Adeptus Arbites: Law and Order in the 41st Millenium...

A while ago, I got lucky and managed to snag a decent sized group of Arbites off of a forum that I like to hang out on. They've always been favorite models of mine and can make for great, thematic skirmishes. Arbites represent a great piece of 40k lore and really, who doesn't love an army of Judge Dredds?

I really couldn't wait for them to arrive and to paint them up.

Original photo from seller.

I bought them right after the post-Specialist Games crash and got an amazing deal. Similar lots have gone on eBay for over five times the price that I paid for mine. That being said, I still needed to hop on eBay to pick up a couple of original Arbite shotguns, as the original owner had lost them in a move. Besides shotguns, the squad came with a variety of weapons and the very much sought-after Cyber Mastiff. They got a bit beat up in the mail, so I sent them for a good soak in Simple Green to remove any lingering paint or glue.

With Specialist Games support now gone, I felt like they deserved a great paint job - a final send off to a new life of 40k skirmishes and RPG sessions.

In fairly decent shape. Every model required greenstuff wrists and minor sculpting.

Unfortunately, a couple of problems arose fairly quickly. First of all, the models needed a tremendous amount of cleaning. Many of them had a great deal of metal flash to trim, holes to fill, or details that were missing. The Cyber Mastiff required re-sculpting of its entire rear foot.

These kind of problems are usually rare for most metal models and probably points to the fact that these molds are old, worn out, and degrading.

By far, the worst problem I encountered was trying to align the hands/guns with their arms. I'm not really sure if they ever fit properly (even when the molds were new), but the Arbites required huge amounts of greenstuff sculpting and pinning at the wrists, along with a great quantity of super glue. Many hours were lost at this stage until I got them all seated properly.

God help me if they ever fall off of a building or if I drop them off a table...

Having completed the squad, it's regrettable that Games Workshop isn't making them anymore. They're a fun, flavorful unit to build and paint.

It's also a shame to think that such an iconic piece of 40k lore isn't actually represented in the Warhammer 40k game.

Regardless, If they ever put out a new plastic kit for the Arbites, I'd be all over it - even if they aren't useable in standard 40k.

Look for an Arbite-heavy battle report to grace this page soon.