Em4's Space Rangers

[6milPhil]

In line with getting into Sci-Fi I've been looking all over the place for interesting figures and I've not been disappointed in the choice. I've bought quite a few from Em4 previously and I was looking at their plastic and saw this squad which sells for £2.55 so I thought it was worth a punt.

There's a commander and four grunts, the grunts are all the same figure but because you get a sprue of heavy weapons they don't have to look identical. The figure on the right is with the standard weapon, the others all have heavies.



As I was assembling these I did think they'd be easier to paint in parts, and as the glue dried on the last one I wish I'd done so. I didn't like the sword the commander had so I scrounged a power fist off a chum. I was trying to do an intergalatic version of pea dot with the camo, not sure how well that worked it's more bubble gum machine. 



Does make me wonder about other manufacturers of plastics though, this whole set was £2.55 which is about the going price for a single similar Sp*c* M*r*n*... 

Great figures and good fun to paint.

from: http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html

[matakishi]

Originally made by Hobby Games. If you ordered £100.00 worth of dice as a trade order they gave you £100.00 worth of these marine packs for free. They were very cheap and very popular with the customers. A squad worked out at under 50p.

[6milPhil]

Bleedin' Hell, that's an incredible bargain, although they're still cheap.

[matakishi]

Mid 90s but still cheap.
Nice painting by the way

[Doug ex-em4]

Paul's going back 20+ years since that deal (it may also give a clue as to Hobby Games' lack of longevity   )

Glad you're happy with them, anyway and an "interesting" colour scheme...

Doug

[carlos13th]

Very Intresting colour scheme.

I really like these models. I have a few I used as Not space Marines and honestly I prefer them to a lot of space marines. I think they were there first models I painted after getting back into models as an adult.

Not a fan of the commander though who seems to be channelling duke nukem a little so he got a head swap and a weapon swap.

You can see the brush strokes.

[Commander Vyper]

Paul's going back 20+ years since that deal (it may also give a clue as to Hobby Games' lack of longevity   )

Glad you're happy with them, anyway and an "interesting" colour scheme...

Doug

Mr Blobby's armoured vanguard from the phantom zone! .

[Bahir]

I love these guys.  Easy to paint, and convert and best of all inexpensive!

Here are to squad leaders I did head swaps and melee weapon swaps.



You can see more here http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=49946.0

[maxxon]

Great!

Here are my Space Comrades:


I even made a couple of videos for them:



More pics here:
http://www.smallcuts.net/photo/album.jsp?id=108&title=Game%2FSciFi%2FComrades

[Bahir]

I like how you did the guy with the banner.  Simple and effective!  I may have to "borrow" that idea

[blackstone]

Was only looking at these last night on the EM4 site! Will be getting some soon seeing how well they paint up!!

[6milPhil]

I even made a couple of videos for them:

 

[Diakon]

Great!

Here are my Space Comrades:


I even made a couple of videos for them:



More pics here:
http://www.smallcuts.net/photo/album.jsp?id=108&title=Game%2FSciFi%2FComrades

Awesome video. Love the subtitles. "Our ideology is as dynamic as our poses" 

[maxxon]

Was only looking at these last night on the EM4 site! Will be getting some soon seeing how well they paint up!!

To be blunt, they are what they are. They're cheap, they're serviceable and they can be made to look pretty good as long as you paint within the limitations of the figures. But winning a painting contest with these would be like winning a golf match using garden tools as clubs.

In addition to stiff poses the main problem is the lack of detail. I thought about doing edge highlights on these, but there are no hard edges on the models. When you look closely, the armor plates just sort of flow into each other. The hair on the sergeant has no texture whatsoever, you have to create that with paint.

Tips: Paint the guns separate on the troopers and paint the backpack separate on the sergeants.

They might benefit from a camo design to draw the eye away from the figure's lack of detail.

[sundayhero]

With the good painting job, these minis have a nice price quality balance.

I always thought about buying 5 or 10 of these to make some "super cops" for my future urban project.