40k Ultramarines Upgrades & Combat Patrol

[ZeroWolf]

I like it, and the combat patrol suits me as I've yet to add Tigerius to my UM force, but it's definitely a one of of for me.

[MoriyaSchism]

9 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

I was not aware! Thank you, my surprise is pleasant and my day is improved.

 

I agree, and realistically I think the solution would be to split upgrade sprues for each Chapter into "heads, shoulders and iconography" and "weapons, accessories and accoutrements". Sculpted icons on shoulders are nice when they're a bit more interesting than just "raised insignia"- as is, decals exist for a reason (and are honestly quicker and easier to apply and get a good result with than decently painting a raised icon) and I'd argue a set of actual separate icons that can be glued onto appropriate shoulderpads would be better.

The old sculpted shoulders were better in every regard. Only one in this new set seems to have any sort of flavour to it. 

[Northern Walker]

31 minutes ago, Blindhamster said:

I thought the BA upgrades were actually better, exception is I do like the scabbards 

they got full kits so likely not deemed necessary 

Still would be nice to have sculpted shoulders for terminators, and more flavour bits for mainline kits though. The new kits are great for heads, but not shoulders or extra bits.

[Rhavien]

That's... Really an upgrade sprue. Maybe I'm just too fabulous to appreciate the understatement, but it looks a bit plain to me.

[The Pounder]

How good are Reivers in game?

 

They’re the only unit in the Combat Patrol I’m unsure of.

 

Like others have said, they could have leant further into the Greco/Romano flavour.

 

 Pretty sure I’ll be building some boys in blue sometime soon!

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, Redcomet said:

It is a bit weird they choose to make an UM one but not one for SW.

 

And I really don’t like any of the heads

They're not releasing Ultramarines infantry ala grey hunters etc. so less need for a wolves one.

 

That said the main purpose of these in my eyes is to not have to deal with chapter badges.

 

Edited Monday at 04:56 PM by Mogger351

[Orange Knight]

5 minutes ago, The Pounder said:

How good are Reivers in game?

 

They’re the only unit in the Combat Patrol I’m unsure of.

 

 

 

Usable. Cheap.

 

It's a mid-game deepstrike unit. I have used them to capture and disrupt.

[siegfriedfr]

Don't understand the obsession with naked heads.

Most people want chapter-specific helmets in quantity to personalize their minis, not bare heads. 

[Kyari]

Its not a wildly exciting combat patrol, but as a starter point for Ultramarines its like ... totally solid? The problem with sticking a named character in is there's less value in buying more than one, but its a decent little sample platter of units, 400+ points, and should do well in Combat Patrol for the 6 people that play it.

 

My usual issue with Combat Patrols is that they look kind of boring without a large centrepiece model. Just chuck a Rhino in, those things are free at this point.

Edited Monday at 05:20 PM by Kyari

[Marshal Reinhard]

2 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

Upgrade Sprue is not quite as good as something like the BT one, but definitely better than the BA one.  Probably TOO many unhelmeted heads, again, but the shoulderpads are REALLY nice, the transfers are super sick, and half of the sprue isn't being used by required upgrade weapons to make a squad work, so they can be liberally applied throughout your force to make guys look cool.

 

Combat patrol is interesting.  Not the best multiple buys because of Tigurius, but each squad is only half of the maximum of each squad so it does sort of push you towards buying two.  Guess you can just kitbash up Tigurius 2 into something else?

While the BT one is good, miles ahead of any of its counterpart upgrades released at the (roughly) same time, it does suffer from being part of that first wave of upgrade kits.

 

It, like the others released for 8th(9th) edition, basically only has pads for standard intercessors and aggressors. The new DA, BA, and now UM upgrades has pads meant for phobos, blade guard, as well as Terminators, the latter I feel the lack of most keenly. A significant portion of the kit is also dedicated to giving a third armament option for the neophytes from the crusader kit, so there's overall less heads and pads than in these second generation kits. Of course what the BT upgrade does do is that it works fantastically in conjunction with the aforementioned crusader kit as well as the sword brethren kit, from which you can source a lot of additional shoulder pads and heads, helmeted or otherwise. But it still leaves the gaps mentioned above.

 

I doubt a renewed upgrade kit addressing said gaps will be forthcoming, much less a bespoke BT terminator kit. Oh well.

 

This new UM upgrade kit is their best one yet, and perfectly on par with the previous DA and BA one.

 

 

[DemonGSides]

1 hour ago, Marshal Reinhard said:

While the BT one is good, miles ahead of any of its counterpart upgrades released at the (roughly) same time, it does suffer from being part of that first wave of upgrade kits.

 

It, like the others released for 8th(9th) edition, basically only has pads for standard intercessors and aggressors. The new DA, BA, and now UM upgrades has pads meant for phobos, blade guard, as well as Terminators, the latter I feel the lack of most keenly. A significant portion of the kit is also dedicated to giving a third armament option for the neophytes from the crusader kit, so there's overall less heads and pads than in these second generation kits. Of course what the BT upgrade does do is that it works fantastically in conjunction with the aforementioned crusader kit as well as the sword brethren kit, from which you can source a lot of additional shoulder pads and heads, helmeted or otherwise. But it still leaves the gaps mentioned above.

 

I doubt a renewed upgrade kit addressing said gaps will be forthcoming, much less a bespoke BT terminator kit. Oh well.

 

This new UM upgrade kit is their best one yet, and perfectly on par with the previous DA and BA one.

 

Definitely agree, and I echo the annoyance at the use of the sprue for loadout options; I also would much rather the Upgrade sprue be used PURELY for decking out your squad with iconography that enhances the flavor of them, without regard for the rules.  The BT one has a LOT of things that do that, even if it is missing the shoulderpads.

They should just release upgrade packs like they do for HH where it's just a :cuss: ton of shoulder pads.  I'd happily pay a couple of bucks for just a bucket of various BA Shoulderpads.  Problem is there's just too many different armor varieties that need bespoke shoulder pads.  Same with Helmets; I want some cool Aggressor BA Helmets but that's just quite likely never going to happen.

[sv-germ]

4 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

The Tyranid campaign decals sold me though. Want a lot of those

 

Yeah, this for me too. I do wonder if this is a signal that (if this is leading to an Ultramarines codex) that we might see Tyrannic War Veterans returning as unit option.  

[Wispy]

4 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

[the Space Wolves] got full kits so likely not deemed necessary 

i joke mostly, it's not a pressing need at all, but i would like some vehicle emblems and some sculpted terminator pads.

Edited Monday at 08:28 PM by Wispy

[Wispy]

4 hours ago, MoriyaSchism said:

The old sculpted shoulders were better in every regard. Only one in this new set seems to have any sort of flavour to it. 

all 4 were much better than what was replaced with

[Orange Knight]

The Space Wolves have so many spare bits in their kits. Just the spare heads from Blood Claws and Grey Hunters could make a number of units look more unique.

 

They are probably one chapter that doesn't actually need an upgrade sprue. I'm not saying they shouldn't get one btw, just that buying a few kits will give you the equivalent of what the BA and Ultramarines sprue are offering and more.

[beefeb]

compare that upgrade sprue to the dark angels or blck templars one....decals too...these are utterly underwhelming....sub-par.  The combat patrol....:cuss:.....did they just go round the warehouse scraping together the shyte noone wanted??

 

they hit it out the park with calgar, sicarius and the victrix guard.....the rest of this stuff is utter shyte.

[Larkhainan]

4 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

I thought the BA upgrades were actually better, exception is I do like the scabbards 

Yeah personally I think people got a little wrapped in the negativity of the BA refresh and took it all as bad, but those sprues have a lot of good stuff. They're not what people wanted, yes, and that's certainly the right of the customer. But I still think they're great.

 

 

But also man I kinda grim chuckle every time I see power swords on a sprue. On average sweetest looking wargear in the game and I'm just piling up dozens of them with no units that ever use the optional ones. Those scabbards look great but I don't know who I'd put them on.

[DemonGSides]

22 minutes ago, Larkhainan said:

Yeah personally I think people got a little wrapped in the negativity of the BA refresh and took it all as bad, but those sprues have a lot of good stuff. They're not what people wanted, yes, and that's certainly the right of the customer. But I still think they're great.

 

 

But also man I kinda grim chuckle every time I see power swords on a sprue. On average sweetest looking wargear in the game and I'm just piling up dozens of them with no units that ever use the optional ones. Those scabbards look great but I don't know who I'd put them on.

 

I think leaning on the upgrade sprue to be where a whole unit's special weapons are kind of robs the sprue of it's purpose.

BA one had some good, but mostly just a lot of "huh?" that could've easily been replaced with an actual Death Company sprue.  If you remove the DC stuff from the upgrade sprue (The snarly heads, Eviscerator, Inferno pistol, DC markings) and put them on their own sprue with some suitably DC looking marines, even as a 5 man, and then replaced those with some more BA stuff featuring wings and angels, a chalice, and maybe some actual helmeted options (We had some REALLY cool bespoke helmets in the past that would be awesome to update), and the BA upgrade sprue would be fine.  But with the excess of DC stuff and the only real stuff to add to your models beyond shoulderpads being a bunch of keychain things, it felt real anemic compared to the really cool stuff found in the other sprues.

I do think the UM one is probably leaning a little closer to the BA in terms of "Well why did we need 8 unhelmeted heads that aren't really anything THAT special?" but overall it ain't bad.  And not needing to have a whole unit or three loadouts live on the sprue gave them more broader army appeal.

Edited Monday at 10:27 PM by DemonGSides

[Jukkiz]

current DC kit don´t compare to old one, that´s a fact,

But ultramarine side could used propably gilded boltgun or such, no? 

[Evil Eye]

2 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

current DC kit don´t compare to old one, that´s a fact,

But ultramarine side could used propably gilded boltgun or such, no? 

That kit was amazing. As much as I disliked 5th edition for many reasons, there were some pretty amazing models released during its duration. I have a lot of fond memories of the conversion/posing guides in the 5E Blood Angels White Dwarf. Also in my experience, whilst not a perfect solution compared to whole new bodies, printing or acquiring longer, more proportionate legs (or if you're daring cutting and extending the kit legs- was it @Veteran Sergeant who had the awesome guide on doing that?) can do a shockingly good job for upscaling old plastics, especially at tabletop distance. So if anyone's got some old DC they don't know what to do with you can still make good use of them! Or if you can't, I'll take them off your hands, heh heh...

[MoriyaSchism]

6 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

current DC kit don´t compare to old one, that´s a fact,

But ultramarine side could used propably gilded boltgun or such, no? 

I miss the old style Maximus pattern helmet. Is there a good STL or 3rd party sculpt of it anywhere? Currently the only remaining official source of them is the Vanguard Veteran box. 

[01RTB01]

I'm glad for those happy with what's coming. I just find it baffling that this kind of thing is being produced yet court of the Archon and the beasts for dark eldar are simply cast to the void. 

[Sgt.Sangha]

I wonder if the white scars might get one, more like I hope the white scars get one

[Lysimachus]

White Scars would be great, but they need to release the multi-part Outriders first (or at least at the same time). Then the upgrade sprue could include bits for bikes; alternate fairings, trophy poles, etc.

 

The one I really want is a new Iron Hands upgrade, with a better selection of bionics - multiple arms and legs, maybe a chestplate or two, including some that are sized for the new TDA!

[Emicus]

I was excited for this. Booo.

 

Upgrade sprue is small.

Box is awful.