Whenever I get into a new game, I have this overwhelming compulsion to build a thematic battlefield, as well as two diametrically opposed factions for the system. I think this instinct is probably based in a desire to future proof myself – as long as I own the books, the terrain and two factions then all I need is a willing participant and I can play forever. In the case of Necromunda, I wanted something to strongly contrast against my Outcast gang. Where the Outcasts were grimy, these models would be clean. Where the Outcasts were kind of a horde, these would be elite. Where the Outcasts were endlessly customised, my new project should be something pretty much straight out of the box. Fortunately, the Necromunda range provides – and the right gang for me was immediately clear: Palanite Enforcers.
Enforcers – especially Palanite Enforcers – are a pretty simple gang; every model from Captain to Rookie comes equipped with armour, magnacles and a stub pistol. All you really have to do from there is choose your second weapon – whether you want a shock baton or a bigger gun such as Boltgun, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun or Concussion Carbine. Similarly, the Enforcers kit is pretty simple with not a ton of options for assembly besides a couple weapon options for each of the poses. Had this been my first gang for Necromunda, this would have probably frustrated me – but having spent weeks chopping up Clanrats and trying to force parts together that were never meant to fit for my Outcast gang, it was a breath of fresh air. The Palanite Enforcers kit does, however, have a couple of frustrating limitations.
While many of the miniatures in the box have a couple of build options and poses – the Sniper can be built standing or kneeling while any pose that can wield a shotgun can be given a boltgun and vice versa – there’s only a single pose for the Concussion Carbine weapon. What’s more, the pose is really specific; shotguns, boltguns and sniper rifles are all held in two hands in either a firing or at ease pose, while the concussion carbine is the only weapon other than a stub pistol to be held at ease in one hand. This makes even converting this particular model kind of difficult, as all of the other poses have a hand sculpted under the barrel of the weapon – there’s no easy way to remove and reuse this hand for swapping the weapons out of these poses. In the end, I had to settle for just two Concussion Carbines in my Palanite Enforcer Patrol, which I differentiated simply by swapping the pistol and carbine around in the second models hands. It works, even if it’s kind of boring.
Besides the Concussion Carbines, I didn’t have too much bother putting together the whole gang. I opted for two boxes of Palanite Enforcers to make up my gang, in order to take full advantage of the different build options and have multiple variants of each weapons with at least subtly different poses.
For my Captain and Sergeants, I opted to give them all Boltguns as, realistically, they’re the best positioned to make good use of this excellent shooting weapon. I figure if I want some more combat oriented Captains or Sergeants in the future, there’s always Subjugators for that. As far as marking these models out as Captain/Sergeant goes, I gave the Captain the only unhelmeted head in the gang as well as a couple extra accessories while the Sergeants simply had the crests of their helmets picked out in my spot colour. Nothing too crazy, the whole idea here was keeping everything fairly uniform and standard issue.
In addition to the Captain and two Sergeants, the rest of the gang was filled up with exactly two poses of each weapon. Two boltguns, two sniper rifles, two concussion carbines, two shotguns and two stub pistols. Aside from giving every miniature a unique pose and weapon combination, this just felt like a nice, well rounded way to build the gang. Boltguns are by some measure the sexiest weapon choice – hence the repetition on the Captain and Sergeants – but every other weapon definitely has it’s place. concussion carbines are incredibly reliable thanks to their blast templates, sniper rifles are excellent at long ranges, shotguns have good stopping power and their short range accuracy makes them very handy for pinning models at close range. Even Stub Pistols are useful for when you want to squeeze in an extra body but can’t afford the wargear yet or for representing Rookies.
Perhaps the biggest delay I had in getting this relatively small model count project completed was figuring out a colour scheme for these guys. I really liked the yellow spot colour used on the box art, but something about the black and yellow scheme didn’t quite gel with me. I experimented with using orange (my personal favourite colour) as well as leaning towards a look more evocative of British police with fluo yellow and blue, but nothing really stuck. Eventually however, I stumbled upon the Ashwoods Stranger hired gun – and that scheme really spoke to me. I had already considered the idea of inverting the standard Enforcer scheme and using white instead of black, but it was seeing the brown leather breaking up the black that really made this scheme work for me. That was it – I had found my scheme.
I’ve done my fair share of white and off-white armour in the past, but this time I was pretty keen to try something a little different. I’ve seen a lot of people getting good results from applying Apothecary White contrast paint over Grey Seer, so that’s exactly what I did with these models – and low and behold, I think the results were pretty good. After dowsing the model in one thick coat of Apothecary White and letting it dry, I then went and picked out all the black cloth with Black Legion contrast, the leathers in Dark Fleshtone, the yellows in Filthy Brown and the metallics in Gun Metal. Once the base coats were down, I gave the yellows a careful wash in a 50:50 mix of Cassandora Yellow and Seraphim Sepia and the metallics in Nuln Oil – being very careful not to let these washes stain the white.
From there, I layered up the browns with Beasty Brown and Leather Brown before washing them back down with a unifying wash of 50:50 Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade. The metals were layered back up with some Plate Mail Metal and the yellows layered with Filthy Brown and highlighted with a mix of Filthy Brown and Elfic Flesh. For the blacks, I added some rough highlights with Mechanicus Standard Grey followed by some thinner highlights with Heavy Bluegrey and then tidied up my lines again with more Black Legion contrast. Last – but not least – I tidied up any messes made on the white with Grey Seer and edge highlighted it with a pure White. Dead simple.
The finishing touches were carefully applying the (awesome) Palanite Enforcer badge transfers on their chests with a bit of Micro Set and Micro Sol, followed by adding a bit of rust staining to the metallic bases with Fuegan Orange and Reikland Fleshshade before a quick matt varnish.
This was a very fun and gratifying project to work on – particularly as a follow up to some very stressful involved terrain and conversion heavy (with a far more higher model count) gang project. Variety is, after all, the spice of life – and it’s a lot of fun to break things up with some nice, clean and bright models straight out of the box.
I’d originally planned for this project to be much more substantial, with Subjugator Enforcers to join the Palanites and big plans to add the Robots and Vehicles as well. However, I’ve had a bit of a rough time of it in my personal life this year and – having already just finished another couple of big Necromunda projects – I quickly started to feel a little bit burnt out on the hobby. In the end, the decision to pare this project back to a simple, achievable core of Palanite Enforcers really helped motivate me to see the project through to completion. Now, how about a group shot, eh?
That’s it for this project for now – but like I said, I’ve already got some Subjugator Enforcers built that I wouldn’t mind getting finished and I could definitely see myself at least doing a couple ‘Sanctioner’ Pattern Automata in the future as well.
In the meantime, I’m actually really far behind on my hobby blogging. As I said earlier, I’ve had a bit of a tough time of it this year and my motivation to write here has been waned a little as a result, but I’ve still got plenty to show and tell including (but not limited to): Battlefleet Gothic, Legions Imperialis, Mordheim and – of course – more Middle-earth. Hopefully I’ll find the time to give each of these projects a write up soon.
In the meantime, thanks for reading and happy wargaming!