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New Tac / Sternguard / Vanguard sprues - mould lines?


Billy Butcher

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On my Sternguard kit they were maybe only on the thighs of the leg parts and some of the combi weapons. A lot smaller and a lot easier to remove than old plastic though, great stuff. And the bits are to die for, really.

Mould lines are always going to be there, it's just a question of their size, prominence and inconvenience of location. As it happens, the new tac squad is the best kit I've ever worked with in regard to all three of those things. the mould lines are small, easy to remove, and don't for the most part run over any important detais. It's a really nicely made kit.

From what I've trimmed off the sprues so far, they're much better than the old bits.  Tacticals in particular- no incredibly eschew bolters or helmets, easily trimmed legs, torsos that line up.  Although I am pissed that old chests don't match to new backs on account of the flip in tabs, meaning I gota use old backs for my Templar upgrades.  Having the sprues attached to the backpacks' exhausts makes for a whole new pain in the ass, too :P

 

Anyway, as far as mold lines, the quality has been quite good so far.  Hope it stays that way.

Yeah I feel pretty bad for the players out there with upgrade kits that don't include torso backs... awkward. I wonder if they even considered that when they made the tab switch. The old torsos are still around (devastator, command, that atack squad box that's horrible value) but not having them in the kit that's the mainstay of your army has to be rough.

Yeah, the mould lines are there, but very very very small when compared to the old sprues. The only parts where they're really visible are the leg greaves, which are quite easily cleaned up as they're mostly just a flat area :)

 

The Sternguard and Vanguard kits are possibly even better. And the bits are sweeeeeeeeet! :D

 

- Loran

Good. The mold lines in the last tactical squad I built were REALLY  bad. I have ridiculous amounts of marines, but am definately going to pick up some of the new sets for shiny new syndrome's sake.

I'm in the same position and didn't regret buying my new tactical squad for a moment. Strongly considering another one at games day, as it is such an amazing kit.

Last I looked the vanguard and sternguard should work with the templar stuff? I have actually yet to try since the sternguard don't need even more stuff on them than they already do. No idea about the tacs but with a little work would it be possible to make fit?

The Stern and Vanguard have the same reversed tab-slot set up as the new Tacticals, so Templar torso bits will not fit in the backs that come with it (without work).  You could probably make the Templar chests fit the new backs, but it I haven't tried yet.  

The Stern and Vanguard have the same reversed tab-slot set up as the new Tacticals, so Templar torso bits will not fit in the backs that come with it (without work).  You could probably make the Templar chests fit the new backs, but it I haven't tried yet.  

 

...I can't say I've looked closely enough yet, but by "tabs", do you mean the two stud-like nubs that help align the back plate with the chest piece?

 

If so, can't you just trim the nubs off and stick them together? Unless, I've missed something (very likely I suspect! :P), that shouldn't be very hard or much work at all...

 

 

Yeah, just trim the pegs. Nothing new for anyone who's been mixing and matching power armour kits over the last few years.

I confirm this as I have made BT with upgrade sprue + new tactical, the only work required is to trim the small dots. So that's not a problem at all.

 

As for the quality/mould lines, the new tactical box was almost perfect but the sternguard had a lot of big mould line.

Also I had a strange backpack with an almost filled exhaust port. The things is that I had the same sort of miscast with my GK terminator squad. Back of their legs and exhaust lost some details like they were filled with plastic.

Not a lot more that I can add to everyone else above, but I've now gone through 3 boxes of tacticals, 3 boxes of sternguard and 2 boxes of vanguard, and these are perhaps some of the best plastic kits that GW have produced.

  • There are virtually no mould lines on nearly all of the sprues. Ones that are there are minimal, and are in areas that can be easily cleaned up.
  • The quality of the moulding has increased in my opinion - even on 'basic' tactical marines the sculpts are exceedingly crisp with great detail, it doesn't feel like you're putting together generic tactical marines.
  • The amount of options and poseability is insane, especially when you look at the Sternguard and Vanguard sprues. The fact that you get 8 seperate combi-weapons per Sternguard box, and 4 sets of power armour lightning claws and thunder hammer / storm shield per Vanguard box is crazy.

One of the vanguard legs seems to be fethed right up on the left side, there's meant to be a stud there and it just disappears into a weird flat void along with the edge of the kneepad. I'm not sure if this is a common issue of it the one I gor is miscast - I didn't buy a box, I snagged one from a bitz site.

I see what you're looking at.  It's very similar to the studded shoulderpads, where the stud just sort of melts into the surface when they begin to meet at an awkward angle.  Just bad design, really.

 

It still sticks out well enough, and a moment of scraping will get rid of the weird merge-line thingy easily enough.

I have found one major negative with the new kits:

the position at which they are joined to the sprue. eg. Lightning claws being connected by the little power cables on the gauntlet, backpacks being connected on the spherical vents, wings of an aquila on a shoulder pad
 

Other than that everything's dandy, but you have to be more careful now when extricating your pieces (I resorted to modifying the lighting claws to not have those cables as it was borderline impossible not to damage them).

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