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Anyone tried them out before? I'm thinking of buying their space rangers as an alternative source of figures for my space marine army (mainly as a variation for my horde of termies) So anyone tried them out before? They seem to have a good price on things but I'd rather get feedback from Dakka before I start ordering

I had their pack of plastic spaceships, which while they weren't so hot I had no issues with the company.

They have a bunch of gangbangers, and a couple of future wars guys that I've gotten from them in the past. They have a couple of plastic generic "Space Rangers" guys that are meh.

Heres the site with the gangbangers.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Thugz.html


Heres the site with the... uh... Space Rangers.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Science_Fiction.html

I'm waiting on some Reporters and cameramen from them for my Supers. I saw the Space Rangers in the flesh and wasn't really impressed. They're pretty bad.

I've only bought some of their metals (which are Mark Copplestone's - who did the original commissar models for GW) and had no issues.

Those plastic space rangers are pretty crude by current GW standards, I think you can get them in bulk cheaper than that as well.

Most of their metals are good, but they aren't their own, they appear to be all sorts of ranges that they have bought the moulds for.

These were orginally a range done by a German company called Metal Magic.
http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Cybertech.html

Their 'Space Rangers' are crude by GW standards but not by the Space Crusade standard - which was the standard when these were released).

Yep, German company Metal Magic did used to do the Spacelords range.
The 'Bunker breakers' were the powered armour units.
The Yoyodyne mob were the armoured humans (unpowered), the Phagons were the beastmen.

They are cast with an integral round base, but slot into a plastic 20mm square base which has an indent for their integral one.

I ordered from them a few times before they racked up the shipping costs. No problems.

Imperial wrote:Anyone tried them out before? I'm thinking of buying their space rangers as an alternative source of figures for my space marine army (mainly as a variation for my horde of termies) So anyone tried them out before? They seem to have a good price on things but I'd rather get feedback from Dakka before I start ordering

I've seen some of their plastics... good generic near-future 'trooper' types or adventurers for RPGs. Not the best... I'd say GW's plastics are a lot better, but sometimes you don't want GW's style.

I used them in the early 2000s bought a bunch of their plastic troopers, great service, great prices.

Dunno how they are these days.

I had a pack of the old Grenedier Space Rangers, like others said they're early 90s Sci-Fi plastics, not very customizable or detailed.

chromedog wrote:They are cast with an integral round base, but slot into a plastic 20mm square base which has an indent for their integral one.

Yep, I've seen that on a few European produced figures, there's an Asterix range that does the same.

I've also bought some of the oriental metals of EM4, they are standard slottas and were from another range but they are soooo cheap. £1.28 each, I had a few ninjas and samurai. I worked out what they were once, Grenadier or something, I don't recall.

Aren't the EM4 figures nearer true 25m than 28mm heroic.

Some are, the Space Ranger plastics are large.

I've got a fair amount of EM4 stuff. A few comment on what's been mentioned here.

1)Future Warriors (Originally sculpted by Mark Copplestone for the Grenadier miniatures Future Wars line).
Nice sculpts. still hold up well 15 years after they were made. They are a very solid 28mm (28mm from sole to eye), a bit on the heroic side, but not quite as big as the 30mm of current GW. Figure them being between the size of necromunda and current GW. I have some troopers, scavengers, savages, and others and they are great. Some of the more civilian'ish figs are very early 90's styled.

2)EM4 Plastics I did a pretty in-depth review of these a few years back here: http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=130510
A few observations:

Gangers: Dated but fun figs, great bang for the buck. One of the female gangers is really a bad sculpt, so figure this set has 4 useable figs rather than 5. The gangers and troopers are as tall as current GW, but slimmer.

Troopers: nice sculpts but the hands/weapons leave something to be desired. I recommend getting them with the Heavy weapons upgrade if only to get the improved torsos, and then switching out the assault rifles with guns of your choice. Whatever you do, they are a nice cheap option if you need some generic sci-fi troopers. Doug at EM4 says there are new arm sets with better assault rifles and weapons coming out soon.

Here's mine. Plastic figs, with the HW set torsos and SAW, command set arms on the leader, custom packs and warzone plastic rifles. Go easy on my paintjobs, it's just block-painting and dip.




Space Rangers. Your basic monopose power armored troopers. They detailing is good enough and they paint up well, but you're not going to get alot of variation in them. Also, they are about as large as terminators. My friend just painted up a squad of 5 and they look nice, but in large numbers, it'd be pretty obvious that asside from the Sgt. Pose, the basic troopers only come in one pose with different weapon options.

3) Spacelords (a former metal magic line). These are close to a true 28 line, and are going to seem smaller than what most people associate with 28mm. I think they're great figs. Great detailing, and a very cohesive style. Unfortunately the line that I'm interested in, the Sardaykin hasn't been re-released yet. I have original early 90's blisters of some of the phagon stuff that hasn't been re-relesed though, walkers and such and it's really nice. I'll be selling some in a few weeks, so keep an eye out.

All in all, EM4 is a great source for cheap, but quality figs. Their range is quite large and it's worthwhile to take your time looking through it. None of their sculpts is going to compare detail-wise with the current state-of-the-art, but Doug has done a great job of picking up some of the better lines of the past and they still fit in well with current figs. I'm a fan.

Good write-up. Thank you for the info.

I've got some of Mark Copplestone's ex-Grenadier Future Warriors stuff, and some of his Copplestone castings Future Wars line (and some stuff that Foundry sell) and they are all the same scale. Likewise with his original Commissars and his Cop miniatures.

Minor changes to them, like heads and weapons, but otherwise the same. There have been at least three incarnations of this range, Grenadier, Foundry and CC ( Foundry have the other one in their "street violence" line) - the CC "band on the run" set has a female singer, the other two don't.

Kilkrazy wrote:Good write-up. Thank you for the info.

Happy to do it. I just hope that more folks discover EM4. Here's another shot an example of what can be done to the plastic figs with a tiny bit of customizing. (the backpacks are IG binocs with the eyepieces filed off)

chromedog wrote:I've got some of Mark Copplestone's ex-Grenadier Future Warriors stuff, and some of his Copplestone castings Future Wars line (and some stuff that Foundry sell) and they are all the same scale...
...Minor changes to them, like heads and weapons, but otherwise the same. There have been at least three incarnations of this range, Grenadier, Foundry and CC ( Foundry have the other one in their "street violence" line)

Yeah, Mark has been pretty constent throughout his career. I've actually found that at least in the trooper range the newer examples of his work are a touch bulkier than the older ones. However, it's nothing that would be noticed without very close examination and certainly nothing that couldn't reflect natural human variation. It's pretty neat that between the 3 ranges one can build a very sizable force without alot of pose duplication.