10,000 years before the Imperial Knights took fight against the horrors of the 41st millennium, the Knight Households marched across the fields of war during The Horus Heresy. Among the patterns of Knights regularly deployed back then was the Cerastus Knights, mighty engines of war that towered above their valiant brethren.

Today the Cerastus Knight Lancer goes up for pre order, and in plastic for the first time ever after being a long standing resin kit from Forge World for use in games of both Warhammer The Horus Heresy and 40k!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy to unbox and check out on the site. If you would like to help support the site then why not order your Knight through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

In this article we will be checking out the new kit, taking a look at how it goes together and even painting it up in House Malinax colours!

We also have a full unboxing video filmed, which you can check out just below or over on YouTube

So grab your lance and shield as we check out the largest plastic Knight kit yet from Games Workshop!

Cerastus Knight Lancer Unboxing and Review

The Cerastus Knight Lancer has long been part of the Forge World range of resin Knights, and something I’ve been longing to get for a long time but sadly never got round to. So when I heard that the Cerastus Knights were coming out in Plastic I was rather excited! With the new edition of Warhammer The Horus Heresy it’s now really easy to put together an entire force of Knights, with the list building mechanic being that you have to take a pair of Armigers for each full size Knight that you take – making the average army approximately 6 armigers and 3 Knights, and this is made even more achievable with the new plastic Cerastus models!

This is a big kit, and Knight fans will be happy to know the entire thing is unique, non of the parts are replicated from the 40k Imperial Knights. The majority of the kit will be used for all of the models of Cerastus Knights that are coming out, and a single frame contains the Lancer specific parts such as the shock lance and shield. Games Workshop have been very clever with how they have released models for the new edition of The Horus Heresy, as they have maximised sprue duplication were possible in order to make the most of kits that have different weapon loadouts. Rather than having to design an entire set of sprues, they can simply rebox it with a single different frame in order to build an entirely different Knight.

One of the things that Knight players are not a fan of in 40k is the fact that without major cutting and remodeling, the Imperial Knight kit is fairly static in its leg pose. Not so much with the Cerastus Knight! The legs are mirrored and the connection point for them actually has a choice of two different sets of connection points – this means you can build it with either the left or right leg striding forward. But for the more advanced modeler, you can actually cut the connection pins off entirely and give it a much more dramatic pose, in much the same way the original resin kit could be built in a number of different poses. This is made possible by the fact all the pistons on the leg assembly actually slide in and out of their casings in order to accommodate alternate posings. This is a game changer for plastic Knights, and I hope it is something that we see in 40k Knight kits in the future!

There is a ridiculous amount of articulation available on this kit, with the lance itself able to be built fully extended ready to strike, or retracted with recoil after hitting an enemy Knight. Likewise the shield arm can be rotated and re-positioned to allow for a number of dramatic poses. One word of advice here is to fully build the arms and weapons, but do not glue the connection points. This will them allow you to get it in the dramatic pose that you want before gluing them together. It’s also possible to swap the lance or shield onto either hand in order to give you variety if you have a number of them in your army.

In the box is also a pair of brand new transfer sheets covering a number of Heresy era Knight Households – Makabus, Vyroni, Perdraxia, Krast, Malinax, Coldshroud and Devine. These are joined by numerous warning marks, kill markers, script, flames and chevrons, making it easier than ever to have your Knight looking the part for the battlefield!

In particular I am very happy for the inclusion of Malinax transfers, as the Malinax sheets are long discontinued from Forge World and go for silly money on the secondary market!

One really nice thing about the kit is that it also has a fully detailed interior cockpit and pilot! Above you can see some shots that I took prior to assembling the Knight, as while you can pop the hatch and see in, you can’t really see all the detail that is on show here once it is all stuck together. I’m a big fan of interior detail though, as it looks really cool and is a fun thing to paint up mid Knight!

I decided to paint this one up in House Malinax colours ready to march alongside my Sons of Horus, and it was such good fun to work on! If you are looking to paint one yourself, then I’d recommend building up the skeleton first, spray and paint that, and then paint the armour panels still attached to the sprue. Yes, you will have to touch them up a little once you snip them off, but this gives you something to hold on to while you paint the panels and makes it much easier to get your brush into the skeleton without the armour being in the way. if you have an airbrush this makes this job really quick too! I’ll be doing a House Malinax painting guide soon, so stay tuned to the site for that.

From a size point of view, the Cerastus towers above most other 40k models and is actually closer in size to a lot of the bigger Age of Sigmar models! In particular, it makes the Imperial Knight look quite small compared to it, and looks really cool leading them into battle!

In summary, this is an awesome kit that well deserves a place in either your Horus Heresy or 40k Knight army – What’s really cool is that we have another couple of Knights in the same chassis to follow, and due to the varied weaponry they all have a very different silhouette. I’m massively looking forward to being able to field a massive army of Knights and send them forth against the followers of the False Emperor!

The Cerastus Knight Lancer is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 12th August

Games Workshop sent Sprues and Brews a free copy for review purposes.