[Tabletop Wargaming/Minis] AT-43

[Hotfoot]

Well, I was wandering around my gaming store today, and I just happened to notice a rather interesting display of minis near the front of the store. Naturally, I was intrigued, since I always like looking at well-painted minis and dioramas, especially for the purposes of having models for RPG use. They looked well done, so I took a look at the boxes, interested in seeing what the price was and how much variety they had.

The boxes were packed with a sheet of clear plastic, letting you see the minis inside clearly, in full color. Yes, that's right, pre-painted. More than that, not RANDOM. Okay, there's got to be a downside, right? Well, there is. They're pretty expensive, running at $25-30 for a box of a squad of infantry (6-9), powered armor (3), or combat walker (1 + cargo crate). It's also pretty recent, so variety is pretty sparse. There were only two armies available, and unit selection was pretty much basic infantry, elite infantry, powered armors, and striders, though apparently there are more available from the company.

So I said to myself, hey, if the rules don't completely suck ass, I might pick me up the starter box and see if I can't get my buddies into it. One trip home and a google search later, I find the Official Website, complete with a free rulebook. After a brief readthrough, the rules seem to be pretty solid, very much similar to 40K in many respects, but more streamlined.

Anyone else even heard of this yet, or am I alone here? It looks a hell of a lot better than *Clix/WotC grab bag game #124/40K, especially for people who:

A. Don't have the time/patience/skill to build and paint an army, complete with customizations
B. Don't have the time/patience/huge amounts of disposable income to spend silly amounts of money on CCG-style minis and just want to buy what they fucking want to play with.