Subdue and Secure - Adeptus Arbites Specialists

One of the fun things about making a Necromunda gang is the creation of individuals with exotic weaponry and wargear as a campaign progresses. I wanted to do the same with my Adeptus Arbites/Enforcers (counts as Venators) in my current campaign, with a web gunner and a riot shield specialist.

It doesn't pay to get on the wrong side of the law!

Neither of the new recruits are standard miniatures, but hopefully both fit nicely in my growing collection of Adeptus Arbites.

The specialist with the web gun uses the body from one of the mid-2000s Fanatic/Specialist Games Enforcers. I borrowed a pair of hands from a plastic Space Marine scout, and equipped him with a resin webber made and given to me by the very excellent Dr Mathias - check out his Miniature Gaming Extravaganza.

The webber is actually a design for a heavy webber, after the esoteric design illustrated in the equipment section of the Rogue Trader rulebook. It came with an accompanying tank for the web chemicals, and it gave me a bit of a kick to find a suitable project to use it on! The hose is the very useful Wrapped Wire by Zinge Industries - much more flexible than guitar strings or cast cables.

Patrolman D-376 "Dragnet" is a restraint specialist, equipped with a non-lethal web gun to effectively subdue suspects for later questioning.

Dragnet got the same colour scheme I've used to date. The only real point of difference is the large visor that the Fanatic Enforcer models sport on their helmet, which I painted the same orange as I've been using for various lenses and gems on other figures.

I added a few warning markings on the tank - I did want to add a 'web' icon, but after three attempts decided it wasn't going to work out!

The riot specialist was a conversion I'd been thinking about for ages, and is an attempt to create a female trooper in the style of the 1990 Jes Goodwin Adeptus Arbites. Female Enforcers are well established in 40k with the Calpurnia novels and Barbaretta from the 54mm Inquisitor range.

I used a Callidus assassin as my starting point (also a Jes Goodwin sculpt). She received a helmet from the head-swapped Arbites from a few weeks back, and I removed her pistol and right arm.

I repositioned her legs, added the holster, plastic Genestealer hybrid shock maul from the and the Enforcer shield. The plastic shoulder pad is the under-pad from the old 1990s Space Marine arms which shares the same panel lines as the 1990s Arbites.

After that it was onto sculpting to try and mimic the male Arbites - an entirely new right arm, leg armour, boots and the chain across her chest. I'd never sculpted a chain before, but this tutorial by Insaniak turned out to be incredibly simple and pretty effective.

I even sculpted an approximation of the boot aquila, which is pretty ropey, but is just about enough to give the impression of a uniform detail.

The photo below shows the comparison between the conversion and the original Callidus model, painted by my mate Simon.

As before, I kept the same paint scheme, the only real point of difference being the battered riot shield, which attempts to mimic the look used on many real life police shields.

You can't really see that the aquila is a bit unusually shaped, but you can see that she has one on her boot!

All in all, I'm really pleased with how well she integrates in with the rest of my 1990 Arbites:

And the web gunner looks pretty at home shoulder to shoulder with some 1992 Arbites for that matter!

I think this pair are going to be the last couple of Adeptus Arbites for a while - I'm pretty sure I don't need any other figures for the Necromunda campaign, and I've got to get back to working on my chaos renegades for August. I suspect I'll add some more at some future point though!