Product Review: Raging Heroes W101 Cyber Zombie Bodyguard

I was unfortunate enough to have missed the Raging Heroes' (Or Raging Hormones as we like to joke) 'Toughest Girls In The Galaxy' Kickstarter back in 2013, part of the reason was the scale comparison; back then the sculpts were much larger than Space Marines; and also the fact that I had thrown in my lot with Prodos Games' Warzone Kickstarter. It was only after things started shipping some year and a bit later, that I looked again at the Toughest Girls In The Galaxy Kickstarter, only to discover that they have actually decided to reduce the scale a little, and this as they say changes things dramatically.

As it stands, fulfillment waves are still being sent out, but despite this eBay seems to be saturated with the KS freebies such as W101 Cyber Zombie Bodyguard. It was because of this; and the scale change; that I took the plunge last weekend and placed a bid for the W101 Cyber Zombie Bodyguard freebie, and much to my surprise I managed to win her for the rather low price of £6.50.

 

W101 arrived this morning and I have to say I am totally blown away by this miniature. At first glance, the spin cast resin looked a mess due to excess resin and I have to admit the amount of release agent still present on the miniature made me think that it had not cured properly, but a quick wash later, a trim and the miniature was perfect. While handling, I noticed that the resin was more brittle than what I am use to, and immediately my heart sunk a little as I considered that perhaps this was restic (resin plastic), the same material that had put me off a lot of other manufacturers for it's inability to hold detail, tedious cleaning and flopping over in the sunshine...

 

When Raging Heroes first announced that they would spin-cast the miniatures, there were a few negative comments made, but as you can see the only real issue with the spin casting process, is the positioning and number of flow channels, with flat object like armour, thighs etc it would not be so much an issue to clean, but in the case of W101 the channels were located in some awkward areas as the photo above shows. Luckily the resin turned out to be a lot better than I had feared, and while slightly tougher, I was able to cut the excess resin away from the detailed areas without damaging the miniature itself.

The sheer amount of detail that carried over on the cast is astounding. But it is the back where the details really shine, the ammo feeds for the guns are true works of art that normally would be so fragile that mass casting would lose that detail quickly over time. I can honestly say I did not expect such quality from spin cast resin miniatures. There does seems to be a little softening of the details towards the upper back area, but not to the extent that I have seen on Privateer Press models, so whatever Raging Heroes have done, they have done it right and I actually find it somewhat amazing that this new company is showing the industry leaders what I consider to be innovation; not only in design; but it seems casting process.

 

 

All cleaned and glued together, W101 does not look to out of place in the grim dark of the Horus Heresy in my opinion. In fact one of the reason for her purchase was to act as a bodyguard for my growing crew of Night Lords Legion staff. Of course despite how awesome and cool the model looks, the key question needed to be answered - what of scale? I decided to compare the scale to a FW MKII Space Marine and the GW metal Naval Officer.

I am pretty sure that the majority of backers for this Kickstarter, did so for the awesome models, but I am also sure a lot of people did so for alternative Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum. Either way, scale was always going to play a significant part for me in this review, it is the reason why I did not originally back the Kickstarter and also why I decided not to back other Kickstarters like Fallen Frontiers. Like it or not, GW is the dominant sci-fi game played currently and most people need their alternative figures to fit as well as seamlessly as possible with the Warhammer system and scale. As you can see from the photo above, I think Raging Heroes have achieved this as W101 fits in rather nicely. It can be argued that because she is to represent a servitor bodyguard, that she can afford to be a little larger, but looking at the photo I think the proportions are comparable.

While the 32mm base goes a long way to giving the illusion that the Space Marine is bigger, you can imagine how ridiculous it would have been, had Raging Heroes decided not to scale back the range. I think they hit the compromise on the head. Now of course I don't have any 'regular' humanoids from that range to compare just yet, but as soon as I do you can be sure that I will write about it. Overall I am very pleased with the way W101 integrates with the rest of my miniature collection and I can honestly say that I will be grabbing a box of Cyber Zombies when they finally become available for general release, which as I understand it, should be soon and also cast in metal.

W101 is the first of what will hopefully be a duo of bodyguard servitors for my Fleet Staff, I am not sure if I will ever use them in my actual Night Lords army, but they will make for excellent background miniatures. I will have to see if the other Cyber Zombie model I am after has been released (#42 Cyber Zombie), but either ways I look forward to painting this particular figure and in the future adding her 'sister' Servitor #42 to the fold!

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

Send The Eighth!

To keep up to date with all our goings on, like and follow our Facebook, Google + & Twitter pages.