Defiance Games: A review of the UAMC marines!

Hi, it's time for another review! This time I will take a look at the plastic United Americas Marine Corps made by the American manufacturer Defiance Games lead by Tony Reidy. Some may have heard that the release date of these miniatures was postphoned several times and that most of that was the result of an issue about the name use of the box which was originally United States Marine Corps. Therefor all the boxes needed to be reprinted and repacked. But after all that waiting here's a review of probably the most generic plastic modular futuristic soldiers you can currently find on the market. Let's take a look ...

The box

The box art is really stunning, when I opened the package I was sure the box art would be similar to the recent Wargames Factory artwork (if you know their box art you will know!) but it wasn't. The box was decorated with the image of a fierce marine equipped with his trusty assault rifle and dressed in a great looking body armor. I must credit the illustrator Diego Gisbert Llorens and the package designer Saffron Media for their excellent work!

The back of the box is decorated with some fluff about the United Americas Marine Corps and their campaigns. In addition to that there are also some examples of the poses you can make with the content and a list with the different parts which you can find on the sprues. I think this a great idea to list up all the different parts the box contains so any unaware wargamer can see if he can use the box for the miniatures or just for some old school kitbashing.

The sprues

The box contains sufficient parts to assemble 24 marines equipped with a variety of light weaponry and a heavy machinegun! The set also includes suffient baseswhich are almost identical to those made by Games Workshop to base the miniatures. Some of these bases come attached to the sprues while others are nicely packaged in a small plastic zip bag. Ok, up to the sprues! The box contains 12 identical sprues, each of these sprues accomodates two marines and sufficient bits for the bits box. Here you can see a picture of the sprue, each of these sprues contains three different pair of legs but only two bodies? I prefered another body but well there's always room for improvement as it's their first plastic boxed kit they have released.

As requested I also made close ups of the different parts in the box. First of all we have the bodies and a bagpack for the long and brutal campaigns in Aleutia and during the Jabaoting uprise. The bodies are dressed in body armour similar to the armor worn in the Starship Trooper films. Second of all we have the heads each of the sprues contains 6 heads of which some have helmets and goggles while other have caps or a simply bare headed. I love this amount of heads but would have prefered at least two heads with an open helmets as the one on the left so you can equip all your soldiers with this type.

Next we have an array of weaponry starting with two assault rifles which are probably the core weapon of the United Americas Marine Corps. Another weapon which is included on the sprue is a modern version of a shotgun and a massive heavy machinegun. I especially love the look of this heavy machinegun as it looks both mobile and deadly (I just see I haven't took a picture of it in close up but you can see it on the assembled models or the entire sprue picture).

There's also another assault rifle included which is probably the favorite weapon of the officers and engineers. I'm not sure if it's a machine gun and a grenade launcher or one of the two but it looks badass!

Assembled

As soon as I had the time I assembled some of these great miniatures. The hard plastic parts were easy to remove from the sprues and only needed some basic flash removal on the arms and bodies. I first started with attached the legs on the base so I had a good base to hold when assembling the rest of the miniatures. after that I fitted and attached the chosen weapons and the head. Be careful always dry fit your parts before you glue them in place. this way can save you lots of problems. Take a look, personally I think they look great and look like they have just walked of the set of Starship Troopers!

Size comparison

As every wargamer want to know are they compatible with my existing army or prefered miniature manufacturer? Well for that reason I have included a scle comparison with some other science fiction manufacturers such as Games Workshop, Kallistra and Grenadier miniatures. all the miniatures seem to fit and none of them looks odd in the selection. There's only one difference and that's the chunkiness of the other models probably because most of the others are metal except for the Space Marine but those are always chunky. From the left to the right you have: A Games Workshop Catachan, a Games Workshop Space Marine, A Kallistra ganger, the Defiance Games marine and a Grenadier models agent.

Profile card

The boxed set also includes a profile card for the United Americas Marine Corps which you can use with the upcoming Alien War ruleset. However most of these miniatures will be used probably with another ruleset, I think the profile card really adds more interesting content to the already full box!

Conclusion

I really love this set as it's one of the most generic plastic multipart futuristic trooper kits I have seen on the market. The box retails for $30 and contains enough parts to make 24 marines ready to do a tour of duty across the galaxy and beyond! The only minor issue I have besides the lack of another body is that some of the detail is not so clearly defined. But that's a minor issue as you have a bunch of tough guys willing to kill some nasty bugs on a desolate planet. Next plastic releases are bugs scheduled on June 18th and the Germans scheduled around the end of June! Semper Fi!

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