The Hooch Hauler. Personally for me this is a tale of woe and triumph.
I was incredibly excited by the CID rules, and when I saw the rules stayed as is and we saw the final render I was ready to buy this model day 1.
Then the price hit and while I wasn't expecting to pay so much, I did because I love Trolls and the rules seem like they have a lot of synergy and makes a neat package that slots into almost any caster in the faction. Luckily I had just about the cost of the Hauler left over from selling some of my old GW models and while I expected that to go further in financing new hobby purchases, I took the plunge day 1.
And then the agonizing wait began.
Then finally it arrived....and sat in my house for two weeks in its box.
Basically work was pushing me into a lot of overtime and we had a lot going on with the family that by the time I got my daughters in bed at night (the only time I can dedicate to actually building a model), I was so exhausted that I didn't have the will to start building what is literally the largest and most complex model Privateer Press has ever produced.
This weekend I finally dedicated the time to build it, and it was an adventure.
Friday night I started assembly with a porter at my side. I figured some alcohol would be thematic and help me get through this monster of a model.
I'm not kidding when I say this model is a monster. The modelers at PP did an utterly incredible job so that when it came to where the injection points for the molds on the various pieces went, every single part had the extra flash in places where you would not see it once the model was assembled.
Clearly there was a lot of thought put into the design in terms of model assembly goes. This was absolutely necessary actually, because when it came to extra flash/resin on parts of the model there is an absolute ton of it.
This is what my work area looked like when I called it quits later Friday night, and that's with a good round of initial cleaning already wiped away!
Saturday night I returned to my project, this time armed with a healthy pour of some fine Canadian rye whiskey.
To my surprise I was able to push through another three hours of pinning, cleaning, and gluing and was able to complete the model.
Suffice it to say this thing is HUGE! I wanted to see if I could possibly get it even temporarily into the foam for my other 120mm based models and did a group shot for size comparison.
Model Quality
The quality on the Hooch Hauler is frankly outstanding. I'm not sure if it's because it's a small production run done as part of the new Black Anchor Heavy Industries (ie. produced in house at PP in Washington), or if it's because this is the first production run using the molds - but the details are really good.
The parts of the model you'll see are really well detailed and...absolutely clean, there weren't any mold lines to remove whatsoever. As stated there was a lot of flash and resin to chop off with clippers and a fresh exacto blade, but none of it impacts the model in a aesthetic way. The mold designers at PP deserve a lot of credit, they really did their homework with this.
Assembly
This thing was a monster to get through, very intimidating at over 40 pieces and some parts that definitely want pinning.
That said, I pin a lot of my models because I want to ensure they hold up, but I had to do far less of that with this than I initially thought I would. The designers here really did a fantastic job with almost all of it so that things generally fit together in a tab-in-slot kind of way that didn't necessitate pinning. And they fit! So often things don't line up easily, or you have to pin anyway - but everything came together shockingly well for a model of this size and complexity.
That said there are some pieces where I paused to wonder if it was a necessary trade off or an intense pathological hatred that drove part of the assembly. The drivers seat was definitely a challenge, I ended up pinning into the cushion the driver sits on and then pinning that deeply into the barrel. And then there are the torches at the top. They have a pretty deep slot/tab design, but the bases of them weren't big enough to be able to drill into to attempt to pin them in. What's worse is that they're a necessity so that you can put in the cloth between them, which then serves as the mount/glue point for the troll up top jumping on the catapult to launch the primary gun.
To PP's credit however that part went together far easier than I thought it would. I was anticipating a lot of greenstuff to hold that cloth in place - but it was surprisingly easy. The troll also glued on shockingly well onto the cloth so it went very quickly to get the last bits assembled.
Finally the instructions were very detailed, probably because they had to be for a model like this, but it was greatly appreciated. Overall when I was assembling it, I was generally impressed by how much thought went into making the assembly as easy as it could be for a model this complex.
If this is what Black Anchor Heavy Industries is going to produce quality wise, then they've really hit it out of the park on that front. You certainly have to pay a pretty penny for this model, but the quality you're getting is spot on.
Other Factors
I am hoping that Battle Foam will quickly have a foam tray designed for this model, but it's going to have to be as tall as the Gargantuan foam trays as you can tell from the last picture. If one isn't coming soon I'll probably create something myself for it using some plasticard and foam. Transporting it is going to be a bit nerve wracking until then.
While I think the model is gorgeous, part of me kind of wishes it was a bit more modest. It's huge, and it's detailed, and it's complicated - which is all built into why it's so incredibly expensive. This definitely feels like a project that PP turned over to their artists and just let them push themselves as far as they could go. It's definitely an achievement in terms of design and production, but it comes with such a high cost.
While that sounds awesome, as an engineer I've been around long enough to know the value of having a project manager come in and say "this is great, but you might want to tone it back some to keep costs down."
No one did that at Privateer Press when it came to the Hooch Hauler. They stopped at "it's great" and decided to take a risk selling it as the premium product it is.
Gaming
I should get my first games with the Hauler this week. As it is a Hooch Hauler + Northkin Raiders + Full Krielstone + CA is 45 points, which in Storm of the North is 2 free solos and 15 points away from maximizing your free points allotment. In fact it does the same thing in Kriel Company, once the Hauler is officially added to that theme - but KC is such a terrible theme because of the limitation on "ranged only beasts" that I generally don't want to go down that route list wise. This is a shame because it's the only other theme we have to play our first Battle Engine in, but as it is, I'm not sure what I can get in there to make it work.
I'm very intrigued to play the list with Grissel1 using the package above plus some Long Riders, a Mauler, and a Brawler. Calamity and her fell calls would work very well with the Raiders gun wise or the old yo-yo'ing Long Riders. Beyond that, I think there's a place for this in either Grim, though I'm struggling to pick out exactly what I want in each of those lists.
Conclusions
The Hooch Hauler is definitely worth it if you care about model quality and aesthetics, though the price point is way higher than what I expected to pay for a single model in WMHD. You definitely get your money's worth in the final product, the only thing is questioning whether or not the model should have been made to this size and complexity.
As a product it feels like PP has taken a big risk here. I hope they do well because I love what the company is doing, but I guess we will see if this kind of product is successful for them.
