The Odalisques are female bodyguards from the Haqqislam faction. This box set replaces the older blister with Boarding Shotgun. This is a more in-depth review than usual as these are my own models for my own army...

Pose & Styling

Following Corvus Belli's usual box set system, the Odalisque set includes two each of two different bodies and four different sets of arms. However it has four different heads which doesn't tend to be the case with helmeted sets.

Befitting their Charlie's Angels/Suckerpunch feel the Odalisque's poses are, well, poses. :-) The 'catwalk strut' legs & torso version naturally lends itself to a pose where the model is nonchalantly walking across the battlefield, casually inflicting mayhem as she goes, while the more static pose feels like a pause to reload, while still looking cool.

As you'd expect, all four variations of model share the same design of long boots, strapped trousers, overskirt, jacket with high collar and armoured forearm bracers. The only sizeable change from the older Odalisque models is the high collar, allowing for the interchangeable heads.

The detail on the models is fine and crisp, of particular note is the pattern of interlacing strips down the back of the skirt.

Looking at each variation in turn, left to right:

SMG arms and striding legs - this is probably my least favourite of the four variations. I'm not sure what the left arm is supposed to be doing, it's not really in the right position for either a hand signal to the rest of the unit to pause or to advance. The hold-out SMG looks good though.

Boarding Shotgun - the studio shot has a nice curve to the waist, making the gun look suitably heavy, however in my construction (see later) the gun ended up higher. This doesn't look so good but does look as if it's being fired.

Contender - the sliding the bolt on the Contender pose is good, very much a 'cool under fire' pose. The flash suppressor is perhaps a bit big considering the small size of the rest of the gun.

Rifle + Light Shotgun - my favourite version, coolly advancing while laying down fire.

These are some of the first Haqqislam models to use the newer more proportionately-scaled guns, noticeably smaller than the old ones. 

New and old Boarding Shotguns:

Old and new Rifle + Light Shotgun:

In game terms, these are linkable troops which can form a unit to gain bonuses. Link teams get the maximum number of bonuses in teams of five. Fortunately there is a fifth model with a Spitfire available in a blister:

Parts & Fit

The older Boarding Shotgun model is renowned as being one of the trickiest Infinity models to assemble, generally requiring you to cut off one of the model's breasts to get the arm & gun part to fit and still being tricky to get the other arm to fit...

I'm glad to say that these models are a very different experience to assemble.

As usual with Infinity models, the torso/leg parts were flash-free and almost mould line free and were very clean apart from some air channel feeders. The mould lines generally followed the edges of the skirt where possible. The smaller parts had more flash and needed more cleaning for the mould lines which caused some problems with the Contender.

Each model consists of four parts - legs & torso, head and two arms.

The top of the neck is a flat surface with a central pin. The bottom of each head has a corresponding hole, allowing the head to be turned in different directions. The two heads with long hair are obviously more limited in direction.

The shoulder joints are slightly different to any other joints I've come across on an Infinity figure - the torso side of the joint has two deep nubs one above the other with the upper one being smaller, the top of the arm then has equivalent holes:

This makes for a very solid joint with a decent surface area for gluing, a must given the relative thinness of the arms. There also seems to have been very little shrinkage/warping as part of the mould making and casting process as nearly all the shoulder joints are very snug fits.

As you may have spotted in the component photos, each pair of arms has been sprued together, eliminating one of the problems of previous boxes where you needed to keep looking back and forth between the box art and the pieces to sort them properly. You still need to do this to some extent because the arms aren't fully interchangeable between the two different torso designs. In addition, the Boarding Shotgun and the Rifle are held in opposite hands, making it impossible to mix up the handless arms.

Going in the same order as before.

SMG - this went together smoothly but could have done with me filing down the lower part of the shoulder joint slightly as the SMG ended up tilted slightly up in the air making it look a little like she can't handle the recoil. I bent the left hand and arm slightly to make it more like she's beckoning other models forwards with a slight curve to the fingers.

I used the open-mouthed head as this is the most active-looking of the models and this echoes the idea of her calling the rest of the unit forwards with an all-clear.

Boarding Shotgun - the first of the three point contact models. the three contact points weren't perfect, but unlike the old BS model the elbow is free of the gun butt, making it possible to bend the arm slightly, this was enough to do the job, although I did also need to do a small amount of drilling out on the smaller shoulder holes. The positioning wasn't perfect enough to glue on one arm and then the second, but the nub on the end of the right arm was a good enough fit into the wrist on the gun slider that I could hold all the parts together with one arm and then apply superglue with a fine rod and let it seep into the joints:

The head was then attached, this involved some filing on the inside back of the ponytail so that I could turn her head slightly in the direction of the gun barrel.

Contender - This again required bending the left elbow slightly to get the positioning perfect but after that the right arm slotted neatly into position with the Contender under the left hand.

Unfortunately the thin body of the Contender kicked in during the cleaning of the parts and the flash suppressor broke off with too small a contact point to glue back on, in the end I used a small bit of plasticard rod instead, although this makes it hard to distinguish from the SMG. However as the SMG and Contender are paired in the unit options this didn't matter as much as it might have.

I used the twin ponytails head on this one but may reposition it slightly to look over the right shoulder like the studio version as it works better.

Rifle - amazingly, this one fitted accurately enough that I glued the right arm & rifle piece on and then added the left arm once it had glued securely! There was a slight gap under the armpit where the left arm wasn't fully fitting to the shoulder but this isn't visible unless looking at the model from underneath.

Below you can see the glued right arm and rifle with the left arm unglued, supported purely by the shoulder and wrist nubs:

For this one I chose the head with the long flowing hair to echo the billowing skirt. This required trimming down the width of the nub on top of the neck as there wasn't much room at the back of the neck for the hair.

The assembled models:

Scale shots to GW models:

Scale shots with the older Odalisque models (including my arm-swap conversions):

Summary - even with the problems with the Contender, this has now become my favourite of the four-model box sets from Corvus Belli, taking the place of the Magister Knights box set. This is due to the generally excellent fit of the parts, the new shoulder joint system, the general look of the assembled models and all the attention to detail like pairing the arms on the sprues and having the three-point-contact arms on different sides so that the 'off' arms can't be confused.

Pros

• Consistent and stylish design.
• Very good scale-matching with the older Odalisque models, other than the guns.
• Solid shoulder joints for the size of the arms.
• Attention to detail in layout of arms etc.

Cons

• Weak flash suppressor/barrel on the Contender.
• Slightly odd pose for the SMG model.

Ian

The Odalisque box set is available for purchase on the Wargaming Trader webstore plus all your usual suppliers.