Reviewed: Albedo Combat Patrol Bluewind Team

Albedo Combat Patrol is part of that special genre, or sub-genre, or perhaps sub-sub genre (I don’t know how far down the rabbit hole one goes with this sort of thing) of “furry animals with human characteristics engaged in terrible, gritty violence with one another”, or “FAWHCEITGVWOA” for short. Fellow occupiers of this niche include the illustrious likes of the Redwall series, Animal Farm and Watership Down. Based on the Albedo Anthropomorphics comic series by Steve Gallaci, ACW is a Kickstarted 28mm skirmish miniatures game from Chris Abbey at Sally 4^th.  Up for review here is the newly released Blue Wind squad.

The team consists of 12 miniatures or ‘critters’ armed with a variety of weaponry and dressed in modern combat fatigues. In addition to the miniatures themselves, the box comes with a set of plastic 25mm bases and a stat card. The figures are cast in white metal, with the torsos and legs in one piece, whilst the arms, heads and tails are separate, as are a couple of very small ammo pouches. The casting is competent for the most part, though I noticed a few holes in the kneeling miniatures where the mold halves haven’t connected properly. The connection points for the arms and heads are bit off as well, and you’d probably need to do a bit of gap filling with epoxy putty on the two-handed weapons. These things aren’t a dealbreaker, but they’re worth mentioning.

I can’t help but feel a sense of Déjà vu since I’m going to say here what I said for the Noggin the Nog miniatures; that they’re just too damn pricey. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Albedo Anthropomorphics isn’t exactly the most iconic comic book out there, so unless you’re a rabid fan of the series (pun definitely intended) or someone who’s always felt that modern combat furry miniatures have always needed to be a ‘thing’, at £44 a pop plus delivery I can’t really see what the draw is. In the likely event that you couldn’t find another ACP player in your area, you couldn’t really use them for any other games either, as the aesthetic is hardly transferable to other genres. The only thing I could think of off the top of my head would be using them as an alien race for Osprey’s Rogue Stars. 

In short, the Blue Wind Team seems to be another one of those products designed for a very small audience who likes this sort of stuff and is prepared to pay a premium price for it. For everyone else though, I’d recommend hopping it.