The Ursarax are a dedicated close combat unit deployed by the Mechanicum during the Horus Heresy as a way of ripping open Power Armour. Armed with vicious lightning claws and power fists, the Ursarax range ahead of the Mechanicum lines as a vanguard threat to any fragile targets.

Today the Ursarax are available in plastic for the first time after previously being a resin kit, and in today’s post we’ll be checking out exactly what you get in the box, seeing how they go together, painting them up and seeing what they look like compared to the old resin ones.

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

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing video which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado, let’s see what new close combat goodies the forces of the Mechanicum have cooked up!

Ursarax Unboxing and Review

The Mechanicum range for Warhammer The Horus Heresy is going from strength to strength! It only seems yesterday that we had the Heavy Support Box released, with the individual models from that box also going up for pre order today.

One of the things we have expected to see is the transition of the resin Mechanicum range to plastic, and today that becomes a little bit closer with the release of the plastic Ursarax. While maybe not the most effective unit in game due to their low initiative, these have always been one of my favourite kits for the Mechanicum. There’s just something about a vicious little murder robot, jetpacking from cover to cover ready to slice open a space marine with it’s lightning claws that puts a smile on my face!

We’ve had them previously in resin, and while not the trickiest to build, plastic certainly opens things up for more people who might be more comfortable working with plastic kits.

One thing to note here is that they use the same lower body and legs as the Thallax. Reusing sprues is something that the Specialist Games team have done throughout the run of The Horus Heresy in order to maximise the number of kits they can put out, but part of me was a little surprised not to see a new “running” set of legs here to differentiate the Ursarax from the Thallax – more on this a little later.

The box contains enough sprues to build six of them, with two of them armed with optional Power Firsts (I think most people will tend to take these if they are running them too. Coming in at £46 I feel this is pretty reasonable compared to the resin ones, and I did have great fun building them up.

There are a few things to be aware of them building them however. I merrily clipped the hands and piping ready to build them in bulk, and realised too late that specific pipes actually go with specific hands. While the parts do have a bit of flex to them, you might find that if you use the wrong pipe you’re not going to be able to get them to connect to the contact points on the Ursarax itself. Luckily the plastic is pretty flexable and I was able to get most of them in place or hide the other end of the pipe under the shoulder pads, and if you actually follow the instructions unlike me you shouldnt have an issue, but it is worth keeping in mind!

The one thing I’m not a fan of however is how static they look compared to the resin ones – check out the picture below:

On the right is the new plastic one, but on the left is the original resin Ursarax. Now from a detail point of view the plastic one is pretty much exactly the same, and even has a couple of additional details that didnt exist on the original models. However you’ll notice that the legs on the old ones are a lot more dynamic with more of a running pose. Due to the new Ursarax having the same legs as the Thallax, they have a much more static pose. I get why they have done this as it means that one less sprue was needed to put out this kit, which in turn means that maybe another kit was granted existance – But I can’t help but feel that they would be even cooler if they had running poses, and this would have also meant you could mix up the poses of your Thallax too.

I’ve not tried cutting and reposing the legs, but this is always an option if you particularly want some in more dynamic poses – and don’t get me wrong, the kits are gorgeous, I just wish they had even an extra couple of legs on the sprue that could have been used to mix up the poses a little.

This is a minor quibble though, the kits are pretty straight forward to build, and for me are much more enjoyable than trying to stick small resin parts with super glue!

The good thing is if you already have the existing Ursarax then they mix together really nicely, to the point where the mixture of standing and running posses works really well across a squad of them! Above I’ve got 6 plastic and 3 resin, and unless you’re looking really closely it’s pretty hard to spot the difference between them,

In summary, this is another ace Mechanicum kit that has been given the plastic treatment, and I can’t wait to see what is on the horizon for the faction. With rumours swirling of a new edition of The Horus Heresy on the way this summer, I think we’re going to see some more Mechanicum kits very soon and more old resin classics finally make the switch to plastic.

The Mechanicum Ursarax are up for pre order today and are released Saturday 12th April

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