The Adeptus Astartes under the leadership of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman are striking out across the galaxy in the Indomitus Crusade. While Abaddon launches his assault with his Arks of Omen, and various xenos races look to destroy the fragile Imperium, the Space Marines hold firm against the terrors of the galaxy! Today, in Strike Force Agastus, we get some new reinforcements to the mighty Adeptus Astartes to expand out the options available to them. In this review and unboxing we’ll be taking a look at all of the kits and seeing how they perform in game too!

Sadly due to this box arriving with us a little close to publication date we have not been able to build and paint all the contents – but we will update this article as we do!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy in advance to check out and unbox! If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy of Strike Force Agastus through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too!

If you would like to watch our full unboxing you can see it just below or over on YouTube

So just what is Strike Force Agastus and what is in the box?

Strike Force Agastus is a £120 box bundling together 3 new Space Marine kits alongside a unit of Heavy Intercessors, gathered together in a set that also contains narrative and the rules for all the included models

Inside we get a new Lieutenant:

This guy is interesting as in much the same way as the multi part Captain and Ancient, it comes with a wide range of weapon options allowing you to outfit him however you wish which is pretty cool and hopefully a sign of what we will see in the future from generic character kits

Also included is the new Brutalis Dreadnought!

This is close combat variant of the Redemptor that shares a lot of DNA with the Furioso Dreadnought of the Blood Angels – it has a couple of different close combat weapon options along with some weapon options too on the torso!

Next up are the Desolator Marines:

These are the new rocket launcher wielding Primaris marines, and have a range of options on the sprue. We’ll take a look at the options a little later on, but there is some nice variety in options, two sprues are included to build 10 models.

Dave has built and painted up a tester model for his Dark Angels and will be adding the rest of the contents of the box to this very soon! We’ll update the article as he does!

Finally in the box you get 5 Heavy Intercessors, which while are existing models, they are still a decent pick in a Space Marine army.

Instructions are included for all the models in the box, and as they are the full kits rather than push fit you get all available model options here

Also included in the box is the Strike Force Agastus supplement

This book contains lore around the Space Marine Strike Force Agastus that the box is named after and their combat against the Orks – we also get the full rules for all the models in the box. While some such as the Heavy Intercessors are duplicated from the Codex, we do get new Datasheets for the new models

First up we have an updated profile for the Lieutenant which grants him all the multiple weapon options that he now has access to – this is great as it means all the existing limited edition models can also be covered by the same datasheet, and gives you the ability to build the one from this box for a specific purpose.

The Dreadnought, as expected, is a close combat specialist – though he still packs some firepower with options such as Multi-meltas available to him, allowing him to soften up a tank for example before charging in to finish it off. To me the Talon is a clear winner as far as arming him goes, with the only real loss being the twin bolt rifles. The benefits of being able to make sweep attacks or extra AP and a wound reroll seems much more useful in my opinion.

Finally we get the Desolation Squad, these are the new rocket armed heavy choice for Space Marines and can be outfitted as an anti-horde unit (Which may be useful if rumours about Tyranids this summer are true) or armed as a dedicated anti-tank unit with the Superkrak launchers. Personally I think the Krak rockets are the better option with a squad of 10 being able to reliably take out most tanks in a single volley on average. There’s also a couple of cool abilities such as allowing a single model to hit on a 2, and also if the Sergeant is armed with a Vengor launcher he also gets to add 1 to his hit roll. They also have the Core keyword making them able to benefit from many buffs (Such as the Lieutenants rerolls)

Summary

So what do I think of this box? If you want to get all of the new Marine releases in a single box it’s a great option. From a value point of view we don’t know how much these new kits will retail for – but we can do some guess work based on prices of similar kits.

Lieutenant – £24 (I’ve based this on the price of single marine heroes)

Heavy Intercessors – £40

Brutalis Dreadnought – £42.50 (I’ve based this on a Redemptor)

Desolation Squad – £40 (while most Marine kits are £36, I’ve priced this in line with the Heavy Intercessors and Kill Team Phobos Marines)

This gives the box an approximate value of £146.50 which basically gives you the Lieutenant for free. Of course, you are also getting the models a little earlier than general release too which may have some value to you that can’t be factored in the above.

I really like the new kits (Yes, even the massive rockets on the Desolation squad) and the Heavy Intercessors are still a nice kit, so can see it worthwhile picking up this box – though discounts are not as steep as some battleboxes, most likely on account of most of the models being brand new. If you only like one or two kits here then you can always wait for general release – though at the time of writing this I don’t know when that will be

I also assume that a new Space Marines codex can’t be too far behind this book, and I suspect that may give us some insight into the rumoured 10th edition of the game – so I think there may be lots more goodies for Space Marine players to get excited about in the near future!

Strike Force Agastus is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 4th March

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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