Josh: Wasteland Raiders – iconic in every Fallout game whatever the flavour. It’s hard to imagine a Fallout game without a crazed, sadistic bastard simply named ‘raider’ waiting to gun you down for no reason other than you existing.
It’s one of the key elements of Fallout to me, to the point that I couldn’t imagine a game that didn’t feature them to some extent. Fallout 3 set the tone for what raiders would become known for in the series: scrap-armoured scumbags getting high and getting violent in equal measure. Crawling through the Super Duper Mart is one of my go-to memories with Fallout with the grotesque gore decor, the low-light, and the constant chatter of evil-bastards talking evil-things to each other all while I tried to find a fridge with some rad-preserved Salsbury steak in it.
And the visual design was strong too. It was Mad Max-esque, with a lot of punk-inspired hair-cuts, armour coated in scrap-metal, tires, (sometimes body-parts) and a gas-mask motif. New Vegas took it a step forward with the Fiends, swapping out the gas-masks for animal skulls, and zeroed in on them being hedonists who barely operated above the tribal level. (and somehow managed to seem worse in their morality than the mooks in the Capital Wasteland.)
Fallout 4 kept on the Mad Max inspired theme but diversified it a little bit with all the various little niches and gangs you can find throughout the game, but the ultimate design isn’t elevated much beyond what we saw from 3 with the addition of the pipe-weapon aesthetic.
It was a shame to me that they weren’t included from the get-go. Nuka Worlds’ raiders came with distinct identities and gameplay themes, I do understand that, but the classic raider is as Fallout to me as the T-45 helmet. My flavour of raider was always the original, or close to it, and it’s I’m so happy to be covering this kit now!
Wasteland Raiders are that much-needed Mad Max aesthetic brought into deliciously crisp plastic. You get two stacked sprues full of delicious goodies – 8 total bodies, 6 of your regular mooks dressed in scrap leather, and 2 in Power Armour to make up your bosses. Featuring alongside them is an armoury of rusty pipeguns, machetes, and some truly terrifying heavy weapons for your top guys. Any spare sprue space not dedicated to bodies, arms and armaments is given to some nice bits you can use to decorate your bases.
Rich: These sprues are the best Modiphius ones I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with, and it really makes me excited for the future! As Josh says, there is a good selection of weapons and bodies, and some great characterful decorations (all hail Toilet Gnome).
The Build
Rich: Honestly, these miniatures went together like a dream. Parts are clearly labelled, attached to the sprue in a sensible way, and required minimal cleanup. The more realistic proportions of the models compared to something like Warhammer: 40,000 can make them feel a bit fiddly just by virtue of parts being smaller, and you’ll want to be careful with some of the longer weapon barrels like pipe rifles, but overall everything felt like it fit well, with intention behind the joins.
As I wanted to run three power armor suits, I ended up adding one of the plastic X-01 suits to my gang. Although I ended up just doing a headswap with one of the Raider suits, I did match up some of the spare Raider arms to the X-01 and was pleased to note that they would have fit quite well. In the end I decided I did not want to interfere with the rounded cowl/shoulder pad thing the X-01 has going on, so I used the intended arms, but it’s a good proof of concept for getting hold of some more plastic power armor and making use of your spares.
One thing I do want to note quickly is the build limitations on the kit. Whilst some of the arms do swap reasonably well between different unarmoured bodies, the intent in the instructions is clearly that certain arms go with certain bodies, and the poses reinforce this. The instructions, to their credit, do a fantastic job of pointing out what kind of gangers you can build from each body – just don’t do what I did and make your crew roster before looking at the instructions! If you work with them side by side there are still plenty of options, and if you really want to go for it then two boxes of the Wasteland Raiders would give you enough to build all the Raiders your heart could want.
The instructions also do a good job of highlighting a couple of builds that are only suitable for Wasteland Warfare, which is great to see.
Josh: My crew was built entirely from the box, outside of the addition of a single Protectron that my crew had hacked at some point between huffing Jet and harassing farmers. I didn’t have much of an issue keying everything together but found myself frustrated with feeling like it wasn’t particularly kit-bash friendly, not in the way I’m used to.
Some arms are just keyed so specifically to one body that you’d need more expertise than I’ve got to try and make it work. It caused me a little frustration with wanting to have a crew with a specific loadout. On the flipside, there’s no reason that if the instructions tell you the body you’re building is something like a grunt and they share a loadout with an elite that you can’t run them as one or vice versa.
I had none of these issues with the power armor though, those kits key together really well. I won a set of X-01 from GHO and they’ve slotted nicely into my crew without any real issue.
Where I’d really like to lay on praise is with how many extras you get on the sprue. You’ve got base-bits (toilet gnome and nuka-cola bottles), and enough weapons to scatter around like loot. I’m a big fan in particular of the suggestions the instructions give you on how to place them on your models to create representations of loadouts.
The Painting
Rich: We’ll drop some more detailed HTPE content for Fallout soon, like SRM’s guide here, but suffice to say that these minis were great fun! I really tried to lean into the battered, weathered look for the power armour without delving too deep into rust effects, and maintaining some of that painted look. I then had a good time making the unarmoured Raiders dirty and grimy, and then tying them all together with matching wasteland bases.
Josh: I’ll say the power armour was both my biggest challenge to paint and the easiest thing to paint. There are a lot of nubbins to pick out, and edges to catch with your brush to really make it pop. Your standard mooks in leathers and tank-tops push you a bit harder with their smaller detail and fiddly bits. I personally wasn’t a fan of the leather straps that cover a lot of their legs, the detail felt a bit too shallow for me at my skill level to catch properly.
What I love about them is how different the vibe you can get off the paint job alone. You can immediately see that Rich and I are using the same kit but they come across in a much different way with how we’ve painted them up. I love that, and I think that’s a real strength of the kit.
The Wrap-Up
Rich: A great kit! Pay attention to the instructions and you’ll have a fantastic time assembling a crew of horrible Raider mooks to bring terror to the Wasteland. It’s rare that I enjoy every step of a kit, but even doing these on a compressed timeline to have them ready for the Goonhammer Open I really had a blast with them.
Josh: I’m the same as Rich. It’s a really versatile kit that hits every major theme of Fallout. You get two beefy power armour lads to weather and grime up, and a selection of mooks to practice your skin-tone game on. It’s too early to make a definitive call on if this is the best kit to introduce yourself to Fallout Factions but it’s going to be a real contender for sure.
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