Copplestone Castings Bio Chem Squad

This is going to be the first of a series of reviews looking at Bio Chem, Hazmat, NBC troopers or whatever you want to call them from a variety of figure companies. I'm labelling them collectively as Biohazard Troopers but I will use the name given to them by their figure companies for individual reviews. These reviews will cover figures from Copplestone Castings, eM4, Hasslefree, Horrorclix and Recreational Conflict. I've listed them alphabetically and that is the order in which I shall review them.

These five figures come from Copplestone's 28mm scale Future Wars range and are set FW16 Bio Chem Squad. My colour scheme, white suits, is based on that found on the Copplestone website, although I have given my squad white boots instead of black. White suits are not the easiest things to paint. I started off by painting these Citadel Space Wolves Grey. I drybrushed this with a mixture of Space Wolves Grey and Skull White, adding more Skull White to the mix until the final highlight was pure Skull White. The deep creases are painted with Citadel Adeptus Battlegrey. I used a 1/1 mix of Chaos Black and Adeptus Battlegrey for my "blacklining" of the figures.
At the far left of my two photos is the squad leader, pointing at something, whilst holding his assault rifle at rest. I've painted the underslung barrel of his rifle as a torch but I suppose it could just as easily be a grenade launcher. The rifles bear a close resemblance to the assault rifles used by the Colonial Marines in the film Aliens. Even so, they still work well in a contemporary setting. All of the troopers wear gasmasks underneath their hoods.
Next up is a trooper armed with a flame thrower with a fitted fuel bottle. Again, the design is based on that used in the film Aliens by both Ripley and the Marines. A trooper with a flame thrower is a great choice for clearing out nests of zombies, vampires or almost anything else.
In the centre of the group is a trooper armed with an automatic shotgun. It's another useful weapon to have for close-in work, even if it is prone to attracting lots of zombies. Note how the trooper has his legs braced to absorb the recoil of firing the shotgun.
Fourth in line is a trooper with the same assault rifle as used by the squad leader. This guy is firing his weapon from the hip. Once again, I painted the underslung barrel as a torch to aid his sight in darkened rooms or corridors.
The fifth trooper is identically armed to the fourth and is in a very similar pose, although he is leaning further forward.
These are rather chunky figures but are well sculpted by Mark Copplestone. If you are only going to buy one set of Biohazard Troopers then these are well worth considering. They fit in well with other 28mm scale figures and are fairly reasonably priced at £8.50 for the set of five figures.