Wargames Factory Shock Troops Review + Sprues

Posted by Ranillon on 21. August 2010 01:00

One of the things that caught my attention at Gen Con were these new Wargames Factory "Greatcoat Shock Troops" plastic models (especially when the Warstore was offering them for just $15).  I got a box just because I thought they were cool and the price was right, but when I talked about them with others afterwards the first thing everyone brought up was how they would make perfect Imperial Guard.  In particular, Death Corps.

In fact, I find it hard to believe that Wargames Factory didn't have them in mind when they decided to make these models.  They are the same scale, nearly the same look, and have weapons as close as you can get to GW without risking copyright lawsuits.  Not that I think that is a problem here -- the quality of the plastics are generally equal to Games Workshop while being much cheaper -- even at their standard $20 cost that is still just $1.11 per model.  Equivalent GW plastics are twice that average.

Basically, when it comes to look and quality I think these would in general be a great choice for Imperial Guard.  Only problem is that they are unlikely to be tournament legal.  If you were to switch out their guns with GW lasguns that would make them entirely WYSIWYG and thus perhaps open up many independent tournaments.  However, any that require "only" GW or "mostly" GW would still be no-go.

Of course, maybe you don't care or want to use these for other purposes, so here pictures of the sprues to allow you to see everything in detail.  Just click the thumbnails to biggie-size them.

As you can see these definitely fit Imperial Guard -- and, no doubt entirely coincidentally, their special weapons just happen to be a flamer and grenade launcher.