Warhammer 40K: About the New Necron & Marine Minis
There’s some really interesting details about the new kits that GW just put out. We’ve built them and are impressed.
This week GW put a big set of Marine and Necron minis out for preorder. We’ve put several together and have some notes to share.
Shard of the Void Dragon
The Void Dragon is an amazing kit, full of cool detail. We’ve seen “floaty” kits like this before in the form of riding high Nagash and the Celestant Prime. What we were surprised at was the strength and stability of the kit. GW has gotten much better at building up lattices of thin plastic pieces and using them to build a quite strong and stable base. Note all that lighting down in the pics below is not only reinforcing the long thin wings, but connects to the base at seven different points, and the lighting also crosses into itself as several points as it moves up towards the C’tan. The “digital signal loss” negative spaces across the body are a nice touch. Well done.
Necron Monolith
The all new Monolith lives up to it’s pictures and is a beast. It is roughly the same size as the old Monolith, clocking in at only a slightly bit larger. But it weights roughly twice as much. The big difference is that while the new kit shares the Silhouette of the old kit it is a fully detailed kit with several internal layers of detail. It is a kit like the Necron Tesseract Vault that has no clear “inside” and “outside” and the model is fully detailed from its inner core out to the outer walls. Hobbyists would be best served to build and paint this one in sub assemblies from the inner core, and working their way outwards. If you assemble the Monolith fully, you will have large ares that are barely visible at various angles, that are impossible for paint brushes, or even spray paint to reach. Finally note that the new kit comes with the rotating wide swivel base found on the Repulsor, so you can angle your Monolith in “action” poses. Or maybe just leaning over because it’s out of breath.
Hammerfall Bunker
The easiest to build by far of the three. With classic Space Marine kit directness, the Hammerfall goes together quickly and easily. It is hollow and has no bottom. To me this is an oddball of a kit with some decisions that make me thinks GW has plans for it. First of all, the four weapon bays are clearly defined separate pieces. It would be easy for GW to make a future transport version, or with other equipment by just swapping out the four side pieces.
Secondly is the very unusual mounting of the top turret. It has a ring arrangement that is completely different than the Repulsors. The missile turret looks great up top on them, but alas does not fit at all. Perhaps it is designed for another chassis we have no yet seen like the Gladiator? But again, it would be very easy for GW to make different top turret options for the Hammerfall. I would not be surprised to see different versions of these in the years to come, perhaps even the Primaris replacement for the Classic Droppod.
Happy modeling!
