Dragon Tides: Round 1

To my surprise, my copy of Dragon Tides arrived last week. Dragon Tides is a simple, fun, arcade- and campy-kung fu-movie-inspired board game of martial arts action. It's also the very first officially licensed game that includes Bruce and Brandon Lee.

Here, I've painted the first three of the eight figures that come with the core box (I will also be getting figures from add-ons (henchmen to beat up on!) and Kick Starter exclusives. I forget the names of these figures right off -- the two on the left and right are generic heroes created for the game. But the center figure is Brandon Lee dressed as a cop.

Coming up, there are not-Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Donnie Yen and Bolo Yeung! So yes, a nice collection of great personalities (who are all oddly treated as villains -- Lundgren and Yeung, I guess are OK to be bad, but I want to play Donnie Yen as a good guy). That's just who's in the core box. Yet to come are (not versions of) Steven Segal, Chuck Norris, Brandon Lee as the Crow, Jackie Chan, and Jean Claude Gosh Darn.

Figure quality:
Good and bad. The material is a solid, soft plastic -- something between Reaper Bones and Zombicide. It feels tough and solid enough to it will bend a little but not snap; in the end, I like the material -- it works well. I use Army Painter primer and paint as usual; no issues at all.

The quality of the sculpts are OK. My only complaint are that some of the faces and the details are a little shallow, poorly defined. But it's nothing some good, patient painting can't handle. Major areas such as folds in clothes are much better and provide some nice areas to layer that paint into high-contrast highlights.
A side note: the bases are integral and solid. Each base also has some artistic features unique to each character, all simply for art's sake. I have no issues with the bases, but if you like to rebase your figures, you'll need some patience and a steady hand to cut away the original base.

Despite a couple of those shortcomings (mostly in the smaller details), these figures have attitude! It's nice to have some great martial arts minis finally. I am glad to have them in the collection, and I think they will end up being one of those collections that I will take joy in painting.

One last note on the figures: They are tall. Taller than even heroic scale Reaper figures. The Brandon Lee figure measures 40mm from his feet to the top of his head -- yeah, that tall. So they won't really fit that Zombicide game. But, with the addition of a box or two of henchman (I got two), these masters will have plenty of asses to kick up and down the streets. It would be nice to have slightly smaller figures I could use in other games, but at least the taller sculpts make for some easier painting.

Game: I have yet to play the game, but the general since I get from reviews is that it's a simple, action game with little depth, lots of randomness and plenty of fun.