Well I bought the Raumjager Infantry kit from Wargames Atlantic. They're soldiers with ill-fitting trousers and jackets, stunted guns, and awkward poses. This is my review of the product.
There's no easy way to say this, but I dislike this model kit. I bought it because I needed a bunch of raiders, and this box provided 24 of them, and nothing else was available to me at the time. I didn't love the look of them on the box art, but then again Wargames Atlantic boxes never do a great job of representing models (why don't they just literally put 1:1 photos of the miniatures on the box?) And besides, this kit was sculpted by Bob Naismith. What could possibly go wrong?
Technically, I guess nothing went wrong. The kit is what it claims to be. You get 4 poses of angry men in jackets and pants that are clearly too large for them, and a variety of weapons and head options. There's something beautiful about these kinds of soldiers. They're easy to treat as baddies, because they look generically mean and dangerous. You don't look at any of these models and create a intricate backstory. These are the formless baddies with guns that your heroes are fighting against. Use one of the heads with a helmet, goggles, and a face mask, and they almost look like robots. You're not going to name any one of these soldiers and make it the focus of your campaign.
When I say they're formless, I mean they actually do lack form. They're obviously humanoid, but the body sculpts are mostly wrinkles of fabric. If you were to design a 28mm firing range dummy model, this is close to what you'd come up with. It's hard to believe there's a human body in there at all, because everything's covered in something that doesn't quite fit.
The shoes aren't chunky enough. The heads are too big and too wide for their helmets. The shoulder pads meld into the jacket, shoulder straps appear on the back but don't connect to anything on the front, the jackets look like skirts, the hands look skeletal (I think they're meant to be gloves?), there's bunched-up elastic on every cuff. The waist is entirely pouch. It's pouches all the way round, and half of the pouches are formless (is it a canteen or a grenade?) The armour is boring, covering just the chest, aside from a codpiece that's long and flat, and frankly makes me think a lot more about codpieces than I think necessary. The heads are somehow simultaneously too large for the model, and also too small for the model's enormous collar.
It's the world's worst uniform, and it's the most boring thing I've ever painted. I'm by no means a pro at miniature painting, but I don't think there's any way to make these models look good. It's all bunched-up fabric and floppy canteens. You can edge highlight and glaze all you want, but in the end you're painting the contents of a thrift store donation bin and sticking a head on.
Stick some skulls and spikes on and call it chaos
OK, there's one way to make these bad boys look interesting, and that is to make them properly bad. Using the Citadel Skulls kit, I glued a few skulls on to my Raumjager guys. Then I borrowed some spikey looking spears from the Wargames Atlantic's own Lizard People kit and added them on. I painted the figures mostly black, painted the armour with Basilicanum Grey and Leadbelcher dry-brushing, added some rust and corrosion, and emerged on the other side with a squad of meanies that I actually don't mind.
Do I buy them as elite troops, like it says on the box? No, they look like ramshackle nutcases. And to be fair, that's exactly why I bought the miniatures. So I guess in the end, there's an argument that it was money well spent.
nope
I'm using these guys as raiders in a my Fallout games, as Kasrkin and Chaos Cultists in Warhammer 40,000. I also stole some legs to attach to some Genestealer Cult torsos I had left over from a Combat Patrol box. I guess you can find a use for nearly any miniature, if you're creative and try hard enough.
On the whole, this model kit isn't great. A lot of parts just won't work even for kitbashing, and those that do work are still pretty bad sculpts, or at least poor concept design. Now that Ooh Rah exists, I see no reason to buy Raumjager, unless you just want some objectively ugly baddies you'll feel good about removing from the table.
Photos licensed Creative Commons Zero.