Warlord Games Special Operations Troops- Review

Well, I am back. Who knows for how long, but enjoy it for as long as it happens!

I recently purchased the box of Special Operations troops from Warlord Games, one of their Project Z boxes.

 

 

 Looking at Project Z, it seemed to be that Warlord had just acquired the Wargames Factory kits, repackaged/rebranded them to sell.

And here is the first, easy critique to make is that there is 8 models in the pack, for what was the same price as three times that many in a Wargames Factory box. This change has also had flow on effects for the kit, but lets have a look at what is inside anyway!

 

 

I am off to the land of pedantry for the next bit, so I apologise in advance...

 

Ok, so the above image is the sprue you get. On it, are 8 sets of legs, 8 torsos, a variety of heads, three "groups" of weapons- M16, AK and SA80 plus derivatives. There is also an RPG, and an AT-4. Those familiar with other Wargames Factory kits will know the overscaled versions of their weapons (thick barrels etc), but that is a known quantity, and isn't a big issue.

 

The weapons themselves have a variety of variants, including the LSW version of the SA80, which is nice. The sets do come with underslung grenade launchers, weirdly the M16's UGL is not the common M203, but rather the AG36. Curious choice.

 

Weapon wise, the kit is lacking in a Light Machine Gun, a minimi/M249/PKM would be great to provide a "proper" fireteam.

 

 

For my set of 8, I decided to make a full squad of the "Not Russian" Green Men from the Ukraine conflict. This meant that I would have a squad of 7, equipped with AKs, except for 1 with an RPK and another with a RPG. I gave them all balaclavas over their faces with green stuff too.

The whole squad

 Assembly on most of the figures was fine, for those familiar with the Wargames Factory kits, these assemble basically the same as every other one of those you have ever built. Each torso has a letter, each left arm has a letter, and each right arm has a letter too.

The issue which presents here, is that there are only 8 left arms. Want to use the "A" right arm more than once? You can't, you don't have a left arm for it. And even worse, there are two arms which are specifically for the rocket launchers. So don't want an RPG? Too bad! Get your converting tools out!

And most crucially, there are two bodies marked with the letter A. But only one A left arm. So even if you are being a good boy scout, building exactly what they want you to build, you can't.

Plus they are all in the "standard" Wargames factory pose:

Pictured: A good pose, but not for all 8 men

Similar poses....

The RPG gunner is lovely tho

So, I had to convert. This is where I got to with my guys:

NCO, note the left arm used to be the one holding the AT-4, but with a new hand provided from another plastic kit.

A repose, so they won't all be looking in the same direction

So none of that is a big issue, I mean, I love converting and would have probably converted them anyway. I think, in the initial planned release of these models from Wargames Factory would have been like their other boxed sets, 3 sprues of men, plus an additional sprue of "cool bits". I think that last sprue would have had all of the extra things I dream of (more left arms, LMGs, Sniper Rifles etc).

 

But we will never know now....

 

 

So how do they paint up?

 

 

 

 Overall, I am pretty happy how they ended up, the detail on the models are consistent with the quality I expect from the Wargames Factory plastics, so from that perspective, I am happy.

So, would I buy them again? No, I don't think I would. Why? Well, I am a stickler for Modern combat and equipment (See Skirmish Sangin!), so would prefer probably to buy from others and get accurate modern combat teams.

But, if you want a pan-country modern military unit, perhaps some form of Expendables/A-team type unit, then these guys would probably be a good fit for you!

Lastly, I had a spare man from the unit, so converted a version of the Punisher, from his latest comic incarnation:

 



 

 

Converted (same issue with arms)

Painted front

Painted back

Thanks for reading!

Pooch

After Action Report- Spanner in the works...

So, with the tank crew I had finished last week, I headed down to the local club to play the scenario which I wrote for the tank.

The story of the scenario is in the last post, so we will dive straight in to the game!

So the tank crew have been driving around in their M60, only to have it make a loud bang, and stop working. From there, they make the traditional horror movie decision to split the group into two. Two guys stay in the tank, the other two head out to see what they can find in the nearby buildings.

The tank is incredibly formidable...

But starts attracting some attention from the locals...

The two guys out looting the buildings are made aware that they are attracting the unwanted attention..

And so they head down, to get back to the tank and help out their buddies. They quickly kill the zombie at the base of the building...

And kill another zombie in their path, who had no idea it was coming...

Sean however gets grabbed by another zombie, and luckily is able to kill it before it got him.

Meanwhile, over at the tank, the crew attempted to fire the 50cal cupola MG at the oncoming horde. All the heavy weapon manages to do is to ventilate a nearby bus, with not a single zombie affected! Taking matters into his own hands, one of the crew hop out of the tank, engaging the oncoming zombies with his M16.

While he is successful for a time, he quickly starts attracting a lot of attention...

The two outside the tank are beginning to attract attention too, their stealthy run was interrupted by a low moan from the zombies, attracting more to their position. With their main route blocked, they turned and headed away from the zombies...

He had time to kill a crawling zombie who was blocking his escape route...

Meanwhile, things were getting worse at the tank. The drumming of the 50 cal was bringing in more zombies, and wasn't helping Thomas, fighting for his life on the turret...

The escape route for the two outside the tank was fast closing up...

With Hank caught in combat, struggling to fight off all of the zombies...

Not being able to move made the situation even worse as more zombies piled in...

The situation at the tank continued to worsen, with more and more zombies arriving...

And making matters even worse, the 50cal finally ran out of ammo. The other crewman popped a hatch, and got to work on attacking the swarm of zombies on the tank.

But there are no shortage of zombies surrounding the tank...

Having just seen his buddy torn apart, the remaining survivor was hard pressed to fight off all of the zombies around him..

The remainder of the horde finished their meal, and then headed towards the remaining survivor...

He made a break for it, trying to outrun the zombies...

Only to get caught by a zombie's grab as he ran!

Things around the tank hadn't improved...

And the survivor on the outside was in a bad, bad way...

The last images of the tank weren't any better...

So all in all a cracking game. My plucky band of survivors tried really, really hard to survive, but just got totally overwhelmed by the number of zombies attacking them. End result? No survivors, lots of zombies. Thanks to Tom for a good game, although, that really didn't stop him from slaughtering all of my guys.

If you think you can do any better than I did, I will be posting the scenario up later this week so that you can have a go.

Question for the commenters- Zombtober, what is it, should I be involved in it?

Chris

Survivor Friday- Tank Crew!

When I was making the M60 tank for the Walking Dead Wednesday (here), I got this great idea for a scenario. I am going to play it tomorrow with my buddy Tom, and once I have played it through, I will get it up here on the blog for you all to play!

The story goes like this....

“.. me and every other reservist got called up when the panic hit. There were four of us from farms near Hanksville, Sean, Hank, Ian and me, Thomas. The rest of the crew made up a pretty clever acronym of our name, which they used to prefix whatever we are doing at the time. It was all because we hung out together all the time and made a pretty good tank crew.

Anyway, so the panic hit, and you have a few hundred reservists kicking around the base, with f all to do. There were no orders and a total comms blackout. We weren’t the first to abandon our posts, and I am sure we weren’t the last. Guess we are the interesting ones because we did it with our training tank. She was an older M60A1, supposed to be retired as a training tank since ’05, but since the replacements hadn’t come through, we had kept her running. She was known as ‘Accident’ as a moniker for the number of training drivers who had driven her so “expertly” into anything and everything.

It was easy enough to grab ‘Accident’, after all, we were the ones on duty guarding her. So we made sure she was filled up with gas and whatever MG ammo we could scrounge and then set off. We picked up the gate guards on the way, they were in on it.

The going was pretty good, we didn’t have any trouble on roads. That was where we found our first walkers, and when we lost the two gate guards riding on the back. We were moving slow, trying to weave through traffic, trying not to throw a track. The two guys on the back didn’t stand a chance. One got grabbed, the other tried to help. I watched them tear those guys apart from the safety of the turret cupola.

We were moving through the outskirts of some town when our luck finally ran out. The engine gave this almighty bang, and then quit. We had all hopped out to see what the problem was, taking turns suggesting fixes. Might as well have been smacking it with a hammer for all the good it would do. So Ian and I grabbed some guns and headed out to the farm nearby, figuring if we were going to be stuck we should try and see if there was any chow to be found, or a place to bunk for the night.

As it turns out running a V-12 twin-turbo engine to push a 60 ton tracked monster around isn’t exactly quiet. Hank and Sean had been “fixing” the engine for all of 5 minutes before they started turning up. Ones and twos to start, easy enough to keep away from the guys working. But before long it was a whole lot more of them, more than they could keep away with only E-tools. Hank reattached the fuel hose, while Sean covered him with his M4. Once the hose was reattached, they both hopped into the safety of the tank.

Ian and I had just finished grabbing whatever cans of food were left in the house nearby when we heard the V12 shudder into life. We bowled out of the front door, only to find that a whole lot of Zeds had heard it too, and were heading to the tank.

There was another loud bang from the tank, and black smoke began to rise from the engine deck. We knew at that point that ‘Accident’ wasn’t going anywhere any more. Hank and Sean would have been able to see grotesque faces leered through the vision ports as hands clawed at the hardened steel armour. Ian and I just looked at each other, realising that there was no way that the zombies could get in, and that our buddies were going to need our help to get out…”

Now of course, I was going to need to make up the four tank crewmen for the game.

I started with the plastic Mantic USMC models, from their Mars Attacks! range. Big pro tip here, wash them with hot water and dishwashing liquid before you try to paint them. Mantic must use an oily mould release, which leaves a bit of residue on the model. I am not a huge fan of the original models, the scale is slightly off for me. But, that won't stop me from using them!

These are the four I started with:

Next step was to decapitate them all, plus remove the arms on most of them. I then used replacement parts from the Wargames Factory male and female survivor sprues. The net result is:

So with the assembling done, it was time to get some paint on them, and this is the final result:

And of course, we need the shot with the tank:

We will be playing the scenario tomorrow, so we will see how the crew go, and should have a write up here over the weekend!

Chris