Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Realmscape Nexus Syphon

Among the Realmscape terrain kits released along with the new Age of Sigmar edition, is the Nexus Syphon. It is either part of the Extremis boxed set or available individually.

The overall design of the new Age of Sigmar 3.0 terrain was moved from ruins of battle, towards new towns and outposts under construction, rebuilding and forging new settlements. The Nexus Syphon, a magical construct to channel the energy from the realms to power and protect these newly founded colonies of the Dawnbringer Crusades.

A Nexus Syphon covers a single sprue with 23 components made from hard plastic. It was designed in the UK and produced in China. It comes with an instruction leaflet, but without rules, unlike other terrain kits we have covered here in the past, like the Gloomtide Shipwreck or Awakened Wyldwood.

It comes in a thin, roughly A4 sized cardboard box and costs 40 EUR.

Terrain, especially the larger pieces, tended to have less depth of details or not be as crisp as the main product ranges (infantry or vehicles). That often occurred with the outsourced kits manufactured in China (an example for rather blurry details is the Shattered Dominion Base Detail kit), but here it is really properly done. A very clean cast, with moderate amount of mould lines. Due to the non-organic structures not much work to remove those.

The centre piece of the sprue is the dome of the syphon, which is split in a lower half and four "petals" for the upper part.

This is the first thing we are going to assemble. Give if a dry run, to make sure you aligned them properly. They have plug connection that is pin coded, so you shouldn't have problems with mix ups. It has a pretty well fit and is stable. It might be a good idea to cover some of the seams with Liquid Green Stuff and sand it down.

The dome stands upon on four pillars. Don't be irritated by their different lengths. The base takes care of that. These were actually the part that took the most time cleaning. As the sides are nicely detailed and you don't want to damage those while removing them mould lines. You can't go wrong here, the plug connections are cleverly coded by shape, so you don't mix anything up. I really like that eye for detail.

Next up, the cover for the chains, keeping the dome on top of the pillars. They are helmeted faces and I can see these bits (or the whole Syphon) being used for 40k terrain as well, with Emperors Children or Blood Angels (due to their similarity to the Sanguinus Guard). That they didn't use skulls, but helmets is refreshing and surprisingly non-grim-dark.

Now for the base. Yeah, it is still Warhammer, so we have of course some skulls and bones on here. The base is made from four parts, really nicely designed and put together. Continuing the great fit. Makes for a stable connection, but I highly recommend to not glue the upper part on just yet. Wait for it until you've painted it.

As mentioned above, the Nexus Syphon gathers and channels the energy of the realms. So, its core is a ball of energy, twisting and turning in the middle of the terrain piece. It is a round orb, connected to the upper and lower part of the Syphon. It fits the casted spells of the Malign Sorcery. With a bit of green stuff you could easily keep it off or replace it all together with something else (maybe a floating artefact or something).

Simply add the dome with pillars (as I said, don't glue it down until you've painted it, it makes your life much easier) and you're done.

Quite a tall terrain piece. Fits the new aesthetics of Age of Sigmar very well, yet is generic enough to be used with a lot of other fantasy themed systems, like Frostgrave, or as mentioned further above, with the Horus Heresy as part of the home world's architecture of some of the Space Marine Legions.

A really nice design. A 360° wouldn't make much sense, as it looks pretty much the same from all sides. But the details are very well done and I just need to cover some seams here and there.

Conclusion
Honestly, I really like the design and the quality of the kit is what you would expect from Games Workshop. As mentioned above, it is very versatile and makes for a good addition to your terrain collection, as you are not limited to use with just with Age of Sigmar. I was bit surprised, that due to its specific use of channelling energy, it didn't have special rules as other terrain kits have.

The only thing to argue about is the pricing. And I don't mean the pricing in general, but how it compares within the Games Workshop terrain range. For comparison the Gloomtide Shipwreck is 20% less, as are most of the similar sized like the Charnel Throne or Skull Altar, both at 32,50 EUR. So that 40 EUR price tag seems a bit steep for my taste, and would work better at around 32,50 - 35 EUR. But as 10-15% discount is easy to find, that's not that a big of a problem. I would have hoped for it being included in the Realmscape Expansion set or another bundle.

Other than that, quick build and proper fit, which isn't always the case, especially with round shapes or larger pieces in terrain kits. But here, nothing to worry about.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar is a brand by Games Workshop

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.