New Plastic "Sword Praetor" Figure

Horus for hope! He will bring you all the bling!

Among the waves of new plastic kits sweeping over GW's Horus Heresy setting are some new figures to represent Space Marine "Praetors" - the senior commanders of the Space Marine Legions. Where once these figures would have been resin, like much of the Horus Heresy range, they are now available in plastic. There are two new plastic versions, and in the new "Age of Darkness" box set, you get one of each! Here is a look at one of them - known colloquially as the "sword praetor".

The Praetor is a central HQ choice for your Space Marine Legion force - in fact, absent named special character, or a Primarch, this would likely be the commander for your force. As such, he has access to all sorts of fancy toys, weapons and wargear. Many players and collectors will want such a figure to really stand out, and I suspect this is what the designer/sculptors were going for with these new plastic Praetors, but for me the result it...meh.  I saw a comment a Facebook group that described the new Praetor figures as "trying too hard", and I think that sums up my own reaction very well.

Behold my terrifying sword! Even when cracked, it is still powerful!

What do I mean? Well, looking at the figure, I find it has a lot of specific 30k sort of features that I enjoy as a one-off, and it becomes too much of a good thing. Rather than work around one defining feature, the sculptor seems to have crammed too much stuff into the one figure, like a cake with too much icing. It's almost as though, having managed to keep the new Mark VI marines looking nice and clear, they tried to dump all of the skullz, cloaks, and other bits into one or two figures to compensate.

So, on this guy...a big sword? Sure! But THAT big? Really? The blade is as big as he is, maybe bigger! And what's up with the cape - it's a mountain on its own. Even better, the cape is multi-part! How FUN to assemble! Then of course there is all of the "flare" - the studs, the lined armour, the comb on the helmet, the dumb skullz...the studs in particular are a real fail IMO. They look less like upgraded versions of the studded the shoulder pads of the Mark VI marines, and more like the beginnings of some kind of Nurgle loser infestation. All in all, to me these new Praetors look more like a 30k cosplay dreamed up by a 40k obsessives....but hey, it's all subjective - you might love them, and if you do, have fun!

There is a LOT of robe on this guy...note how, thanks to his faith in the Warmaster, this amazing robe is not only huge, but very clean, despite the best efforts of pro-Emperor terrorists.

One other gripe - these figures also come with bits of terrain that one must stick to their feet...while you can convert around that if need be, I generally hate built-in ground features on figures. Leave the groundwork to me! Stop assuming you know what groundwork I want! And stop making stuff that deliberately does not fit on the base, for f*ck sakes!

Those studs on the shoulder pad are totally years of service, and not at all the first signs of any kind of mutation or anything like that...right? I mean, who would believe such a thing?

Another thing about that sword - it is pretty thin plastic, and turns out it breaks easily! If you look closely, you can see the crack where I managed to glue the #$#$ing thing back together...

But on the plus side, at least they included a helmet as an option, instead of forcing you to have this nutter walking around the battlefield bare-headed.

Death to the false Emperor! He wants to take away our stuff!

Not every sculpt will be a home run, or be to our taste. We all have figures we love, and figures we don't love so much. The new "Age of Darkness" box is generally awesome, even if these two character figures are, in my view, a miss. Skilled hobbyists out there will spot a challenge, and try and create unique conversions with these guys (and there have been some excellent and inspiring conversions done online). I'm not sure when I will get around to the "axe Praetor", but in the interim, if you are looking for command figures, I recommend sticking with the existing range from Forge World, which (for now, at least) features a mix of generic, non-Legion-specific officer figures, as well as Legion-specific command figures for several Legions.

That's all for now - thanks for reading!