GW recently released these science fiction law enforcement models, and I picked up a box as soon as I could.
The models are attractive, and lend themselves to a lot of uses – both in and out of the GW universe.
The good:
The models look nice.
They are humans in body armor that would seem to fit nicely with several lines of "heroic 28mm" human figures, and can work for police, security, paramilitary, and other roles.
They are multi-part models.
Each body comes with at least two weapons options (allowing the five bodies to be constructed as ten unique builds).
There are accessories, such as ammo pouches, grenades, holstered handguns, even handcuffs.
The box comes with two identical sprues, so there are extras of some things, which can go into your bitz box for use with other models.
These are GW plastic models, so are hard plastic, can be glued with plastic glues (super glue is not required), and can be cut cleanly for simple conversions.
The disappointing:
The sprues are crowded and tight – it can be difficult to get your side cutters into position to cut the pieces out.
The models, despite being multi-part, have limited build options.
There are a lot of parts for each model, particularly when you consider that they are designed so that each body needs to have a matched torso set (front and back), matched legs (matched with each other, and the torso), and appears to require a matched set of arms (matched with each other and the torso – but these are likely to be the easiest to mix and match).
Each model has a head, torso front, torso back, neck (?), right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm, right hand and left hand – ten matched parts for the basic body, then more to add equipment. One figure requires an additional part for the lower front portion of the tunic. Much more fiddly than you might expect for minis that are not really multi-pose – by comparison, many GW kits (such as Cadians) have head, torso (one or two piece), legs, and right and left arms (sometimes with hands attached), and legs, a total of 5-8 body pieces, plus equipment, and allow a greater variety of poses.
I think that the models will be useful in a variety of roles for me, but am not rushing out to buy several more boxes (as I was thinking of when I first saw these minis), since the same ten minis (five poses, each with two weapons options) will be repeated, and building them is not as fun as building other minis – such as SM tactical squads, orks, or Cadians.
