Some New Plastic MkII Marines From The VII Legion Astartes

"Careful with those rifles now!" Imperial Fist veterans sporting "disintegrator" weapons. 

Earlier this summer GW dropped a new edition of its Horus Heresy rules - the "Saturnine" edition. When GW rolls out a new edition for any of its mainline games, new figures are, of course, a big part of the marketing appeal to players. Horus Heresy 3.0 was no exception in this regard, with many fans of the setting zooming in on the new Saturnine Terminator armour (and the associated hilarious retcon). For my part, I was much more intrigued by the new multipart "regular" Space Marines sporting Mk II power armour. You get 40 of these guys in the new boxed set, so I thought I would start off with a 10-man squad as part of this summer's painting. This is a veteran tactical squad in the colours of the VII Legion Astartes, the Imperial Fists. 

Helmet with comb? Check. Big sword? Check. Scrolls and grenades? Well OF COURSE. 

The Horus Heresy setting is, of course, far in the (terrible) future. But at the same time, it's also "old", in that it occurs some 10,000 years prior to the 40k setting. One of the "oldest" bits of that "old" setting is the Mk II power armour, worn by the Legiones Astartes as they set off on The Emperor's so-called "Great Crusade" to sort out the Galaxy. All of us who enjoy the setting have our favorites when it comes to the different Space Marine armour variants, but those who opted for Mk II models tended to be going for a particular "old school" look for their force, and for years and years they have had to use Forge World resin (or that of, er, "competing suppliers") to do it. 

Vexillary on the left, regular veteran on the right. 

No longer. The Mk II is now available in multipart plastic glory, and I have to say, they sculptors really nailed it. There are few features I might quibble over...for example, the "belt buckle" style joint on the front now has a stupid skull in the place of the previous Imperial Eagle...but overall, these figures are excellent. The proportions are lovely (much better than the original resin ones, which sported oddly thin waists). The assembly is relatively straightforward, and becomes very familiar once you spot the assembly patterns used in the previous plastic Mk VI and Mk III sets. I also love the look of the bolt gun variant that comes with these guys...it is nice and chonky, with a cool sickle-style magazine and nice scope. 

Vox operator with the usual skull-enhanced communications system. 

You will note, however, that none of said bolt guns are to be found here. These fellows are instead equipped with various "disintegrator" weapons. Now, the Horus Heresy is already crowded with a blizzard of weapon selections, but the designers opted to retcon yet another set of weapons into that packed lineup. These "disintegrator" weapons are meant to be near-lost relics from the Dark Ages, very powerful but also dangerous to use, and thus only pulled out of their secure lockers in times of serious emergency - such as a betrayal by The Warmaster and half of the Space Marine Legions...

A view of the heavily segmented Mk II armour. 

The new rules reflect the power of these weapons (because of course), but they are also subject to a variant of the tiresome "gets hot" rule which makes them even more dangerous to those firing these weapons. It is, IMO, yet another case of the rules getting out of whack with the lore. These rare, dangerous weapons are such that they are only trusted to veterans...yet firing these weapons more than a few times is one sure way to ensure you never become a "veteran" in the first place! Makes sense in a 30k-kind of way, I guess :) 

Disintegrator "Blaster" on the left, "Heavy Disintegrator" on the right. All very, very safe to use, no doubt...

Since these weapons were dangerous and stupid to use, I thought they fit in perfectly with Rogal Dorn's lot! There are four types of "disintegrator" weapon in the group - the Sergeant has the "pistol", and most of the lads have the "rifles". There is also a "blaster" variant - I think that is the one with the twin barrels, while one chap is hulking along with a "heavy disintegrator". As one does. 

Don't roll a "1" lads...

"If anyone survives, I shall smack them with my sword!"

I was very slow to paint these fellows because...well, it was a slow summer for actually get stuff painted, and I wasn't in a huge hurry, as I sort of already have quite a few Space Marines, and while these Mk I kits are lovely, in general, the Mk II is not my favorite flavor of power armour. These were lovely to paint up - the only really challenging part was getting the decals to sit properly on the shoulder pauldrons. This a minor thing, but it vexes me constantly that GW always makes the Legion symbol decals a touch too large, such that you need a fair bit of decal softener to get these things to sit down on the curved surface of the shoulder.