On Monday, Games Workshop took a breather from the relentless hype for the new edition of Warhammer 40k to announce something completely unexpected – a pair of brand new Space Marine kits for Warhammer: the Horus Heresy. There’s a replacement for the venerable Mk IV Tactical Squad, and a brand new Mk IV Assault Squad, both of them updated to be in scale with the rest of the plastic Horus Heresy range.
The new Marines use the same poses as all the existing Horus Heresy marine kits – bad for model variety, but a boon for combining these minis with the various Heavy Weapon, Assault Weapon, Breacher Squad, and Command Squad upgrade sprues that are already available. The Tactical Squad even has little arm greaves which can be added to the MK VI arms in the Heavy Weapon upgrade kits – to make everything gel a bit better.
The outgoing Mk IV tactical squad was one of the first ever plastic kits for the Horus Heresy, originally released in the 2012 board game ‘Betrayal at Calth’. It was accompanied by a monopose Contemptor dreadnought, Cataphractii Terminators, plus a Chaplain and Terminator Praetor. With the new Mk IV kits, only the character kits remain to be replaced.
In the Horus Heresy books, Mk IV power armor was the most advanced version of the technology to see regular service with the Space Marine Legions during the Great Crusade. Once Warmaster Horus was suborned by the powers of Chaos, he routed supplies of the armor to his favored Legions, which proved to be a mixed blessing, since Mk IV armor proved to be very difficult to keep in good working order.
Field repairs to Mk IV armor often employed cumbersome external power cables, and composite armor plates held in place by monomolecular bonding studs. The mongrel suits that resulted from this ugly patchwork were dubbed Mk V ‘Heresy’ armor. That’s now the only major armor mark from the Heresy that doesn’t yet have a plastic kit.
There’s no word from GW when the new kits will be available, but we can reasonably infer they will cost exactly the same as the other Tactical Squads and Assault Squads. Both new kits will be available first of all in a new Maximus Battle Group box, which contains 20 Mk IV tactical marines, 10 Mk IV assault marines, a Contemptor Dreadnought, and a Sicaran Battle Tank.
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Source: Wargamer
