Horus Heresy: Miniature Spotlight – Sicaran Tank & Leviathan Dreadnought
We got our hands on the new plastic Sicaran Tank and the new plastic Leviathan Dreadnought for the Horus Heresy. Here’s a few things we learned along the way.
This weekend Games Workshop has the new plastic kits up for pre-order for both the Sicaran Battle Tank and the Ranged version of the Leviathan Dreadnought. They sent us the kits and I had the pleasure of putting them together. I learned a few things along the way and I’m here to share that with you.
The Sicaran Battle Tank
I want to start with this kit because it’s a big chonky kit! Building it felt like putting together a kit somewhere between a Land Raider and a Predator. Which kind of makes sense as this kit really is a Land Raider-sized Predator. Assembly-wise, this one really isn’t too bad. I know lots of hobbyists out there might have some stress about those tracks though. I feel ya. But that’s probably due to previous kits like Rhinos or even Land Raiders. These tracks weren’t that bad. You actually don’t even use all these tracks.
I highly suggest building them in the same order as recommended in the instructions and also using plastic glue as it gives you a bit more time to get them all into the correct position before everything get set in. Super glue might dry too fast for this process.
As far as the rest of the kit it all went together pretty smoothly. Take your time clipping and cleaning off all those burrs though. That helps to ensure a snug fit all the way around the model and helps to limit gaps. I did end up with a few minor ones that will be fixed later with gap filler. Once it’s gets primer and paint you should be able to tell where the seams are.
The Turret is pretty straight forward. Just be careful not to get glue on the bar that connects the two guns on top. If you do, you might not be able to rotate the guns upwardly. You can’t really swap the turret guns out so no tips on magnets or anything there. The sponsons, however, are a different story.
The side sponsons are weapons you could pretty easily magnatize and swap out as needed. There are a couple different ways to do it but I suggest not gluing in the targeting box on the top of the guns. It functions as a “pin” to hold the weapon in place. There’s another peg-like bit on the bottom that you can connect via another “wire” bit that holds it in place.
I think if you do it right, you could either magnetize or just leave the weapons unglued so you can swap them out later. They don’t really share a lot of bits between the different options which is nice.
It’s a pretty solid kit and not too crazy to build. I’m really glad this particular tank got converted to a plastic kit for the Horus Heresy!
The Leviathan Siege Dreadnought
This kit was a little trickier than the Sicaran, imo. It wasn’t that much harder, but the armor plates didn’t quite fit correctly. I pride myself on being pretty good at assembling models so that irked me a bit. I’m definitely going to go back and gap fill where the plates meet later. Again, once it gets primed and painted you shouldn’t be able to tell.
Assembly-wise, other than the armor plates on the front, everything went together smoothly. You get three different feet to choose from — you could go with 2 flat feet or 1 flat foot with one “moving” foot. I opted for the two flat ones because this dread is a shooting some really big guns so I didn’t picture it charging forward.
Unfortunately, the leg assembly doesn’t really allow you to swap out the feet later. Unless you do some crazy stuff with magnets and the rest of the joints…but that’s not something I was interested in doing.
Weapon-wise, you’ve got 3 options in the base kit. The cool part is that if you don’t glue the “elbow” in, you can basically swap between all three.
If you get a second copy of the ranged weapon sprue you can then double-up on all the same weapons. I’m really glad GW designed the kit in this way. You could absolutely magnetize all the guns or you can just attempt to jam the weapons in there and hope they stay. I think eventually they might wear out the “elbow” plastic doing that but it that’s a problem for another day.
As far as other options on the kit, you’ve got a few different chest crests, groin armor plates, and head cowls to choose from. If you’re looking to build a couple of these you’ll at least be able to assemble them with some different styles.
Personally, I want to get the close combat weapon sprue now and be able to swap things around. Or maybe I’ll get another one just to have two different sets of weapons for the two dreadnoughts.
What do you think of these two kits?
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