Wargames need soldiers. I own a bunch of miniatures designed for specific games, so I've been feeling the need lately to bolster my all-purpose miniatures. I wanted soldiers I could use across lots of games, from modern scenarios of Black Ops to sci-fi games of Rogue Stars, Space Station Zero, or Warhammer 40,000, or even Horus Heresy (yes, there's an expansion to include human soldiers in that game now). Wargames Atlantic has a kit called Ooh Rah, and this is my review of that kit.
The Ooh Rah kit is part of the Death Fields product line (which, as far as I can tell, is meaningless because the quality of sculpts, sizing of components, and weapon types, are variable even within Death Fields.) They're generic soldiers in costumes that could easily be themed as standard issue uniforms, special op tactical suits, or police or security uniforms either in a modern or sci-fi setting. In the kit, there's an odd assortment of weaponry, including several identical rifles, a sniper rifle, 2 heavy ballistic weapons, a little mini machine gun, and 3 or 4 pistols.
Again, because there's no consistency from kit to kit, these weapons aren't likely to appear in any other Wargames Atlantic product, which is a little annoying if you're trying to build a cohesive army (as I am, with Cannon Fodder 2 and Ooh Rah). Then again, there are lots of different guns in real life, so why not in miniatures? A rifle is a rifle, a heavy gun is a heavy gun, a pistol is a pistol. It all works out in the end, as long as you're willing to do a little extra interpretation of whatever rules you use for your games.
My point is that these are generic soldiers. They don't obviously belong to any nation or faction either real world or imagined, so you can put them into any modern or sci-fi army in any game and they'll fit neatly in.
Building the models
I've already complained about Wargame Atlantic's lack of documentation. These kits are difficult to assemble because Wargames Atlantic provides no insight into what parts are meant to go with other parts. Hold an arm and gun up to a body, and spend several minutes trying to find the matching support arm. There's no way around it.
This kit, interestingly, does have labels on the sprue. Unfortunately, I can't figure out the schema for the labels to make sense. I tried, and thought I was making progress when I found that arm R12 was a rifle (as I recall) and it did fit to arm L13. That suggested that after you select a right arm, you look for the left component with a number incremented by 1. That turned out not to be the case when arm R9 ended up pairing with L11 (not L10).
So it's just about doing your best to find matching pairs of arms, determining which body they fit on (not all arms are compatible with all bodies due to poses and angles and pouches). Dry-fit everything before applying glue.
Painting the models
Painting the models is a pleasure. In my experience (I've got 5 or 6 Wargames Atlantic kits), it's one of the 2 best Wargames Atlantic kits for painting (the other is the Lizard People kit). The sculpt quality is excellent, and there's exactly the right amount of detail. Armour and pouches are separated just enough to tell them apart from the folds of clothing, the clothing ends where flesh begins, the poses are nice, and the end product looks great.
They're easy to theme, too. Each model has chest and knee armour, a helmet, and of course clothing, so all you have to do is pick a colour for armour and a colour for cloth. I did one squad in green and khaki, and another in grey and blue. There's basically no way to go wrong, and it only took me a day to paint a 10-man squad. I bet you could even just spray them all black, and then dry-brush some metal on the weapons and some gray or brown or green on the armour and pouches and call it done.
Really easy, really fun.
My favourite Wargames Atlantic kit
Of all the Wargames Atlantic kits, this is my favourite. As difficult as it is to build, once you've pieced the puzzle together it's one of the least flexible Wargames Atlantic kits I own. Unfortunately, this also means it's probably the least useful for kitbashing, becaues some parts just aren't complete (arms have chunks cut out of them so they fit over pouches, for instance). That might sound bad but actually in this case I appreciate it because that means it's technically easy to build. Some arms just don't fit on some bodies, so you can't accidentally end up with the wrong arm that seems to work for one gun, but now you're short that arm for the gun that really really requires it. With no documentation and really bad example photos on the box, it's a relief that this kit at least protects you from an objectively wrong choice while assembling.
These are great sculpts, they're fun to paint, and they look amazing in the end. This is a kit you probably shouldn't only own once. Get a box to use as police, get another box to use as an army, and another box for security guards. I wish there was a greater variety of heads, or else that the heads from other kits fit onto these (I did use a Raumjager head on my Sergeant, and although it's noticeably a little big, I just imagine the Sergeant has a slightly large head). If there's ever to be a "classic" Wargames Atlantic kit, Ooh Rah is destined to be it. You can't fail with this one. If you need soldiers, or cops, or space station guards, or a kill team or strike force, special ops, thieves, vigilantes, or just meanies with guns, Ooh Rah is the way to go.
Photos licensed Creative Commons Zero.