A part of the Imperial Guard kit, Schaeffer’s Last Chancers that came out way back in 1999 that has since had both Colonel Schaeffer and the unit themselves become part of 40k legend, Warrior Woman here is a model that had gotten started, then stopped twice in the past two decades. With the Impetus of Fembruary this year, I decided to knuckle down and finally get her painted and completed to a standard I’d be happy with. While the Last Chancers themselves are a Penal Legion, based very much on The Dirty Dozen for inspiration (I laughed when I saw them called “…the Suicide Squad of the 41st millennium”!)

Now, me being me, I never really liked “Named Characters” or “Named Units” in 40k, based on the whole “How do legendary leaders of epic armies like Marneus Calgar and Eldrad Ulthwe manage to fight each other so regularly, and only with 20 men and a transport in tow?” thing. So when I bought the Last Chancers box, I bought it as a way to get more variety of models to incorporate into my pretty-much anonymous Imperial Guard squads. Warrior Woman here didn’t exactly fit in with a uniform that actually worked in a standard metal IG squad. It wasn’t until much later that I picked up some extras (not that I’ve painted them) but now I’m pretty sure I can paint the whole lot of them as their “actual” roles.

The biggest problem with Warrior Woman was working out how to paint her. She was clearly very much based on Xena, Warrior Princess with a Cadian helmet of the day plopped on her head, but neither of my previous attempts to paint her as an Escher didn’t work, nor whatever I was thinking in the bright green that this model was basecoated in at one point.

Now, while I’m thinking I’ll probably paint up the full set of Last Chancers, Warrior Woman’s scheme there isn’t exactly inspiring, either. In the end, I want with a dark outfit, inspired by Xena alongside a skin tone, hair and half sleeve inspired by both Sasha Banks and Mercedes Martinez‘ new look.