Dreamforge Eisenkern Troopers - Review

[Olgerth Istaarn]

So by now most of you probably heard about Dreamforge Games. They make a pretty sick Leviathan, which is a Titan alternative especially if you run GK... I remember someone posting a picture of it as a part of his GK army, it was pretty nice.

 

They now make Eisenkern (iron-core) Stormtroopers, the kit received fairly rave reviews on several sites, and looked well-made enough in pictures that I went and ordered it. It showed up today and I assembled 1 stormtrooper.

 

The kit contains a ton of bits and offers many interesting posing possibilities. I'm not going to post sprue pictures because there are enough of them floating about on the interwebs. The model itself, when assembled, looks pretty much as advertised, no surprizes there. If you can get past the obvious Nazi aesthetics (just tell yourself it's a DKOKer) the model looks very nice. It's also reminiscent of the Protect Gear suit from the Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade.

 

My plan was to use the Eisenkern troopers as a stand-in for the Imperial Guard allies in my army, because they look high-tech, armored and equipped to somewhat survive on a the futuristic battlefield. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. The Eisenkern are definitely skinnier than the Space Marines, but, when mounted on a GW base, they stand just as tall as the Astartes, or even a bit taller (1mm or so) on the account of the Marines' propensity to always be semi-crouched.

 

Here is a scale shot of an SM, an Eisenkern, an SM Scout, an IG grunt and a cultst. You can see the issue. It would be ridiculous if your genetically engineered superhumans were accompanied to battle by "regular humans" who are just as tall but a lot skinnier.

 

http://i46.tinypic.com/aktwzc.jpg

 

That said, the kit can be torn apart for some pretty sweet conversion bits. Shoulderpads, backpacks, guns could all play very well with GW IG models or maybe even SM, and the head is big enough to work on the actual SM. Again, if you don't mind the very obvious Nazi-style helmet.

 

That's it, wasn't going to come back at all but figured I should at least try to save some people money if they contemplate the same route as me.

[Durus]

Wehrmacht ≠ Nazis.

 

Apart from that nice review. Would the upper body section fit on a pair of IG legs? Because it seems to me the height difference mainly comes from the longer legs. Torso and head look about as big as a cadian. So how much additional conversion work would kitbashing take?

[Olgerth Istaarn]

Excuse me?

 

Anyway. Transplanting the torso on IG legs is easy enough - the "waist" is the same size -  but the plastic IG legs have a "skirt" around them (the lower half of the uniform jacket).So an armored torso somehow sprouting a cloth skirt looks stupid. I don't know if there are non-"skirted" IG legs out there.

[Durus]

I am not saying there were no party members that were soldiers. I am saying not every soldier was a party member. I was just pointing out a, in my opinion, problematic generalization.

 

Thanks for the answer.

[Olgerth Istaarn]

Maybe Catachan legs could work... they have no skirt.

[Dragon Claw]

While they might not work as IG I could see them working as Scouts if you swap out their weapons for bolters or adapt them to look like sniper rifles(silencer, extra optics, etc). After all scouts should be roughly equivalent in size to a normal astartes as they've gone through most of the bulking up of muscle by the time they're let into combat and the armour the model is wearing wouldn't be too far off an approximation of scout armour(ie powered but much less bulky than normal power armour to allow for greater movement). If you wanted to you could always add a few greenstuff cloaks and hoods to help echo the camo cloaks on the original sniper armed scouts, I think they could look pretty sweet if done right.

 

Thinking on it, it's always bugged me how titchy the scout models were.

[Cypher-xv]

While they might not work as IG I could see them working as Scouts if you swap out their weapons for bolters or adapt them to look like sniper rifles(silencer, extra optics, etc). After all scouts should be roughly equivalent in size to a normal astartes as they've gone through most of the bulking up of muscle by the time they're let into combat and the armour the model is wearing wouldn't be too far off an approximation of scout armour(ie powered but much less bulky than normal power armour to allow for greater movement). If you wanted to you could always add a few greenstuff cloaks and hoods to help echo the camo cloaks on the original sniper armed scouts, I think they could look pretty sweet if done right.

 

Thinking on it, it's always bugged me how titchy the scout models were.

I was thinking along the same lines. I'm not the biggest fan of the current scout models. Some models really need an update from their 90's look. I'm seriously considering ordering a box.

[Chaeron]

Gene bulked Skitarii perhaps...

[GhostLegion]

having some of the forgeworld elysians, i can say these plastics are almost exactly on size with the resins.  its not quite a perfect equality, but very close...

[SevenExxes]

It's the power armour that makes a space marine look bigger than a scout space marine. In the Assault on Black Reach novel the main character replaces his power armour with scout armour. Some space marines remain as scouts. Therefore the Eisenkern trooper wouldn't resemble a normal human.