Horus Heresy Legion Melee Weapons Upgrade Set

[Marshal Mittens]

$47 is a kinda heafty price. Dispoilers will be $100 a squad. 

[Marshal Reinhard]

will you need one set per squad?

[Lautrec the Embraced]

I suppose you could eke out 2x10man Despoilers squad just fine if you are not too picky - you need 7 "regular" members (chainsword and bolt pistol) per squad, so in theory 14 for two squads.

 

You get 10 regular chainswords and 2 sheathed. Coincidentally, we also get a total of 12 bolt pistol, so we are 2 short. But we also have 2 two-handed chainswords, which are legal swap for any member and solve the problem of missing bolt pistols.

 

We run out of chainswords and bolt pistols at this point - but no worries, since the remaining members of the squads may take power weapons and fancier pistols (or auspex/grenades etc).

 

 

[01RTB01]

6 hours ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

That is cheaper than I expected. Might pick up a few more. 

Why would you need more than 10, let alone 10?!

 

I've got 14k of Emperor's Children and I only want 2...

[Mandragola]

For what it's worth I like this sprue, though not for all purposes. I play Raven Guard so I don't especially want Despoiler squads, which wouldn't be allowed to charge after infiltrating. But I do want various veterans, assault squads, sergeants and so on with all kinds of weapons. This sprue lets me do that.

 

It's annoying there isn't just an infantry squad set up as despoilers that you can buy. GW's choice to stick the bolter arms on the body sprue, rather than having a modular kit, doesn't look too clever in my opinion. You actually throw the bolter arms away if you're doing despoilers, command or heavy weapon squads, and presumably you will in future if they ever get round to doing breachers.

 

This approach is good if you want a ton of bolter-armed tactical marines* but not for anything else. Instead of their mini accessory sprue they ought to have made a series of half-size sprues to go with the bodies, providing bolters, special weapons, command options, recon and breacher squads and so on. Replace the bolters on the body sprue with the bolt pistol holsters, grenades and so on.

 

*Which I actually did. I've got more than 50 painted up, which probably isn't even all that unusual. 

[Vassakov]

47 minutes ago, Mandragola said:

For what it's worth I like this sprue, though not for all purposes. I play Raven Guard so I don't especially want Despoiler squads, which wouldn't be allowed to charge after infiltrating. But I do want various veterans, assault squads, sergeants and so on with all kinds of weapons. This sprue lets me do that.

 

It's annoying there isn't just an infantry squad set up as despoilers that you can buy. GW's choice to stick the bolter arms on the body sprue, rather than having a modular kit, doesn't look too clever in my opinion. You actually throw the bolter arms away if you're doing despoilers, command or heavy weapon squads, and presumably you will in future if they ever get round to doing breachers.

 

This approach is good if you want a ton of bolter-armed tactical marines* but not for anything else. Instead of their mini accessory sprue they ought to have made a series of half-size sprues to go with the bodies, providing bolters, special weapons, command options, recon and breacher squads and so on. Replace the bolters on the body sprue with the bolt pistol holsters, grenades and so on.

 

*Which I actually did. I've got more than 50 painted up, which probably isn't even all that unusual. 

 

So I kinda see where you're going with this, but I think that selling the basic troop box as essentially half a kit - even if it we say £30 for 20 bodies and then a £17.50 sprue for just bolters so the price remains the same for Tactical Squads and everything else a bit cheaper - would have led to howls of outrage that GW was trying to fleece people by selling them unusable units.

 

(And yes, I know this is how FW worked, but FW was always an insane way of doing things that probably didn't help onboard new players at all - which HH 2.0 is clearly both aimed at doing and doing successfully.)

Edited October 29 by Vassakov
Thought of something else.

[TheArtilleryman]

5 hours ago, Mandragola said:

I’ve actually found the spare arms to be incredibly useful to have. I’ve built two MK VI assault squads from the AoD marines so had 20 pairs of bolter arms left over. Because I’ve also got a bunch of Mk IV plastics, I’ve used them to very easily build special weapon squads for them as well. Saved a ton of conversion work as the MK VI arms fit the MK IV perfectly and look similar enough to work. This has meant I’ve also got better value out of the special weapon sprues.

 

Edit: don’t know where the quote text went - weird

Edited October 29 by TheArtilleryman

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

@01RTB01 My HH Imperial Fists will have over 1,000 infantry models. I'm going to need a lot of everything. 

[Mogger351]

5 hours ago, Vassakov said:

 

So I kinda see where you're going with this, but I think that selling the basic troop box as essentially half a kit - even if it we say £30 for 20 bodies and then a £17.50 sprue for just bolters so the price remains the same for Tactical Squads and everything else a bit cheaper - would have led to howls of outrage that GW was trying to fleece people by selling them unusable units.

 

(And yes, I know this is how FW worked, but FW was always an insane way of doing things that probably didn't help onboard new players at all - which HH 2.0 is clearly both aimed at doing and doing successfully.)

I think you've misunderstood the argument. Rather than the bolters and arms sharing a sprue with the bodies, shuffle it so a tac box is 2 sets of 10 bodies and a 20 bolter sprue. A despoiler box is a set of 10 bodies and the melee sprues. There's less wastage and lowers the cost barrier for those who want the melee squad.

[TheArtilleryman]

10 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

I think you've misunderstood the argument. Rather than the bolters and arms sharing a sprue with the bodies, shuffle it so a tac box is 2 sets of 10 bodies and a 20 bolter sprue. A despoiler box is a set of 10 bodies and the melee sprues. There's less wastage and lowers the cost barrier for those who want the melee squad.

Wouldn’t you have the same amount of “wastage,” but just on different sprue layouts?

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Wouldn’t you have the same amount of “wastage,” but just on different sprue layouts?

No, because instead of buying a bolter squad plus melee arms, or any of the other upgrades, buying 2 boxes worth and having loads of spare arms with bolters you buy 1 box with the relevant sprues in without the spare bolter arms.

[Marshal Mittens]

Mandragola,

 

I am not against having a lot of bolter pigs. Both my SoH and Dark Angels have 4x20 Bolter Armed space marines, as it fits with the lore for both legions, and it looks very cool. 

 

My issue really is that to make 20 Dispoilers I need 2 of these kits and a box of marines, which will run me $178 before taxes. Even at a 15% discount I am looking at $151 before taxes. 

 

I would love a lot of these guys for my SoH, Dark Angels and Space Wolves, but even with a decent hobby budget, $151 on the low end for a normal squad is just silly expensive. It's more than forge world.

 

If they don't do these in a box with marines, I can't see most folks running dispoilers much. 

[TheArtilleryman]

54 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

No, because instead of buying a bolter squad plus melee arms, or any of the other upgrades, buying 2 boxes worth and having loads of spare arms with bolters you buy 1 box with the relevant sprues in without the spare bolter arms.

Right you mean box up the same bodies in different sets but just change the arm sprues. I see what you mean now.

 

I wonder how many people buy the HH tactical squad boxes at £50 a pop. I have a feeling that with so many copies of AoD out there people are likely to have bought the tacticals more cheaply. 

Edited October 29 by TheArtilleryman

[Tyriks]

27 minutes ago, Marshal Mittens said:

Mandragola,

 

I am not against having a lot of bolter pigs. Both my SoH and Dark Angels have 4x20 Bolter Armed space marines, as it fits with the lore for both legions, and it looks very cool. 

 

My issue really is that to make 20 Dispoilers I need 2 of these kits and a box of marines, which will run me $178 before taxes. Even at a 15% discount I am looking at $151 before taxes. 

 

I would love a lot of these guys for my SoH, Dark Angels and Space Wolves, but even with a decent hobby budget, $151 on the low end for a normal squad is just silly expensive. It's more than forge world.

 

If they don't do these in a box with marines, I can't see most folks running dispoilers much. 

I agree the cost adds up a lot, but it is NOT more than Forge World! 5 Despoilers from FW is $72, meaning 20 with no other additions would be $288, nearly double the cost you laid out here.

[Mandragola]

1 hour ago, Marshal Mittens said:

My issue really is that to make 20 Dispoilers I need 2 of these kits and a box of marines, which will run me $178 before taxes. Even at a 15% discount I am looking at $151 before taxes. 

I agree, this sucks. My point is that it's a situation they're kind of locked into, due to the design of the body and bolter sprue. That sprue has a bunch of bolters and their arms which you throw away and doesn't have holsters, grenades, the nuncio vox and so on. Even the brush for the Sergeant's head is on the accessory sprue, bizarrely.

 

So for any kind of unit you need the body sprue with its useless arms, the accessories and whatever arms and weapons you're using. It's a real shame but it's caused by the body sprue, not this sprue - which is a decent collection of melee weapons for a unit of despoilers and your sergeants.

 

I guess they could have split this sprue into one of chainswords and one of the other stuff. I'm not sure that would have cost less. And yeah, I now realise there aren't enough bolt pistols here for the despoilers and I don't know what to say about that. As it happens I recently made an assault squad with shields, so I have 10 spare pistols that I'll hold onto in case despoilers are somehow awesome in the next edition or whatever.

[Stitch5000]

18 hours ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

@01RTB01 My HH Imperial Fists will have over 1,000 infantry models. I'm going to need a lot of everything. 

Is the 1,000 infantry model army in the room with us now?

[madlibrarian]

I’m sorely tempted to make HH iron warrior veterans, all armed with power lances. No idea if they’re meta or not, but could lean heavily into the Olympia theme. 

[Matcap86]

1 hour ago, Stitch5000 said:

Is the 1,000 infantry model army in the room with us now?

 

There's plenty of examples of people with giant collections of Infantry models. No need to make fun of people's aspirations/ambitions. 

[Son of Rawl]

I want at least a box of these for certain models. Betting there will be another box with chain axes, and the rest of the Charnabal options in the future.

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

About half the army is in its boxes. I'm assembling Tank and Dreadnoughts atm. 

 

The 520+ model Imperial Fists army is in the room with me right now. 

 

@Matcap86 Thank you

[SkimaskMohawk]

20 hours ago, Mandragola said:

I agree, this sucks. My point is that it's a situation they're kind of locked into, due to the design of the body and bolter sprue. That sprue has a bunch of bolters and their arms which you throw away and doesn't have holsters, grenades, the nuncio vox and so on. Even the brush for the Sergeant's head is on the accessory sprue, bizarrely.

 

It's weird looking at the vehicles and how well designed they were for the variants, compared to the infantry and how they...totally didn't even care lol. Like the assault marine debacle, the resin stop-gap melee weapons, the sprue jumble you point.

 

Feels like they never actually planned to refresh the whole range.

[dicebod]

3 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

It's weird looking at the vehicles and how well designed they were for the variants, compared to the infantry and how they...totally didn't even care lol. Like the assault marine debacle, the resin stop-gap melee weapons, the sprue jumble you point.

 

Feels like they never actually planned to refresh the whole range.

I feel like "totally didn't even care" is a bit hyperbolic. There were lots of pretty smart decisions in the tac marine kits (interchangeable weapons, the standardized accessory sprue, the separate mk III vambraces, the special and heavy weapon kits).

Was the assault marine debacle just that they took a while to come out?

I think you are right though that they didn't probably plan to refresh the entire range. My guess is that they probably thought despoilers were going to be the super niche choice they were back in 1.0...which definitely turned out *not* to be the case.

[SkimaskMohawk]

1 hour ago, dicebod said:

I feel like "totally didn't even care" is a bit hyperbolic. There were lots of pretty smart decisions in the tac marine kits (interchangeable weapons, the standardized accessory sprue, the separate mk III vambraces, the special and heavy weapon kits).

 

Lol idk about those smart decision claims when looking at the tacs. Being interchangeable and having accessory sprues are kinda...the norm for marines. Keeping standard, expected, features should be the norm.

 

And I'll maintain that there wasn't a lot of care or forethought put into the tac sprue layout, especially compared to the vehicles. Like let's look at the tanks. Everything is arranged and divided up to allow for the modularity of the line. The floor isn't mixed with the rhino ceiling; the smoke stacks aren't on the accessories. The tac kit was clearly only supposed to support tactical marines from their layout; bolters and gun arms are next to the bodies, bolter bayonets are all on the accessories. You can't take the core body/head/pack sprue, accessory sprue and add the breacher sprue, ranged weapons sprue, or despoiler sprue, and throw it into a box the way they've done for vehicles. 

 

Id usually say it's deliberately done to encourage the extra sales, except we know that they designed the assaults and melee weapons post release. They just didn't plan on it, which is weird. The limiting factor on despoilers in 1st  was monetary cost for no real rules difference;  plastic solves that. Idk, maybe there's a middle manager there sour they missed the chance.

[OttoVonAwesome]

I think thier original plan was to support the kits with resin upgrades as we saw with the dissapointing despoiler upgrade set and they just changed thier minds after seeing the success of the luanch. 

[01RTB01]

7 hours ago, OttoVonAwesome said:

I think thier original plan was to support the kits with resin upgrades as we saw with the dissapointing despoiler upgrade set and they just changed thier minds after seeing the success of the luanch. 

 

They always said that the resin despoiler kit was a stop gap and plastics were always coming. 

On 10/30/2024 at 10:29 AM, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

About half the army is in its boxes. I'm assembling Tank and Dreadnoughts atm. 

 

The 520+ model Imperial Fists army is in the room with me right now. 

 

@Matcap86 Thank you

I tip my hat to you sir. Most impressive!