Not long ago I took a look at one of the blister packs from Spartan Games which housed the impressive Flagship from the Iron Dwarves fleet. Now I'm going to take a look at the starter fleet for the race and delve into a little bit about how they play in Uncharted Seas.

Spartan Games is of course re-releasing the fleets with new miniatures in September but lets take a look at their current starter fleet and the models within. Come September when I can get my hands on the newer fleet we shall see the comparison between their newer and older techniques.

So first off lets check out the box itself. The packaging is glossy and full colour with a great example of models and terrain on the front. The back also has information on the fleet itself and more images showing off some more of the fleets on offer from Spartan Games.

Now inside the box itself. First Spartan Games supply you with a few templates and a token sheet that you can use in your games. Its refreshing to have them come with your product rather than having to photocopy them yourself. Obviously the tokens are fairly small and fiddly but you can back them onto a piece of cardboard for some extra thickness or even mount them on small round counters like I have seen other hobbyist do.

Inside is also a nice set of statistic cards for the fleet. These are fully updated with the latest errata and are incredibly handy to have with you as your playing.

You also get a selection of cards that are important for the game. These cards are nice and hard wearing with a good colour finish.

Cards in the game are used for a variety of things. Some boost the potential of a single ship, others influence an entire squadron of ships. There are also race specific cards which in the case of the dwarves involve plenty of repairing and boosting of their guns. You can also find a few cards which can be played at the start of a turn to influence things like wind direction, heal ships, or even give you an initiative plus to gain the upper hand.

Now lets get onto the important part, the models. Here are the frigates you get in the box. They come, like all of the ships wrapped in bubble wrap to protect them and also they can be reused in order to transport them. This is something pretty unique to the Iron Dwarves in that because they don't have sails they are incredibly transportable.

There is a lot of flash on the frigates but most of it is easily removed. The jagged edges left over will need a craft knife to cut off so you have a smooth surface to paint on.

Next on the list is the cruisers. Again they have a small amount of flash and jagged edges around the bottom of the hull but its nothing that can't be sorted out with a bit of trimming.

And last but not least is the mighty battleship. Essentially the base model of the flagship from last time it suffers from the same little pit falls around the cannons and the hull, but its another great simple model to paint.

In terms of tactics with the Iron Dwarves they move incredibly slow but have the durability to take a massive amount of firepower from the enemy. With guns that have incredible damage at more or less all the range bands they can deal with many ships at once.

The frigates have the advantage of being able to fire in 360 degrees with their turrets so it really encourages you to get right into the middle of other ships and blast them from all angles. This is contrasted with the dwarf cruisers which just have guns on the port and starboard. This tends to have you leaning towards a defensive stance with these guys screening your larger battleship from oncoming foes. The battleship is just a monster in every sense of the word. With guns on every side of its ship (bar the rear) it can plow right into the midst of a sea battle and deal incredible amounts of damage.

So that's a bit of a look at the Iron Dwarves Starter Fleet!

What do you guys think? Drop some comments below.