Thank you to Games Workshop for providing us with these models for review.
It’s a big week for Palatine Enforcers reinforcements. The Bastions of Law book dropped (read here), alongside the Palanite Enforcer Captains & Sergeants, Weapons Upgrades (long rifles and new heads!), Enforcer Haunts, and Companions! It’s a lot of stuff.
We also got a sneaky booster for Ash Waste Nomads, in the form of the Ashwing Helamites. This is a neat kit which includes two Ashwings, a lure, and upgrade parts to make a handler out of the regular nomad kit.
Palanite Enforcer Captains and Sergeants
Fowler: This is the main event for the new drop! Three new Enforcer torsos and a plastic dog. The kit contains two sprues, so you get two of each. This is a very cool kit, but there are some surprising caveats about the compatibility of this kit with the existing Enforcer stuff. I spent more time than I had planned on the modeling side of the enforcers and did not get any fully painted up – but I hope that my experience helps folks to hit the ground running (or plan ahead) for getting the kits themselves.
Detail and Assembly
The elephant in the room is that it is difficult to integrate these new torsos with the older Palanite kits. Starting with the Palanite captain, the arms have molded shoulder pads on them. This means that there are two issues 1. using these shoulders on existing Enforcer kits would require removing the shoulder pads and 2. Other enforcer kits do not have those shoulder pads and they don’t look right!
Captains only have a few options available in the kit: pistols (bolt or plasma), along with an unarmed left hand or two different power sword variants. My dream was to have a plasma pistol and riot shield captain – using options in the upgrade sprue and a pistol from the Captain box. The lack of molded shoulder pads on outside arms presented a serious problem – how do I make other options look good?
I used Oyumaru – also known as “blue stuff” and made pressmolds of the molded shoulder details. Neither of the left hand options really had clean entire shoulders, so I just took molds of the right arm options. Once those were cured, I used greenstuff to cast shoulder pads. These come out pretty flexible, which is helpful in terms of getting a good fit onto the new shoulders. There ends up being a lot of excess green stuff with making this kind of mold – I used a pen drill with a sanding tip to sand it down and get a relatively clean final result. If you go down this route, I suggest making several molds of the shoulder options so you can do a bunch at the same time. inevitably, some of them will have air pockets (that don’t look like cool battle damage).
These arms are magnetized, which was a bit of an adventure on this kit. The inner void of this kit has some material, but not enough to really set a magnet into. I just ended up drilling out the entire inside and throwing some extra magnets through the core of the torso instead of setting one line normal.
Lots of work for one model, but my intent was for it to be the one Palanite Captain that I build and paint. The other one is likely to be used for a statue in my 40k terrain!
The Subjugator Sergeant build has two options – one with the new chem-thrower and one with a heavy stubber. I tried a few old Subjugator arms on the Sarge torso and it seemed like the opening was smaller. In this case, I wanted to use the new arms for both builds – but if you want a sarge with a shield, you may have some conversion work ahead of you. You would likely just need to shave off some excess to get them into the shoulder holes.
The Palanite Sergeants also have surprisingly smaller arm holes. The options in the box are for a bolter or an autopistol and a baton. My ideal would have been a sniper rifle from the new upgrade kit, but having already spent a bunch of time on the captain conversion, I knocked out the bolter build. Everything went together smoothly, and I like the result here – I just wish that it had the same shoulders as the standard Enforcers
Another high point of the kit is the Cyber-Mastiff. His butt is made out of the piece that I thought was the face, and that brings me joy. That join is a bit tenuous (plastic glue and patience, folks), but I enjoyed the build otherwise. There are two build options for the dogs; not much room for customizing – but I doubt that many people will have more than one dog on the table at a time.
Overall, this is a cool kit – but with some caveats. If you want to venture outside of the builds contained in the box, there is some serious hobby work ahead of you.
Palanite Enforcers Upgrade Sprue
The upgrade sprue is great. With non-Subjugator enforcers getting access to riot shields, it’s great to see the bit show up in here. Each sprue has a right and left-handed option, with two sprues in the box. Other notable inclusions are an at-ease long rifle, a two-handed concussion carbine, a web gun, and a flamer. Close-quarters enthusiasts can enjoy a pile of autoguns, power knives, and shock batons. The five new heads are a welcome addition as well.
Especially as Enforcers don’t come with stub guns by default – and have access to some special ammo – having a grip of autopistols alone is a welcome addition here. If you are building an Enforcer gang, this kit is highly recommended.
Palanite Forge World Kits – Haunts and Companions
Detail and Assembly
I’ve been looking forward to the Palanite Companions kit for a long time. A pair of badasses with dusters and horrifying guns. The builds were pretty straightforward. One pitfall here – the Companion with the gun across his chest will get in the way if you are trying to do a transfer there. I would recommend leaving that bit off if you plan to freehand or apply a decal. I am in the early stages of painting these, but fair warning that there are a lot of details in close proximity around the head / neck / cuff / etc. Even when I was going slow and being careful, I got a fair amount of paint in the wrong spots. Take your time!
The Enforcer Haunt build was mostly fine, but did have some nightmarish bits. The hoses are extremely small and brittle. One was already broken, and broke in other places when I tried to salvage it. I left one tube off, and in hindsight would have just clipped the tubes off of… whatever things on the legs they are connected to. I stuck it out as I really want to run a haunt in my next Enforcer gang.
Ashwing Helamites
Detail and Assembly
DYLON: Let’s take a look at the Ashwing Helamites. They’re plastic! It’s a neat kit with the option to have the bugs flying or placed on terrain (the right way). It’s a modern kit, so the details are crisp, well laid out and the instructions are pretty clear. The only weird thing is that there are a fair few connection point in this kit that are a little vague. The Lure just glues together, but seems to matter how you glue the ends on. The upgrade parts for the handler are great, but the connection point for the back banner doesn’t sit as flush as I’d hope.
I only assembled one Ashwing due to time constraints. What did I learn? It’s 16 parts for the one bug. Build the base first. Dry fit everything. And as you glue the legs on, especially for the one standing on the rock, take care with the leg placement. Turns out it matters and you’ll need to glue the legs to the body and base at the same time. I didn’t realize this, but I guess I’ve built enough kits to check and I’m glad I did.
I let the glue set up for a few between each set of legs. Which have pretty vague connection points. Like, I know where they’re supposed to go, but it’s not super clear honey they’re supposed to sit in there. So I jammed them in the holes and figured it out. I broke out the tweezer for som of them. And had to change the position of one of the mandibles when I glued the head on.
I’ve dealt with worse but it was a pretty tedious process to get it all together and parts where they should be.
Painting
DYLON: I had to dig up the previous article I wrote about the Duneskuttler to remember how I painted my Nomads. Bless my past self for writing it all down. That said, painting this guys went super quick. I knocked them out in two sessions and am very happy with the results.
Final Thoughts, Parting Shots, and What Have You
DYLON: I really enjoyed the opportunity to paint something new and cool for my Ash Wasters and left me thinking that I should get some more assembled and primed before winter to have a fun, quick project. So many weird critters that I have the opportunity to paint, I should really get on it.
Fowler: I really like where I ended up modeling-wise with these kits, but I do feel some longing for easier compatibility with regards to the Captain & Sarge kit. The time investment to get things sorted was much, much longer than expected. I encourage intrepid hobbyists to become ungovernable and make their own shoulder pads for their cool, custom captain. Otherwise, everything except for the Haunt build was a joy.
Thanks for reading, Enforcer enjoyers and outlanders! If you have any questions for us, want to suggest a future article, or just want to show us pictures of your kickass gangs, drop us a line over at Necromunday@Goonhammer.com.Â
