Legions Imperialis has had some brilliant support from Games Workshop, with a whole host of plastic kits coming out over the life of the game. Today the Mechanicum get another wave of releases following the initial launch box with the missing tanks and Knights all getting new plastic models to either replace old resin ones or fill some gaps in the range.

In this review we’ll be checking out the new Legions Imperialis releases, seeing how the kits go together, painting them up to see what they look like in the flesh and seeing how they compare to the older resin models.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us these free review copies a little early to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Legions Imperialis goodies through Element Games and save yourself some money too?

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

So without further ado, let’s check out the new kits!

Legions Imperialis Knights and Vehicles Review

There’s been a lot of love for Legions Imperialis already since release, and for fans of Epic who had a craving for tiny micro machines sized versions of Horus Heresy units it’s been a real dream to build and paint. The Mechanicum had a great launch with a Battle Group Box that contained a lot of the core elements of an army, through a lot of people have been waiting for the rest of the kits in the initial army list in order to be able to fully build out their armies

Thankfully today most of the missing kits are up for pre order, with units for both the core Mechanicum list and the Knights. Let’s start with the Mechanicum units here as this makes rounds out the remaining units in their army list

First up we have the Karacnnos, which I was a massive fan of in Heresy scale, and if anything is even cooler in epic scale. This is the missile tank for the Mechanicum, with side mounted Lighting Locks, and itlooks every bit as cool as the full scale one. The missile bays can be assembled open or closed, and I reckon with a little work you could probably build then so they can open and close during games too! All of the sculpts are the same here, with the kit building 4 models. If you’ve built any of the transports you’ll know what to expect here as they are a variant of the same chassis, though it is an entirely new sprue – I had thought that maybe this would be an upgrade frame to the existing kit.

Like with all other Legions Imperialis scale kits, I’d recommend building them and then attaching them to something like a lollypop stick to make them a little easier to paint. With kits this scale you don’t really need to worry so much about the fine details and just try and focus on the main distinguishing features that makes them stand out. For those that want to go that extra mile, these kits all include transfer sheets with a load of different symbols that can be used across the models.

The Karacnos kit wasn’t too trick to build, being quite a large vehicle, and really followed much the same construction methods of the transport

The next new kit is the Krios, another tank we’ve previously seen for Horus Heresy and now getting the Epic treatment. This builds 6 tanks, but you do need to be careful about which variants you are building. The kit builds 4 Venators, however in game these can only be taken in multiples of 2 – so to get the most from the kit you’re probably going to want to pick up 2 boxes so that you can build a full squad of 6 Venators, and then 6 standard Krios armed with either of the two weapons – again you only get enough bits for 4 of them out of a kit to be armed with the Irradiation blasters, so if you want a squad of 6 you’re going to need to boxes with the reamining models built with standard lightning guns or as Venators.

This is an odd thing, but I suppose it simply came down to how many parts they could fit on the sprue – it just leaves you with a “spare” model if you opt to build 3 standard ones and a squad of 2 Venators.

It’s not shown in the instructions, but you can actually build them to make the gun moveable too – swinging up and down like it does on the full scale Heresy version. Again, this is not something that everyone will want to do, but it certainly looks cool and adds some variation to your units.

Mechanicum Knights are probably the coolest type of Knights, and up until now they have been available as old resin kits from Adeptus Titanicus. With this wave of releases, Games Workshop have taken the opportunity to recreate them in plastic, and in many ways with much more detail too!

We’ll start off with my favourite Knight variant, the Atropos – this black hole firing engine is an iconically cool Knight, and I’ve always been a big fan of it in Horus Heresy, with the tiny epic version looking just as awesome. In the photo above you can see the new plastic kit on the left and the resin one on the right, and honestly it’s very difficult to tell them apart. The plastic one feels a little sharper and has more detail such as additional armour plates and optional banners, while the resin one was a tad easier to build on the grounds of having less parts. The fact you get 4 plastic ones in a box for less than the price of the resin ones is a big win too, and makes it a lot easier to field lots of them in your games of Legions Imperialis, while still being fully compatible for games of Adeptus Titanicus.

Next up is the Magaera and Styrix duel kit – this builds 2of each varient, and just like with the Atropos, it replaces an older resin kit from Adeptus Titanicus. In the photo above the plastic one is on the left, and again there are some minor differences but it’s very hard to see the difference between them unless you have them side by side. Again there’s some extra bits such as banners, and for these you actually get Mechanicum and Household banners in the box if you want to differentiate where your Knights hail from.

I will say that the plastic ones are a little fiddlier to build than the resin ones due to the number of small parts they have. The resin ones have a lot of the sections cast as a single part, though the trade off of this is that the plastic one feels a little more detailed than the resin one, and again just like with the Atropos they work out a lot cheaper than the old resin ones (with the resin ones only coming two to a box)

Finally we come to the biggest Knight in this release, the Asterius. We’ve previously have the other Acastus varient in plastic, but now we have this eagerly anticipated one! With its duel conversion weapons and a Karacnos missile bay on the top, this just looks awesome, and like with the vehicle you can model this with the missile bay open or closed. This was actually the easiest to build out of all these kits, mostly because of it being a lot larger! The kit builds two of them, though the poses are a little more static compared to the other Knights we’ve looked at that have a multiple of poses – that said the arms here can be positioned in a few different ways to mix up how the two of them look.

Another really nice touch with all these Knight kits is that they all come with terminals for Adeptus Titanicus. It might have been a few years until we have had any books for Titanicus, but the fact we have terminals included in the boxes means that at least they are still supporting the game over the course of the life of Legions Imperialis too. I think a lot of people were worried that Titanicus support would dry up once Imperialis was released, but at least due to the inclusion of these terminals people will still have a way of adding to their collection.

In summary, this is a great wave of releases, and right now (with the exception of armigers) Mechanicum players can now put together all their unit options. I expect we might see another book at some point which adds things such as the Ordinatus engines. Legions Imperialis is looking really heathy right now, and it’s great to see it get so much plastic support.

These kits are up for pre order today and are released Saturday 3rd May

Games Workshop provided Sprues and Brews free copies for review purposes.