Andy Hoare, manager of Games Workshop’s Specialist Games team, says that once the core of the Horus Heresy Space Marine range has been converted from resin to plastic, “we’ll start diving into the individual Legions in plastic”. The commitment doesn’t come with a timeline, and Hoare notes that “for the foreseeable future” the firm’s priority will be on the core forces deployed by all the Legions.
The comment comes from an interview that GW uploaded on Wednesday, in which Hoare gives some basic details on the next six months of Warhammer: the Horus Heresy releases. The commitment to make the resin-to-plastic conversion for the specialist units in each Space Marine Legion is very vague, but does at least confirm that it’s on the cards.
The rest of the roadmap is vague: releasing the rest of the core Space Marines units is the firm’s priority. The first release will be a long-awaited plastic melee weapon upgrade kit, which will be revealed on WarCom “in the coming weeks”. Announced last year and originally planned for a spring 2024 launch, the kit has been pushed back multiple times.
Recon marines, Seekers, Destroyers, and Breachers are all stuck with expensive resin kits, and feel like strong candidates for models that might make the leap to plastic. While there are already plastic kits for Tartaros and Cataphractii Terminator armor, they’re now the oldest plastic kits still in production and might be replaced. We might also see another mark of Space Marine armor converted to plastic – MK V ‘Heresy’ armor would be particularly fitting.
An accompanying article states that 2025 will see the release of “more tanks”, which you don’t need an Astropath to predict: the Heresy is a dream for treadheads. The Space Marines’ Arquitor Bombard artillery piece, and nimble Sabre self-propelled gun, are both still resin kits, as are several variants of the Sicaran battle tank. Then there are the glorious Space Marine super heavy tanks…
The article also promises “new plastic weapons options for existing walkers”. The Deredeo dreadnought only has plastic options for two out of its four main guns, so that’s a strong candidate to receive a new weapon sprue, with options for a Volkite Carronade and Arachnus Heavy Lascannons.
Hoare says we should also expect “subsequent waves” of Solar Auxilia and Mechanicum, without giving a date. The Mechanicum range has only just started to make the leap to plastic, and anything could happen. But as the Karacnos Assault Launcher is built on the same chassis as the Triaros Armored Conveyor, which has just received a plastic kit, a plastic Karacnos seems inevitable.
Some of the photo illustrations for Legions Imperialis have used photographs of 28mm scale plastic Solar Auxilia style Baneblades and Stormhammers which don’t match up to the current resin kits, suggesting they have already been converted to plastic and are awaiting release. Tanks built on the chassis of the (already plastic) Malcador, like the Valdor Tank Hunter and Malcador Infernus, seem very likely too.
If only a fraction of these predictions come true, it’ll be a rich release period for Horus Heresy – though Adeptus Custodes players will be forgiven for feeling a little hard done by. If you’re a 40k player attracted by the sound of Space Marines and isn’t that intimately familiar with the Heresy fluff, we have a helpful guide to the Horus Heresy books to help you orient yourself in that tangled mess of novels.
Source: Wargamer
