"Beastie Boys" - Blackstone Fortress Beastmen: work in progress

I apologize for the long interlude without posting.   As a teacher, I should be able to get so much hobby stuff done in the summer, and yet...


... here we are.

I liked the beastmen in the Blackstone Fortress game so much that I picked up a few more on e-bay.

One nice thing about them is that they are quick and easy to assemble.   They have four pieces - legs, a torso front, a torso back, and a head, and there are two versions of each piece.   This means that they also only have a limited number of unique poses, which is not a problem if you are just using the four that come with a single Blackstone Fortress set, but opens up some quick conversion opportunities if you want to put together larger units (herds?) of them.  I am not overly fond of the running legs, as they only allow one point of connection to the base, but there are certainly models out there that are more awkward.



I think I've managed to get 20 unique minis, using some simple weapons swaps.   The most basic were putting the torsos together so that some had two melee weapons and others had two handguns.  Also pretty basic was swapping out the chainsword for the blade. 

A dip into the bitz box gave me access to some Chaos Warriors bitz, like a cloak for my leader, axes, a Chaos sword, and some flails.  I then added in some weapons left over from Genestealer Cult, Cadian, and Space Marine kits: different las-pistols, bolters, plasma pistols, and flamers (because low Ballistic Skill troops like Beastmen would want to have template weapons) and ended up with what you see here.


As you can see, the models have been primed, but not painted.   I added basing to a few of them to hide extra plastic I used to help stabilize the single foot (and one with both feet on the ground because I wasn't paying attention, grabbed the next model, and added basing material).




Contrast these with the Necromunda Palanite Enforcers released late this summer - here is my preliminary review of them, produced as I started building them.
The Enforcer 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.
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.

Half a box of Enforcers.  Primed and blackwashed for the photo.

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.