Necromunda – Promethium Tanks and Refuelling Station

The latest Necromunda plastic kits revisit the Cargo 8 Ridgehauler and its options for trailers, adding a new type of container for both the trailer and a terrain piece with the Promethium Tanks and the Refuelling Station.

Both kits are available for pre-order from today (November 5th) and will be delivered starting the saturday after that. As the Book of the Outlands previewed some of the (empty) trailers and various load outs, these kits have their rules included in this book (pg. 76 ff.) as well as an addendum to the assembly instructions of the refuelling station (not the cargo-8 trailer). The rules in the book only cover Promethium Tanks as cargo-load of the Cargo-8, the rules for using the Refuelling Stations are only covered inside the kit. We're going to build both, the Promethium Tanks On Cargo-8 Ridgehauler Trailer and the Promethium Tanks Refuelling Station, beginning with the trailer.

It shares the majority of parts and most of the sprues with the Cargo-8 Ridgehauler (we've covered the truck itself in the review), the trailer is the same as the other Cargo-8 trailer, just replacing the containers for the Promethium tanks (meaning swapping the Container sprue for a tank sprue. So far this new sprue is only part of this kit and the refuelling station.

The Promethium Tanks on Cargo 8 Ridgehauler Trailer has a RRP of 47,50 EUR and covers two large and two medium sized sprues, along with a decal sheet and black-and-white instructions.

It shares the wheels and carriage from regular Trailer / Ridgehauler, no alterations here. All the parts are already included to mount the new freight. The sprues covering the wheels and suspension are included twice.

The new sprue, covering two promethium tanks each, covers the tanks themself, along with some gear and additional (partially optional) accessories for the tanks. Casting is sharp, with visible mould lines, but due to their design this is very time consuming to remove, especially on the top and bottom parts of the tanks.

The instructions  cover a few variants how to assemble the tanks and how a single or multiple trailers would look like. We will go into the details of the variants further below in this review.

As the trailer is absolutely the same as with the Cargo-8 Trailer carrying a munitorum container, we won't bloat this review by duplicating the build and just refer you to the other article, covering those steps in detail, and head directly towards the promethium tanks.

The Promethium Tank Refuelling station is just the sprue of the promethium tanks, twice. The RRP is 37,00 EUR and its release date is the same as the trailer.

This kit comes with two sprues and black-and-white instructions, including the rules for the use of Promethium Tanks Refuelling Stations in the game.

As you can see, the sprue covers two tanks, build from a top and bottom, along with four-part ring, that can be stacked to build taller tanks (more on that further below). Beyond that, the sprue covers a walk way, an external pressure tank and some smaller tools.

Each tank consists out of a bottom part, a ring section in the middle and a top part. Removing the mould lines is quite time consuming and partially difficult, as they ran across the details of the rim. Before you glue the mid section to either lid or bottom, wait for the next step.

You can combine the mid section of multiple promethium tanks and build different sizes of the tank, for example a really flat one, just using the bottom and top, the regular planned one with one ring section or stack multiple on top of eachother, to extend the size of this. I am honest, I expect the middle rings to pop up as an STL shortly after the release.

The two tanks are combined by a connection piece and two side bars. Once again, the instructions suggest building these this way. But you should keep an eye out for the variations and maybe just glue them to one side, as you can combine multiple tanks to a larger refuelling station etc.

The promethium tanks can be connected to the Warhammer 40k pipelines with two additional pieces that can be added to the bottom parts on multiple angles / different sides. The walk way on top only fit in two orientations of the lid, so this is important to keep in mind (or to not glue the lids until you've sorted out, where you want to go with the design).

There is a small compensating tank that is added to one side and functions as a mid-step for the ladder added to one of the promethium tanks. This is a nice piece, but in my opinion only works with the refuelling station, on the tanks mounted as cargo on the trailer they look a bit odd. The small hand wheels that are added to the sides, below the side bars are important, as they later are used as a connection to the trailer mount.

Each sprue covers a few additional bits, to add to your terrain or gang. So you a double sided tool / ammo box (depending on the orientation), pile of screwdrivers and spanners, two monkey wrenchs, two blow torchs and a hose - per sprue! Neat.

The fully assembled promethium tanks can be added to the trailer. For that you need the high mounts on both sides. I wouldn't glue both of them, maybe one side and leave the other one with magnets or just push them into place. As you can see, the fit neatly on the trailer and if you go for a taller tank you could problably put them on the side.

You can combine multiple Promethium Tanks in different orientation. Beside the variation of height, you can align them in pairs of two, build more complex structures etc., depending on what you're looking for. And of course due to the pipeline connectors, you can add them to a network of pipelines and other buildings as well. I did a dry with with my Plasma Reactor.

And to give you a final idea of the size. Here are the Promethium Tanks with Primaris and First Born Space Marines, as well as a classic and more modern Necromunda miniature. The tanks are bulky, but could be a bit taller in my opinion. Just a mid section more. Maybe we will see a small sprue with only that part (or third party STLs).

Conclusion

For the attentive gamers, this was no surprise, as this option was covered in the Book of Outlands.  But I wasn't sure if we would see the kit as an option so briefly or as a new kit, as I could have imagined, that they would repack an existing kit for example the medium sized tank sprue from Sacristan Forgeshrine or Galvanic Magmavent, especially as it was teased in the pictures of the cargo load outs.

This kit didn't fix the issue, that the trailer is rather time consuming to build, especially with the suspension that is hidden after assemble. And that is a bit annoying, as you spend quite some time on doing that. With this second option for a cargo load out, you see a bit more of the complexity of this kit and that they obviously could even add further load-outs in upcoming books, or you could build your own setups. But to be honest, I think that the ridgehauler with two trailers is big enough (as you can see in the picture above, it stretches across my cutting matt which is 60 cm / 24 Inch wide and that is - at least for me - long enough for a moving terrain piece (and neat mission idea, where you wouldn't move the ridgehauler, but everything else - like they did with the Dark Eldar Jetbike scenario back in the day - White Dwarf 237 - September 1999).

And I think it is pretty neat, that the refuel station has rules as well and I can see these being combined with the Gang Stronghold, as you could use it with the tower etc. and I think they will fit in with the Battlezone Fronteris Landing Pad from Nachmund - especially with the refuel purpose. For me to be a better fit, I will definitely need to add some height to these.

As for the prices, my mine issue was with the Ridgehauler itself being quite expensive and the trailers adding up too three-digit terrain piece. Difficult, especially as you get the Battlezone boxes for that kind of money. In this case, yes the trailer isn't the cheapest, but if you're already down the Ridgehauler and a trailer, you can add this, or maybe if you already have enough of those, just go for a refuelling station or two. These seem like a decent price and variable, especially if you have additional mid section (you could basically use a tube / pipe with the fitting diameter).

Warhammer 40,000 and Necromunda are brands by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer