I have encountered so far.

I still had issues with mold lines, as well as some burring of the medium. I mitigated this to a large amount by using my X-acto knife rather than my files for the bulk of the clean up. Hopefully once I give them a scrub and undercoat then any rough areas will be hidden.


There are a few nasty gaps that will need to be filled, though I am tempted to focus on the heroes and key boss monsters as the massed critters will probably not suffer the same scrutiny as the larger pieces.



I'm planning on a fairly decent level of painting, but no clever blending or excessive shading as there are lots of models to get through and ultimately this is a board game not a minis game (well, its kind of both).



I'm hearing worrying reports that the plastic may have changed for the expansions, and they come pre-assembled, which never pleases me and is on of the reasons I can't get in to Dust for example. Rackham learned the hard way that gamers and modellers like as pure an experience as possible when it comes to building models. However, I can sympathise with Soda Pop as this is a board game and I am sure for every dedicated modeller like me, there are more guys and girls who just want to get the game out and get playing.



Hopefully once the expansions finally hit these shores I can give a personal opinion on the changes that may have been made.

So, here are the assembled Kobold mob. This is one of two you get in the box, along with a mob of dragon spawn, their daddy Dragon and 9 heroes. (Well, 8 and a giant bear). So this represents about 1/4 of the contents of the box. Not bad value.

I love the aesthetic of the Kobolds. There are four basic grunts (each with their own rules) as well as the wizard leader and a Troll overlord to test the heroes. I could see me picking up a whole unit of these to use in D&D or fantasy battle games if they were not so monopose. Still, I now have a decent sized set of generic goblin type figures for any future RPG sessions.

I should be getting my first game in over the next few days so will be back to report on how the Kobold mob fares. I might even get some paint on them if I am really lucky.