The Warhammer 40k action figures made by Chinese manufacturer JoyToy will soon be getting company on the toy shelf, as the firm has just unveiled new 1/18 scale figures for Infinity the Wargame. JoyToy announced its partnership with Spanish game studio Corvus Belli in October 2022, and the new designs are available to pre-order from its online store today.
JoyToy already makes licensed action figures from a huge range of Warhammer 40k factions, including Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, the Grey Knights, Astra Militarum, Adeptus Custodes, and T’au Empire.
This is the first time another wargame has received the JoyToy treatment. Infinity has a clean sci-fi aesthetic that borrows from anime, Mass Effect, and military sci-fi. It’s a natural fit for Joy Toy, which specialises in creating mechs and semi-realistic sci-fi military figures.
The walking war machine with missile launchers, giant hammer, and enormous shotgun is a Ratnik Heavy Infantry trooper from the Tartary Army Corps. According to a press release by Infinity publisher Corvus Belli this figure will be about 20cm tall, standing nose to nose with an Imperial Knight.
Its smaller buddies are Marauders from the USAriadna Ranger Force. In the Infinity setting both these troop types hail from the independent world of Ariadna, which has a culture derived from several 21st century nations who arrived on the first human colony ship to leave earth.
Corvus Belli promises more figures to come, including the French Ariadnan human / wolf-person duo ‘Equipe-Mirage Five’ (yes, Infinity has wolf-people), and the Panoceanian Teutonic Knights, who are what you would get if you made Warhammer 40k’s Black Templars in the Ghost in the Shell universe.
The figures are available to pre-order from the JoyToy website now, and there’s currently a discount on them. Once they go to their full RRP the infantry will cost $49.99 / £41 and the Ratnik will cost $94.99 / £78.
The undreamable dream for all these toys would be to play out a full miniature wargame using 1/18 scale action figures. That’s slightly more achievable for Infinity than it is for Warhammer 40k; Infinity focuses on small engagements between special operatives, and uses around 10 models per side.
While Warhammer 40k got in ahead of Infinity for an action figure line, it was far from the first wargame to have matching children’s toys – Battletech had a line of gloriously tacky plastic Battlemechs and pilots from Tyco toys in the ‘90s.