The MKII Assault Squad is finally up for pre order today with an awesome kit allowing you to put together a fast moving vanguard squad in classic MKII armour! In this full review and unboxing we’ll be taking a look at the kit, seeing how they go together and outlining any hits and tips you might need when working on your own!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over the new kit to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Horus Heresy goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

It’s a busy day of Horus Heresy releases as we’ve also got reviews of the new Fellblade and Journal Tactica up too!

We’ve also filmed a full unbxoing of the MKII Assault Squad which you can see just below or over on YouTube!

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

MKII Assault Squad Unboxing and Review

The 3rd Edition of Warhammer The Horus Heresy kicked off this summer with the awesome Saturnine box, filled with awesome new kits and the latest Rulebook – and it’s not taken long to wait for the first wave of releases following that set with both the MKII Assault Marines and the Fellblade both up for pre order today!

I’ve been looking forward to Assault Marines, as that’s one aspect my Sons of Horus have been lacking in – so when this kit turned up (in their awesome old school armour) I jumped at the chance to get them painted for the site!

If you’ve built any Horus Heresy Space Marines then you’ll know what to expect here, as it’s a very similar set up to the other kits they have put out so far. You get 4 sprues consisting of 2 duplicates of 2 frames allowing you to build 10 models. As with all other Heresy Marine kits, each sprue will build 5 marines in fixed poses and then arms and weapons are paired to fit those positions. While this does mean less customisation when putting together your squads, it does mean that they are most likely compatible with all existing Astartes upgrade parts.

The kit just contains Chain Axes as the weapons, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we got some more upgrade frames in the future to allow you to arm your Assault Squad with different loadouts. I’ve not tired using any of the existing upgrade kits on them, but they all look to have the same universal connections seen on the rest of the range, so there’s going to be lots of potential here for kitbashing and using existing parts from other kits.

Being in MKII armour, these are nice and chunky, with the jetpacks themselves being pretty big and supported by a rail that runs from the front of the armour over to the back – something which looks really nice on the finished models

I painted these up as Sons of Horus to match my existing army, and had a great time working on them! Being an older mark of armour they really suit sponging and weathering to make them look suitably worn and damaged.

You get options in the kit for bolt pistols or shields, and personally the save from the shields seems far more useful than the pistol shots on the charge. You also are able to build every 2 out of 5 with Heavy Chainaxes too.

I did find these guys a little fiddly to build in places – like with the other marine kits be careful not to accidentally snip off the locators for the arms, as these can just look like a sprue nub if you’re not paying attention! More so than other kits, the arms really do matter here too as there’s not much clearance around the Jetpacks, especially if you are using the shields. My advice here would be to double check and dry fit everything before you glue it, as I had a couple of sections where I had to adjust the pose while the glue was drying – and there is a little give in the poses if you do find you’ve gone wrong somewhere, so just be carefull.

I really did enjoy working on this kit and I can’t wait for the other “missing” kits such as Dispoilers and Breachers, which I’m sure will all be hot on the heels of these kits!

The MK2 Assault Marines are up for pre order today and are released Saturday 4th October

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

Published by Matt Crowther

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