Wargames Atlantic Eisenkern Panzerjager

I was looking for some sci-fi soldiers for a game of Space Station Zero, and I stumbled upon Wargames Atlantic. They had a shipping centre nearby, so I decided to give them a try. The closest thing to generic sci-fi soldiers I could find, at the time, was their Iron Core product line, which then consisted of Eisenkern Panzerjager and Eisenkern Stormtroopers. I meant to buy Eisenkern Stormtroopers, but the two products look and sound similar so I ended up accidentally buying a box of Eisenkern Panzerjager instead. This is my review of that product.

As the name (or at least, the name of the product I'd meant to buy) implies, these models are off-brand Star Wars stormtroopers. I mean that in the best way possible. The great thing about Imperial stormtroopers is that they're faceless baddies that you can kill over and over again without remorse. They're easy to paint, because you'll likely paint them to be uniform, so after a squad is removed from the board, you can bring it back again as a different squad. If you're looking for a host of infantry to throw onto the battlefield, this box provides 20 soldiers and a great variety of guns. It's basically the perfect sci-fi infantry kit.

Building

Standard Wargames Atlantic warnings apply. There's no documentation. You get not even a hint of what gun goes with what arm, which arms are meant to be paired together, how legs fit together, what you're supposed to do with some of the greeblies, or even what parts are greeblies and what parts fit together to make something larger. It's a puzzle, and it's not fun because you know that somebody at the company knows how it's all supposed to go together. Why they would withhold this basic information from you is anybody's guess.

Aside from that, this set has some pretty cool features.

First of all, the backbacks actually fit snugly on the backs of the models. Seems like a basic convenience, but with Wargames Atlantic products that's not always the case (the Cannon Fodder 2 and Ooh Rah kits both provide backpacks obviously designed for the curves of a human's back...and a flat surface on the backs of the models where the backpacks attach.) These backpacks (or powerpacks, probably) are perfectly fitted to the armour, so no gaps.

Secondly, the guns don't have hands attached. I don't know that I love this as a feature, but it has its advantages. With no arms or hands sculpted into the guns, you get a bunch of guns you can use as greeblies when you're all done building. It's also especially easy, with just a few clever snips, to kitbash the guns onto models from other kits (size permitting, obviously.)

The difference between the Eisenkern Panzerjager (the one I bought) and the Eisenkern Stormtroopers (the one I meant to buy) is that the Panzerjager are all-female and the Stormtroopers are male. I'm guessing that the Panzerjager are physically smaller, because the models I ended up with feel particularly diminutive. There are otherwise no distinguishing features that make these models female, so I have no idea why the distinction exists. All in all, I do feel these models are just a few millimeters smaller and thinner than they ought to be. When you buy these models, you want soldiers, but these models feel like a gentle breeze could blow them off the table.

Painting

Painting these armoured ladies is super easy. It's all plate armour and weaponry. There are some hints of padding underneath the armour, and I did try to paint some of that but eventually I gave up. The lines between the armour and the underpadding isn't always clear, and even when it is, it's almost too small to notice. Using contrast paint or a wash fills those little lines in automatically, so I just let the paint do the work.

In the end, there's actually not much here to paint. These aren't space marines by any means, and the armour isn't modular enough to pick out, say, a knee pad and a pauldron for squad markings. I did a little bit of that for some of my soldiers, just to help me tell them apart from one another, but the most satisfying paint jobs I did were the uniform ones.

I base coated them gray, dry-brushed with Leadbelcher (Citadel), and then did a layer of Aethermatic Blue (Citadel). It took me maybe an afternoon to complete, aside from waiting overnight to do the Aethermatic Blue glaze.

Not a bad kit

I've used Eisenkern Panzerjager models as a Vindicare Assassin for Warhammer 40,000, Tempestus Scions for Warhammer 40,000, and as my crew in a Space Station Zero campaign. In other words, I've used them piecemeal as army fillers rather than as a dedicated army, although I could imagine using them as infantry in an army for a generic sci-fi wargame. The kit isn't amazing, and I do wonder if the Eisenkern Stormtroopers would feel more substantial, but it's a fine kit with a good number of soldiers to throw into battle. They could be good cannon fodder, or a nice set of baddies to flood your table with in a solo wargame or roleplaying game. They're not much fun to build, but they're easy to paint.