Warhammer 40,000: Dark Vengeance Unboxing

Originally I wasn't going to buy the boxed set of 6th Edition Warhammer 40,000, Dark Vengeance.  The Dark Angels are a little too angsty, goth, and arrogant for my tastes, and while the chaos models are cool, my Word Bearers army is still in its infancy, and has been on the back burner for ages now.  But then I thought, I do want to get the rulebook.  I did find the small rulebook in 5th edition to be very useful, and far less cumbersome than the full size rulebook.  So I thought a bit, and decided that if I spent a little bit more money than for the big rulebook, I'd get a boatload of great minis too.  If I didn't want to ever paint the Dark Angels, I could always trade them or something.  In the end that put me over the edge.

So on to the unboxing.  The box is thicker than that of the Battle for Black Reach, and is more like the size of the 4th Edition (Battle for Macragge) and previous sets.  It is of the same material too--not the more heavy duty card that Space Hulk and Dreadfleet was packaged in.


Taking off the shrink wrap, the box surface is in a matte finish, which looks pretty cool, I think.  Adds to the somber atmosphere of the 40k Universe in a subtle way.

Opening the box, the interior looks sparse.  It looks like they could have fit the contents in a smaller box if they tried a little harder.

They could easily have shaved an inch off of a box that's 3-1/8" thick.  I would think that cutting the box depth by 30% would have to save warehouse space... The fact that the box is so loosely packed makes me think that some damage could occur during shipping.

The miniatures are what we have come to expect from GW's plastics:  very high quality with some dynamic poses.  I was mainly interested in the Chaos Space Marines, the Helbrute, and cultists in this set, and was thinking of trading/selling the Dark Angels.  After examining the Dark Angels models, perhaps I will reconsider.  I'm not really into the background of the Dark Angels, but I have to admit, these models are very cool.

In addition to the miniatures are the obligatory measuring sticks that no one uses, templates in fashionable neon green, bases, dice, and the books.

The books consist of a Quick Reference Sheet that also has rosters for the miniatures supplied in the box, and a shrink-wrapped collection of other books.

 Taking off the shrink wrap, we have another Quick Reference Sheet, minus the rosters.  Also is a detailed assembly guide for all the miniatures, a quick start How to Play Warhammer 40,000 book, and the mini-rulebook.

The rulebook and the How to Play Warhammer 40,000 book come in high quality covers, but the inside pages are not the high-quality gloss you might expect.  They are full color, but feel like they are made of recycled paper--similar to the pages of more recent issues of White Dwarf Magazine.  Depending on how you feel about recycled paper, this could be a plus or a minus.  For my purposes they are just fine.

So there you have it, Dark Vengeance.  It is a box set that is not quite filled to the brim with awesome.  But that's mainly due to the fact that the box itself it too big.  That in itself isn't a big deal, but it makes me wonder why they did it that way.