Horus Heresy – Legiones Astartes Mk II Assault Squad
Along with the Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank, a new infantry plastic box set is introduced for the Legiones Astartes in Horus Heresy: the Astartes Assault Squad in Mark II armour.
This new boxed set of ten Legionaries as an Mk II Assault Squad is available to pre-order for 44,50 GBP / 57,50 EUR from today, 20 September, with an official release date of 4 October.
As we haven't yet covered the standard Mk II tactical power armour, I would like to provide you with a brief description of this piece of equipment's lore. Mk II armour, also known as Crusade armour, was the first fully enclosed, mass-produced power armour widely used during the Great Crusade. It featured environmental systems and life support, enabling Space Marines to fight in the vacuum of space and on hazardous worlds. The armour patterns were then further developed, enhanced and streamlined to suit the needs of battles beyond the Great Crusade, through the Horus Heresy and beyond. The Mk III power armour pattern was a modification of the Mk II, featuring heavy armour plating at the front (including larger chest, groin and shoulder pads), intended for use in boarding actions, tunnel assaults and void warfare, for example. It was never intended to replace the previous Mk II, but rather to provide an optional variant for certain operations. This boxed set is therefore the perfect addition to your force if you use Mk II or III and want to field assault squads in matching power armour patterns.
Horus Heresy – Legiones Astartes Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank
More than 15 years have passed since I last covered a Super-Heavy Tank kit in 'full scale' on this blog. When the Fellblade teaser was shown at the Dropsite Preview, I was really excited about this kit. You know what that means: we're not doing things by halves here, so we've gone for a full review and build report with 100 (!) pictures!
But let's dive in. The Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank of the Legiones Astartes for Horus Heresy is available for pre-order today, September 20th, and will be released on October 4th. It is a full plastic kit and has an RRP of 125 GBP / 160 EUR.
Legions Imperialis – Mustering the Imperial Fists
I did an initial draft of the theme of my Epic scale Imperial Fists, long before the rules of Legions Imperialis (or even the game itself) were announced. And now with access to the various formations and detachments, I want to create a proper scope for this project.
Initially, they are meant to be Defenders of Terra, the Imperial Fists forces of the Third Sphere. We made an example army list, using the content of the starter boxes and first wave. This is somewhat limited, but gave us around 2.000 points to work with.
The access to the Sicarans, Predators and Kratos will give us the option to use a proper armoured company, as well as solid transports within a Demi-Company using the Rhinos.
Warhammer 40,000 – Converting the Space Marine Terminators
Last year I showed you the new Space Marine Terminator Squad, in updated scale and Indomitus pattern armour. And those were build with the intention of use in Space Hulk, as written last July as well. As I pointed out, a few options and poses were missing to fulfill all roles needed to play the different campaigns.
As a TLDNR sum up, there is the core game of Space Hulk and further campaigns, making use of the Terminator variant boxed sets for Dark Angels or Space Wolves, and I wanted to re-create this more Codex Astartes compliant with Sons of Dorn, the Imperial Fists. By using the parts from the Terminator Squad plastic kit and further sprues, among others from the Deathwing Assault set, I went on to convert the Terminator miniatures for the weapon load outs, that I would need to cover the extended gaming material.
While could build most of what we need, especially for the Space Hulk core set and Ultramarines campaign from the vanilla Terminator squad, there are still a few poses open.
From the Dark Angels campaign Bringer of Sorrow, we would need the third Terminator with a special weapon, in this case the Plasma Cannon, as we covered the heavy flamer with the multi-part squad and the assault cannon from Leviathan.
Building a Space Marine Lantern
In Germany we celebrate Martin of Tours and him dividing his coat, as St. Martin including a procession. Children will attend it, carrying a lantern, singing Martin's song and depending on the region will receive a Weckmann or sweet pretzel.
Depending on the time you have on your hand and the age of your cihldren, you either buy a pre-made lantern or build one yourself with them at Kindergarten or School. As this year, my kids build theirs in school and kindergarten, and are old enough to carry their lanterns on their own, I didn't want to go empty handed and build one for myself.
But what should my lantern be? And after thinking about it for a while, I had the idea of building a Space Marine helmet.
Warhammer 40,000 – Space Marines Terminator Squad
With a bit of delay, we take care of the Space Marines Terminator Squad for Warhammer 40k, and these are the Indomitus pattern models in a fitting Primaris scale, introduced first with the release of Leviathan as push-fits, and later followed by this multi-part kit with more options.
This is a really interesting release, especially for me as Terminator were something that was completely out of reach when I started the hobby. Back in the 90s the models were only available in metal, and a single terminatur was 18 DM (9,2 EUR but 15,10 EUR with inflation) and a box of 5 was 85 DM (42,25 EUR, but 71,30 EUR with inflation) and that was quite an amount of money for a teenager for a single unit. Just by that comparison, the new RRP of 55 EUR is cheaper than the metal models were back then. But the "first" plastic terminators (there were plastic terminators from Space Hulks first edition) were already a huge improvement, as you could get 10 of them from a box of Space Hulk (99 DM), later as an individual kit, and they were part of the battle force that was released in 1998, which made them much more accessible and dropped their price below retail.
Re-Enter the Space Hulk – In Space No One Can Hear You Scream
Back in 2009 I reviewed the third edition of Space Hulk, and it was a "limited" release back then and Games Workshop really took that seriously, that the reprinted the boxed set for a limited amount of boxes multiple times over the following years, as the 4th edition in 2014, and another print run in 2016. The actual limitation was that the translations didn't receive a reprint, and the releases in the 2010s were just available in English.
Yet, we want to re-enter the Space Hulk, as I own the third edition and got a bunch of new designed Indomitus Terminators from the individual kit and Deathwing Assault, and I want to do a retro-mod using these new, upscaled sculpts and move away from the Blood Angels in the same step.
Warhammer 40,000 – Deathwing Assault
The 1st Legion returns with their updated 1st company, the Deathwing Terminators under the command of Belial. While we already had a rather Deathwing heavy boxed set last year with Wrath of the Soul Forge King, bringing a lot of the 2013s Dark Angels Terminator sprues into circulation once again - only to be completely out of scale with the release of the new Terminator models of Leviathan - now the updated and upscaled Deathwing Knights are part of the Deathwing Assault, which we're going to take a look into today.
Deathwing Assault is a themed army boxed set, covering a battle force of Dark Angels (or its successor chapters) 1st company Terminators, including Belial as a character and the current rules, covering the Codex Supplement and Data Cards for the Dark Angels as well.
Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team – Salvation
With Salvation the next season of Kill Team starts, leaving Gallowdark behind and opening up something new. And with the new season, a few things have changed. The big boxes were split, so you have now a separate Killzone: Bheta-Decima box with the terrain features, and in this case the Salvation boxed set for the two Kill Teams, in this case Space Marine Scouts and Aeldari Striking Scorpions, as the new season focuses more on spec ops and infiltration.
None of the boxes are stand-alones, you will still need the Core Rulebook to play. The lite rules are free to download on Warhammer Community. Anyhow, today we're just looking at the Salvation boxed set.
Legions Imperialis – Point values of the 1st wave
As this question was asked more often, a quick overview, where you land with the items from the first wave.
A few things up front
- No, the starter set can not be combined into one large legal army as they Primary and Ally army split is 70/30 of points. There is a special formation for quick starter games, that is not meant for matched play.
- You can mix multiple Astartes Legions into one army, as they don't count into the allied contingent if your primary list is Astartes
- The 30% allied contingent count against anything that is not your primary army list. The Aeronautica units of your primary army are usually air support and don't count against the allied contingent.