Review: Paulson Games' Mecha Bits

Greetings everyone, sorry for the delay in posts.  As usual that whole 'real life' thing got in the way.  Rest assured I've been working away on my new Tau army and am getting closer to being able to have a playable force ready to go.

In addition to the Tau Battleforce box I acquired to start my army, a friend (Thanks Tim!) gave me a huge box of his old Tau stuff... most of it needing some TLC and repair work but overall a lot of usable stuff.    Included in the box were a number of old Crisis Suits, including one Broadside suit. I managed to put together a team of three 'Fireknife' suits with plasma rifle & missile launchers and they are in progress now.  I was really excited about the Broadside until I figured out I only had one railgun, which makes the Broadside a bit hard to field.  Since single railguns aren't easy to find I started looking around  at alternatives and heard mention of some third-party bits that might just do the trick.

Enter Paulson Games.  This is a relatively new company based out of the Chicago area that specializes in making resin parts that work well for small-scale models.  They have a range of mecha parts that will work very well for a number of different games, including 40K.  I ordered a sampler of parts to see what they look like and am posting a review of them here.

All of Paulson's parts are cast in an off-white resin.  The level of detail is very good and while there is some flash to be cleaned up it's not bad. All of the Paulson parts are shown as-is right from the mailing packet.  I didn't clean up any flash or mold lines yet.

First up, the railguns.  I ordered both the 'long' and 'short' models of the railgun.  As you can see, the 'long' version matches up with the GW railgun (Top in the picture) very well from a length perspective. I actually like the Paulson railgun better as it looks like it has more heft and appears more like a true heavy weapon.  Reminds me more of the long AT guns from World War II.

Railguns

Next, here are the missile launchers.  From top to bottom we have the Paulson 'underslung' launcher, the Paulson regular launcher and the GW Broadside arm launcher at the bottom.  The front of the Paulson launcher is a separate piece and is shown at the bottom in front of the GW launcher to show the width of the overall piece.  The launchers are about the same height but roughly twice as wide as the GW ones.

Missile Launchers

I also ordered some Autocannons and compared them to the GW Tau Burst Cannons. The Paulson cannon is the top one, with the separate front shown for detail.  The two halves of the GW burst cannon are below.  Again, the Paulson autocannon feels more like a true heavy weapon to me.

AutoCannons

Finally, I ordered some alternate heads as well.  Paulson offers two slightly different models of heads and they are compared here to a stock Crisis Suit head.  They will be a nice alternative to the stock GW heads, possibly to show newer suit models or field modifications.  The Paulson models are on the left & center of the two following pictures, with the GW head on the right.  

Front view

Heads - Front View

 Side view

Heads - Side View

The verdict? Overall I'm very pleased with the parts.  They have good detail, a reasonable amount of flash, good prices and excellent shipping rates worldwide.  I'll be ordering more parts over time and hopefully they will keep on expanding their range of products.  As of this writing they have their entire inventory on sale 30-50% off so if you're interested in checking out their stuff order soon!