Rob Reviews: em4's "Troopers" and "Command conversion kit"
Posted by
BobbieTheDamned
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BobbieTheDamned
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em4's "Troopers"
Price: £2.50 for 5 Troopers.
the sprues
In the pack are five complete troopers. No alternate parts, nothing fancy just the parts to make five guys. They're 31mm from the bottom of their boot to the top of their helmet which makes them pretty much the same height as GW guys but they're much more realisticly proportioned.
The troopers themselves are quite nice. They wear an armoured body suit with helmet. Four of them have a targeting display hanging from their helemt (two have them on the left eye and two the right eye), all have visors and the last guy has his down and this covers most his face. The styling is quite 80s but the detail is nice and deep and should paint well. These guys have the right look for high-tech imperial guard or Arbiters if you're wanting to use the for GW settings.
Where these guys are a let down is their weapons. For a start there's only two rifles between 5 guys, two are armed soley with pistols and one with a BFO knife and a pistol. The pistol/knife combo arms are the best sculpted, with the pistol looking like something out Space:1999 and the knife like its out of crocodile dundee's collection. The rifle arms arn't bad, kinda star trek looking rifles but due to the direction they're moulded the hands are rather poor. Worst of all are the pistol only arms, which suffer greatly due to how they're moulded, having virtally no detail at all. This is compounded by the fact that none of the troopers is looking directly forwards so they can't even aim down the pistol; so you're suck putting them in charlie's angels poses
The backpacks you get with them are ok. There's a 'high tech' looking pack which I guess is a comunications pack, two standard backpacks and two light 'belt kit's. These fit into holes in the back of the troopers, so if you don't want them you'll have to fill the holes. Its also slightly anoying that each differant backpack had differant belt equipment, which to me looks odd (most soldiers are going to need the same equipment, its only role specific equipment that's going to change).
Historical Accuracy: n/a - Not historical miniatures.
Value for Money: 8/10 - 50p a trooper is pretty good.
Sculpting Quality: 9/10 - lots of charachter and detail
Production Quality: 5/10 - badly planned moulds have ruined a lot of the parts.
Personal Opinion: 8/10 - pretty good, with parts from my bits box they'll come out fine.
em4's "Command conversion kit"
Price: £2.00 or £1.45 if bought with a set of troopers.
the bits
Now these were a supprise when I got them. Each metal part arrived indvidually wrapped in tissue paper, and appears to be pre-undercoated. An interesting touch and I seem to remember other metal figures I've had from em4 were undercoated too.
In this set you get some great bits. The first arm (which I got two of) is some sort of scanner or other similar tech device, very handy for conversions. There are also two nice sub-machinegun arms (which look a lot like an MP5k) and two pistols, in each case you get both a left and right arm. There's also a 'pointing' arm and a 'shouting' arm (hand rased to mouth), a grenade throwing arm (which looks odd posed throwing as all grenade arms do). There's also another mistery bit of tech: is it a bomb? a medi-kit? or is it just the guys sandwiches being kept super fresh in a high tech lunchbox? who knows!
All are well sculpted and completely free of any flash. I love the guns, the pistols are very nicely done and look like they could actually be fired one handed. The arms are however rather skinny and slightly too short in my opinion. They look fine on the troopers but would probabbly look odd on other figures without a little bulking up. Maybe I'm just used to seeing more 'heroicly' proportioned parts, they seem anotmicly correct on the em4 troopers but yeah they're very 'fine scale' compared to most figures available.
Historical Accuracy: n/a - Not historical miniatures.
Value for Money: 9/10 - a nice pack of conversion parts, good value if you're buying the troopers too.
Sculpting Quality: 9/10 - Very nice sculpting, would be a 10 if they were a little bulkier.
Production Quality: 10/10 - No mould lines, no flash, and the come undercoated!
Personal Opinion: 9/10 - They're very nice parts.
All in all I will be getting more of the em4 troopers when funds allow, but they're going to end up with a lot of other parts on them to improve their look. I'm tempted by the heavy weapon set but they look a little on the ridiculas side.
Price: £2.50 for 5 Troopers.
the sprues
In the pack are five complete troopers. No alternate parts, nothing fancy just the parts to make five guys. They're 31mm from the bottom of their boot to the top of their helmet which makes them pretty much the same height as GW guys but they're much more realisticly proportioned.
The troopers themselves are quite nice. They wear an armoured body suit with helmet. Four of them have a targeting display hanging from their helemt (two have them on the left eye and two the right eye), all have visors and the last guy has his down and this covers most his face. The styling is quite 80s but the detail is nice and deep and should paint well. These guys have the right look for high-tech imperial guard or Arbiters if you're wanting to use the for GW settings.
Where these guys are a let down is their weapons. For a start there's only two rifles between 5 guys, two are armed soley with pistols and one with a BFO knife and a pistol. The pistol/knife combo arms are the best sculpted, with the pistol looking like something out Space:1999 and the knife like its out of crocodile dundee's collection. The rifle arms arn't bad, kinda star trek looking rifles but due to the direction they're moulded the hands are rather poor. Worst of all are the pistol only arms, which suffer greatly due to how they're moulded, having virtally no detail at all. This is compounded by the fact that none of the troopers is looking directly forwards so they can't even aim down the pistol; so you're suck putting them in charlie's angels poses
The backpacks you get with them are ok. There's a 'high tech' looking pack which I guess is a comunications pack, two standard backpacks and two light 'belt kit's. These fit into holes in the back of the troopers, so if you don't want them you'll have to fill the holes. Its also slightly anoying that each differant backpack had differant belt equipment, which to me looks odd (most soldiers are going to need the same equipment, its only role specific equipment that's going to change).
Historical Accuracy: n/a - Not historical miniatures.
Value for Money: 8/10 - 50p a trooper is pretty good.
Sculpting Quality: 9/10 - lots of charachter and detail
Production Quality: 5/10 - badly planned moulds have ruined a lot of the parts.
Personal Opinion: 8/10 - pretty good, with parts from my bits box they'll come out fine.
em4's "Command conversion kit"
Price: £2.00 or £1.45 if bought with a set of troopers.
the bits
Now these were a supprise when I got them. Each metal part arrived indvidually wrapped in tissue paper, and appears to be pre-undercoated. An interesting touch and I seem to remember other metal figures I've had from em4 were undercoated too.
In this set you get some great bits. The first arm (which I got two of) is some sort of scanner or other similar tech device, very handy for conversions. There are also two nice sub-machinegun arms (which look a lot like an MP5k) and two pistols, in each case you get both a left and right arm. There's also a 'pointing' arm and a 'shouting' arm (hand rased to mouth), a grenade throwing arm (which looks odd posed throwing as all grenade arms do). There's also another mistery bit of tech: is it a bomb? a medi-kit? or is it just the guys sandwiches being kept super fresh in a high tech lunchbox? who knows!
All are well sculpted and completely free of any flash. I love the guns, the pistols are very nicely done and look like they could actually be fired one handed. The arms are however rather skinny and slightly too short in my opinion. They look fine on the troopers but would probabbly look odd on other figures without a little bulking up. Maybe I'm just used to seeing more 'heroicly' proportioned parts, they seem anotmicly correct on the em4 troopers but yeah they're very 'fine scale' compared to most figures available.
Historical Accuracy: n/a - Not historical miniatures.
Value for Money: 9/10 - a nice pack of conversion parts, good value if you're buying the troopers too.
Sculpting Quality: 9/10 - Very nice sculpting, would be a 10 if they were a little bulkier.
Production Quality: 10/10 - No mould lines, no flash, and the come undercoated!
Personal Opinion: 9/10 - They're very nice parts.
All in all I will be getting more of the em4 troopers when funds allow, but they're going to end up with a lot of other parts on them to improve their look. I'm tempted by the heavy weapon set but they look a little on the ridiculas side.
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Re: Rob Reviews: em4's
Re: Rob Reviews: em4's