Now that many of us have our new kits in hand, what are your thoughts!?

[Marshal Mittens]

Personally I love the Kratos and Spartan, like the preators more than I expected, like the marines. Don't like the 2 part pads, they look cool but the seam sucks to work with. 

 

Overall, I am pretty pleased. 

[GodEmperorOfMankind]

I'm loving the marines, they're a lot less monopose that I expected, especially cutting off the tabs and sticking weapon set upgrades on them! 

Hating the praetors, why did they have to make them primaris sized?  I needed to use a primaris arm and a terminator power fist to do a kitbash just to stop the arms looking weedy. And they're bigger than the terminators! WHY?! 

Books are decent quality, especially for the price, half that of an old black book. Am looking forward to getting the rest. Am a little put out they've cut out things like caestus rams and boxnaughts though. 

Overall loving the box set, just need to get some games in now! 

[caladancid]

The books are awesome. No real replacement for the black books for lore- but I mean hard to expect that. 

[Corswain]

So far so good. Got my 20-man tac squad built and was very happy with the posing options. Building the contemptor now and very happy with it's versatility.

Back to beakies next to see how well they go as an assault squad but I'm feeling a lot more confident after the first build.

[bushman101]

Lack of weapons on the mk vi is kinda annoying. Not a single bolt pistol or chainsword? 

[GodEmperorOfMankind]

4 hours ago, Corswain said:

So far so good. Got my 20-man tac squad built and was very happy with the posing options. Building the contemptor now and very happy with it's versatility.

Back to beakies next to see how well they go as an assault squad but I'm feeling a lot more confident after the first build.

Built a 10 man despoiler squad using 90% just the mkiv weapons set. Came out pretty good. I'll see if I can snap a photo of them this morning. 

5 man recon team using the 40k scout sniper rifles is next. 

Edited June 25, 2022 by Altis
Food now = good

[tinpact]

Haven't gotten the main part of my order yet, but I got a few extra shoulder pads for some MkV guys, and was actually pleasantly surprised at how well they went together.

The little tabs make it really easy to align, and the seam is pretty much invisible with a little plastic glue and scraping.

[Doghouse]

The marines are really easy to build but they feel more like traditional board game style playing pieces than marines. It's a bit of an odd one for me because I personally think the Great Crusade era should have a mass produced feel over gothic embellishments which I feel are more at home in 40k. The mono-pose builds feel a bit lacklustre but again this suits the style of the game where marines are basically objective holders so I can't really feel any sense of attachment to the units. Pawns rather than champions, that is what best sums up them to me which isn't a bad thing really and true to the lore. Minor nit-picks really.

The bare heads feel a bit big to me but I do like the smaller hands.

I think while they look nice I think they could have pushed a little further and elongated the torsos and bulked out the arms a bit more.

I'm really not a fan of the Praetors, they feel like Gravis armour to me and the size is off putting for me.

Vehicles on the whole are fantastic, I'm not brave enough to start the Contemptor just yet but the tanks look amazing.

Heavy weapons are fine and the special weapons box is a really nice touch.

 

 

 

[Slinky]

Not sure why they made the praetors so huge, it's like they are Orks and the higher ranks are bigger, up to Primarchs? :)

I do like the Mk VI marines, but not sure how a huge force of them would look, it feels like the repetition would become a bit obvious - Has anyone tried switching arm pairs between the torsos?

[Arkhanist]

13 minutes ago, Slinky said:

Not sure why they made the praetors so huge, it's like they are Orks and the higher ranks are bigger, up to Primarchs? :)

I do like the Mk VI marines, but not sure how a huge force of them would look, it feels like the repetition would become a bit obvious - Has anyone tried switching arm pairs between the torsos?

I've not started on the assembly yet personally (trying to focus on finishing painting my mark iii/iv squad members I started first!), but I've seen a number of people say that swapping the arms between poses was no problem, and seen a number of builds where people have got more variety out of the stock kit. If you think about it, there weren't that many poses in the legs for the existing heresy kits either. Helmet and shoulderpad swaps also add a lot to the apparent variability to a squad, as well as mixing marks (as long as you solve or don't mind the height disparity).

Lack of melee/pistol arms is disappointing, but they can be kitbashed from other sets or printed without great difficulty, and it seems inevitable there will be a despoiler/assault set in plastic at some point, possibly a different mark.

[Corswain]

4 hours ago, Altis said:

Built a 10 man despoiler squad using 90% just the mkiv weapons set. Came out pretty good. I'll see if I can snap a photo of them this morning. 

5 man recon team using the 40k scout sniper rifles is next. 

Got 5 Assault Marines built today and I am super happy. I wasn't sure the jump packs would fit but they work just fine, just jeeded to trim the backpack "locater lugs" off for placement. Despoilers were my backup but I'm doing Blood Angels so I really wanted those jump packs.

I've been using the MKIV weapon set too but also a bunch of MKVII stuff from my bits box because anyone who is getting upset with me becasue the elbow pads are wrong is someone I'm not spending a lot of time with. :)

[Dont-Be-Haten]

I love the Kratos, and the Spartan is such a good model. Pretty much everything everything in the box has rekindled my love for first born. The rules are also so much better than what 9th edition has to offer right now also.

[Irate Khornate]

Overall I've pretty much enjoy everything about the new kits. It's been fairly easy for me to turn the tacticals into spoilers with some 3D printed bits. Cataphractii are by far my favorite terminators. The vehicles and dreadnought are absolutely excellent. My only complaint is the size of the praetors, but I'm doing a mid to late heresy color scheme with my World Eaters so I'll say they're swelling with power due to chaos.

[depthcharge12]

Kratos was a pleasure to build - even the spots I expected to have seam fit issues came out flush.

I think GW has finally figured out how to get tracks to work without being a PITA! :P

[Arkhanist]

2 hours ago, Corswain said:

I've been using the MKIV weapon set too but also a bunch of MKVII stuff from my bits box because anyone who is getting upset with me becasue the elbow pads are wrong is someone I'm not spending a lot of time with. :)

If anyone complains, they're variant mark V arms which was notoriously patchwork and made up on the fly, and combined with mark VI was the basis for the mark VII design hence the uh vague similarity of the elbows to eventual mark VII arms which of course wouldn't be seen until the Siege, having been retrieved from Mars. Then hit them with one of the new books, that should leave them with enough of a limp they won't be so nitpicky in future.

[Astartes Consul]

Picked up the Big Box and the Rhino. Really impressed with how the vehicles have been moulded to hide as many mould / seam lines as possible. The Mk VI kit is lovely and my only real complaint is the studded shoulder pad design - but I know at least there is a reason for why it was done that way.

 

One thing, has anyone else with the new Rhino notices that the interior and back ramp are an incredibly tight fit?

[Dont-Be-Haten]

2 hours ago, depthcharge12 said:

Kratos was a pleasure to build - even the spots I expected to have seam fit issues came out flush.

I think GW has finally figured out how to get tracks to work without being a PITA! :P

Best part is it feels like they had magnets in mind with this kit. Everything slides in and allows for easily exchangeable weapons on both the main turret and the sponsons!

[Noserenda]

Ive only had the MK6 infantry and they are pretty disappointing, honestly the Chaos marines im kitbashing them with blow them out of the water

[m_r_parker]

One thing I'm really impressed with is how they've designed certain kits with an eye to how they can be used in the future. Take the Deimos Rhino for example, it's clear that you can take out the sprue with the front and the doors and swap it for different sprues depending on what you to build. Want a Vindicator, I'm guessing there's a sprue with the Demolisher Cannon and reinforced armour. Want a Predator, here's a pair of sprues with the sponsons and weapons and the mounting points to the chassis. Want a Whirlwind then here's the top mounted launcher sprue. I'm sure kits like the Sicaran also have this capability. 

Magnets on the Contemptor is fantastic; there were always elements of the community who would be able to do this themselves with a hobby knife and such, and at least they recognise this. The contents for the *full* Contemptor release is mind-blowing considering the range of weapons that come with it. I didn't think we'd see weapons like the Conversion Beamer come out in a core box.

The editing on the books could have tighter in places. Particular things that annoy me are presenting me with a list of options, and not bothering to sort it in any way. Look at the list of Consul types, it's not sorted alphabetical or points based, it's just random. Weapon lists in the core book operate similarly. I know if I'm looking in a list for an entry I would be trying to filter the area I need to look in based on first couple of letters - assuming an alphabetical list. Plus there's a couple of places in the Legion iconography sections where MkVI pads are described as MkIV and vice versa. 

I'm not sure why I've seen so much hate for the MkVI armour. I think it's expectations based on the MkIII and MkIV kits that they'd be veteran tactical squads with options, but they've been advertised as HH Tactical Squads - they're bolter boys.

Honestly I'm interested to see how this is supported in the next 6 - 12 months and beyond. The current timeline looks good, but doesn't mean anything if the support goes away.

[Gorgoff]

MK6 look fine, but boring.

There are only 5 different bodies in the box and since you can't reposition them they all look the same. So it comes down to the arms and where you put different bits and bobs on the models.  

I've used the SW upgrade kit vom FW which fits nicely to spice them up and it worked well.

But from a customer perspective it is very user unfriendly to remove all options from the kit and sell them seperately in those special/ heavy weapons boxes. 

Another negative are the mold lines. Every marine is a piece of work because all parts have thicc mold lines on both sides. Horrible. That took ages to remove and adds a lot of building time which pretty much fights the purpose of making them monopose in the first place. 

[Mandragola]

Overall I'm pretty happy with this set. I've built 20 tacticals with bolters and a Praetor so far. They work really nicely for the Ravenguard that I'm using them as. I'm going for quite a minimalist matte look, so the plain armour and identical armaments work well. I think they'd work quite a bit less well for some other legions, and perhaps especially for traitors. That said, it would be easy to add in different arms and heads, and doing that could create all kinds of fun things.

I don't know if I agree with the criticism of only having 5 bodies. Varying arm poses between bodies means it's easy not to have duplicates, and not obvious if you do.

Where the set is definitely deficient is in "fun" alternative options. With the primaris kits we're used to having poses for guys holding knives, throwing grenades, reloading their guns and so on. There's none of that here and the fact that all 5 bolt guns have the hands moulded on makes it much harder to make interesting poses. That's a shame. If they released a despoiler conversion kit I'd grab it, mainly for this sort of stuff - and possibly to make an actual despoiler kit.

I might see if I can convert some of my remaining 20 guys into things like recon squads, apothecaries and so on. I don't think it'll be especially difficult but we'll see how I get on.

[Corswain]

41 minutes ago, Gorgoff said:

 

Another negative are the mold lines. Every marine is a piece of work because all parts have thicc mold lines on both sides. Horrible. That took ages to remove and adds a lot of building time which pretty much fights the purpose of making them monopose in the first place. 

I was surprised by the mould lines. I feel like I haven't seen that many on a (new) GW kit for a long time but I enjoy the assembly part of the hobby as much as the rest so I weirdly kinda enjoy going over each little piece and removing them.

Maybe enjoy is the wrong word but I find it immensly satisfying once it's done. My brain might be a bit of a mess. Or it might be that GW has slowly rewired it over many years and the pain/pleasure lines are starting to blur. ;)

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

Tl;dr: I am not amused with Spartan.

The kit is an example how aggressive cost-optimalization by a company is detrimental to hobby value of a kit. Let there be no mistake – the build is far more pleasant than FW, but that’s not exactly the highest bar. There are also nice features like:

-        Weapons are not that hard to magnetise

-        Easily exchangeable cupola options. The kit shares the sprue with Rhio, so if you do not glue part A5, you can have interchangeable Havoc Luncher, gunner and combi weapons.

-        The front doors are a tight fit, so your tank does not look like retarded mouthbreather, if you fancy to leave them unglued to peek inside

 Those cannot overshadow major issues due to GW’s greed. In order to cut costs GW decided to make Spartan have as much common parts with Land Raider as possible. The result is unnecessary division of parts and gaps to be filled and sanded down (general Kenobi will help us point them out).

Land Raider is shorter and narrower than Spartan. Several steps are dedicated to bringing Land Raider parts to Spartan seize.

And thus, the sides of the tank, instead of being moulded as one piece are divided into 3 parts one the outside (step 21a&e) and whooping 5 on the inside (21b-d&f-h). The GW plastic isn’t the softest one so it is not possible to squeeze all of the parts so that the melted plastic will be pushed outside and fill the gaps by itself.

 

 

The same issue is visible with the bottom parts (23g&25a). Parts E5&6 are not perfectly fitted to C1, just like E7&8 to C2. These leaves gaps and if you manipulate them carelessly, you can misalign them so they will not sit flush. This can prove problematic when fitting the sides to the central part, because 5 out of six bottom joints go to these “widening” parts. I would advise to modify the construction sequence and attach parts E5,6,7,8 not in step 23g&25a but 25b, when the whole central is built and ready to be matched with the sides. Note what a bitch to fill are gaps between C1 and E5&6 - the rest is in the bottom, so whatever.

The construction sequence should also be modified as for the bottom. I you follow the instructions and attach part F7 to E4 in step 22c you can find it problematic to properly align the front part as finished in step 22j with the rear in step 25b. You won’t have access from the top to parts E4 and C1, so I would move part C1 from step 25a to 22c. Part E4 will be also helpful in aligning parts E5&6.

Parts C5 have slightly wrong shape and will not sit perfectly between C4 and C2, leaving a narrow gap under C4.

Parts E18&19 have insane gaps below to fill

There are gaps to fill at front where the bottom part of the doors joins the side parts.

The roof is divided into two parts, because GW is to cheap to give more parts where they are needed. The roof should have been divided into several ziggurat like floors, what would help to hide the gaps in corners, which are flooded with wash during painting anyway.

Because GW is cheap, it is allergic to slide moulding. The results are visible in the cupola visors, leaving us with more gaps to fill. If the highlighted in purple area was slide moulded as a separate part, it would be possible to glue only the visors themselves, leaving no visible gaps.

No slide moulding means multi-part barrels, what means more gaps to fill and sand.

No side modling means gaps in exhaust pipes.

Parts L1&2 leave visible gap. They do not lock sponsons in place after rotating them as per steps 25f&g to leave them moving up and down. I think they should have been divided not left-right but top-bottom. I am not sure if slide moulding would be necessary.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla

[Chaeron]

I’ve liked what I’ve built so far: it’s mainly been cutting the models from the sprue and sorting, but it’s progress! I’ve built (bar heads) one of each pose: planning to start some more converting soon, so watch this space…!

[SkimaskMohawk]

Re: mold lines 

 

I felt like there were far less mold lines on the mk6 than on the Primaris crusaders, celestian sacresants, or the beast snaggas. Maybe it's just been a while since I built a normal tac or intercessor lol