Star Wars: Shatterpoint - Assembling the Core Set

Star Wars: Shatterpoint's Core Set contains over a dozen miniatures to assemble and paint, although the miniatures are (mostly) painless to build. Next month, Atomic Mass Games will release Star Wars: Shatterpoint, a new tactical miniatures game built around small squads of Star Wars characters from multiple eras. While Atomic Mass Games already produces the popular Star Wars: Legion game, Shatterpoint uses much smaller teams and is focused on holding specific objectives to win phases of the game (known as Struggles). Another notable difference is that Star Wars: Shatterpoint uses larger miniatures than Star Wars: Legion, which hypothetically makes them easier to build and paint than Legion miniatures. 

While I haven't gotten Star Wars: Shatterpoint to the table yet, I did take some time to build the Core Set this week in preparation for my first game. I'm something of an Atomic Mass Games veteran, as I've built nearly every Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniature produced by the studio since that game launched nearly four years ago. In fact, Marvel: Crisis Protocol was my first miniatures game that I ever took time to build and paint, so the Star Wars: Shatterpoint was an interesting measure of how far along I'd come as a hobbyist and how Atomic Mass Games' design skills had progressed since they launched their first game in 2019. 

The prospect of building miniatures is always a daunting one, especially when the miniatures cost a not-insignificant amount of money to replace. Back in 2019, I was armed with only super glue and a pair of clippers, so building my first Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniatures wasn't exactly an easy task. In fact, I completely botched three of the initial twelve Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniatures in that game's Core Set, forcing me to purchase new miniatures off of eBay.

Since then (and over 100 miniatures later) I've picked up a handful of tools to help me assemble miniatures – an Exacto knife, plastic glue, and toothpicks. All three are cheap to purchase, but have significantly improved my process and made building miniatures a lot less anxiety inducing. Of the three, toothpicks are easily the most important tool – I use them to apply smaller amounts of superglue to miniatures than globbing glue directly from the bottle. Not only does this help players apply glue to the surfaces that actually touch, it also speeds up the time it takes for the glue to dry because you're putting a much smaller amount of glue on the miniature without sacrificing any integrity. The plastic glue is another invaluable tool – plastic glue actually causes the plastic to melt and quickly re-dry, in essence fusing the pieces together instead of sticking them together with glue. Plastic glue is a bit trickier to use than plastic glue as too much glue can damage the miniature, but it's an invaluable cheat when you have two parts that just won't stick together. I often use a small amount of plastic glue on tricky joints after an initial application of super glue, helping to strengthen the bond and ensure things won't break apart. 

In general, the Star Wars: Shatterpoint Core Set miniatures are a lot easier to assemble than their counterparts from Marvel: Crisis Protocol. The four primary units are all very quick builds – Anakin, Asajj, and Maul each have 6-7 pieces and Ashoka has 10 – and don't have too many fiddly bits. Anakin's Clone Troopers and Ashoka's Mandalorian warriors have a couple of smaller parts but aren't too difficult to build either and I appreciated that all of the Secondary Units have alternate builds that allow for some customization straight out of the box. The only truly tricky builds were the Battle Droids – the arms and legs are very spindly with some very small joints and don't necessarily position right without a little extra fiddling. Twice, I had to turn to plastic glue to basically fuse a Battle Droid's legs to its base and one of my Battle Droids didn't have its arms line up so that its rifle was properly resting in its hand like it was supposed to. 

Still, all of the Star Wars: Shatterpoint miniatures are now firmly based and ready for painting, which is big improvement over my first experience with Marvel: Crisis Protocol. Some of this is because I'm a much better hobbyist than I was four years ago, but some of this is because Atomic Mass Games has improved their designs and miniature production than when they started as well. I don't forsee any of the Shatterpoint miniatures having the same infamy as Captain Marvel in the Crisis Protocol core set, and I think most of these miniatures are simple enough that even an inexperienced builder can assemble them without any issues. 

We'll dive into the actual Star Wars: Shatterpoint gameplay in a later article, but you shouldn't be worried about actually building the miniatures. Armed with the right kinds of glue and some patience, Star Wars: Shatterpoint should offer players a fun hobbying experience. 

Star Wars: Shatterpoint will be released in June.