Another mighty wave of Legions Imperialis releases is about to drop in, featuring the heaviest infantry and vehicles fielded by the Legions during the Heresy. The Saturnine Heavy Assault Cadre combines Saturnine Terminators and Dreadnoughts. There are also boxes of Araknae platforms, with a variety of armaments, plus the Fellblade, Glaive, Falchion and the new flame tank, the Ascalon.
The large Saturnine Battle Group box contains two Saturnine Heavy Assault Cadres along with eight Araknaes, eight Vindicators, two Mastodons and two Fire Raptors.
Thanks to Games Workshop for sending us Saturnine Battle Group boxes to review, along with the new super-heavies.
Table of Contents
Saturnine Terminators
First, let’s have a look at what you get on the new Saturnine sprue. Each one has enough models for three bases of Saturnine Terminators, one Saturnine Command base and two Saturnine Dreadnoughts.
Thundercloud: As you can see, the tooling is clean and detailed. The assembly is for the large part fairly straight forward, though there are some pieces you need to be very careful of. The Saturnine Command Squad has two melee weapons with thin shafts particularly vulnerable to breaking. If they do break, a delicate touch with the plastic glue is required. They’re vulnerable to a weakness being created in the shaft in the moulding process, so be particularly careful removing them from the sprue.
NotThatHenryC: The detail on the commander and his retinue is pretty incredible, even by the standards we’ve become used to with epic-scale models. The Praetor has an eagle on his cloak and they’ve got various tassels, purity seals and other bits and pieces. They are rewarding if you have time to spend on them but I’m glad I wasn’t painting them in a rush.
Looking at the saturnine terminators, the number of guns you get is a bit unhelpful. I wanted two guns per terminator because I expect to Deep Strike these guys in, which prevents them from charging, so fists wouldn’t do anything. There are 6 of each gun for the right hand per sprue but only 3 left handed. They go in units of 9 per detachment but you get 12 left-handed guns in our big box or 6 in the small one. It’s awkward to set them up in whole detachments.
As there aren’t enough left arm guns for everybody to have one I decided to have one fist per base, to serve as a Sergeant. I think I can reasonably claim that’s a base all with one load-out if they’ve got 5 guns. That way I could make four Detachments from my four sprues. One would have dual plasma, using the six left-handed plasma guns and three fists. Another would be dual disintegrator. The other two would use the remaining guns to make bases with plasma guns and disintegrators.
With the two-sprue box you could make all your Saturnines have a mixed load-out, so long as every third terminator had a fist. Alternatively, you could have one unit with dual plasma and the other with dual disintegrators. In any case you’ll have to have those power fists, or perhaps to try and swap a few guns from right hands to left.
Look how big they are compared to standard Astartes! I guess now we know why the Civitas buildings all have such massive doors.
I painted my infantry on their sprues. They got a wraithbone spray and were then hit with Imperial Fist contrast and Agrax Earth wash for the yellow, which gives a very strong colour. On my tanks I take this a few more steps with drybrushing of flash gits and Dorn yellows, followed by a Lamenters yellow glaze, but for the infantry that isn’t really needed.
All the sprue gates for the Saturnine Terminators are on parts of the model you can’t see when they’re built, which is really clever. You can cut the painted bits off, stick them together and you’d never know the difference. That’s not quite the case for the Command base, where you’ll need to do a little bit of painting gaps – but really not much at all.
A True Poster: At first glance I was a little worried I wouldn’t enjoy building the Saturnine infantry portion as it was full of tiny bits. This was not the case, as the way these were designed was very clever. Though the Terminators are four whole pieces each, the build path is quite quick. The bodies are separated into two pieces (the legs and front of the torso are one piece with the back being another) to allow a void for the arms to slot into. The shoulders of all the arms are a bit extended where they glue to allow you to hook them into the bodies and lift them fully so you have room to paint.
The command models are similar, with only the Praetor being a few pieces more to allow for the pose that is found in the more standard scale version. I am a big fan that only the Praetor has the hero rock/putty between his legs. I appreciate the design of this on the other infantry models for Legions Imperialis, but I do find it nice to see these large lads without it. Three to a 32mm base they have quite a presence compared to their Cataphractii counterparts.
Painting:
After preparing the models by sticking all the infantry on popsicle sticks grouped by loadout (a stick of double plasma, a stick of double disintegrator, etc.) and sticking the turrets of the Araknae on separate sticks I primed everything black.
From there I drybrushed the models the same way I do my regular Heresy models. Firstly with a heavy pass of Incubi Darkness, followed by Kabalite Green, and finally with Sybarite Green.
With the green down I clean up all the areas that will be black or metallic with a coat of Black Legion Contrast paint. The single pigment black works really well to kill the green and gives me a good starting point for the next steps. After that is fully dry, I drybrushed all the black areas with Eshin Grey to give them a highlight. Then I did a heavy drybrush of Leadbelcher onto all the weapons, the legs of the Araknae, and the tank treads. I highlighted this with a quick drybrush of Necron Compound, and then hit all the areas I wanted to be bronze with a coat of Snakebite Leather Contrast. The brown tone turns the silver into what I am looking for on all the melta tips, the details of the plasma, and any random banding I want to break up on the models. After that I hit the plasma coils with Tallassar Blue Contrast, to get me that blue glow that’s easy to read on the table. Now that this is done, I go back and hit all the trim with Runelord Brass, this took the most time on the infantry as they have trim on both the shoulder and shins but it breaks the model up and the pale desaturated tone of Runelord doesn’t distract from the vibrant sea green of the armor. I hit all the lights and viewports with Mephiston Red, and did the same on the flyers glass but layered it up with Evil Suns Scarlet and Wild Rider Red to really pop at a distance.
I threw a couple of transfers from the sheets on at this point, and the new Aircraft Transfer Sheet is really cool as the scale is a bit larger than anything on the standard sheets released so far, I see some uses in regular scale with these in a lot of hobbyists futures. The weather where I am is not conducive to varnishing as I write this, so please excuse the reflections in the pictures!
For the bases I used some sticky tack to fix them to a piece of cardboard and primed black, followed by successive stippling of Zandri Dust, Screaming Skull, and finally Wraithbone. The rims were then cleaned up with black to frame it all nicely.
Saturnine Dreadnoughts
NotThatHenryC: You don’t have any of these issues with the two Saturnine Dreadnoughts on each sprue. There are two different sarcophagus designs, though neither is obviously Loyalist or Traitor, so you can happily use them together. Each sprue has one of each arm gun and they can be fitted on eithier the right or left arms. I built a couple of mine with paired plasma and disintegrators just for a bit of variety, though I’l play them as having the legal load-out.
There isn’t any posing that you can easily do with the legs but I found I didn’t mind that. They are plodding along as you’d expect them to. Overall I found they went together very easily, perhaps more easily than the Leviathan and Deredeo.
I’m thinking of making a few Sons of Horus to build a Traitor force, along with some Dark Mechanicum stuff and maybe my Legio Mortis from Titanicus. I used a couple of the Saturnine Dreadnoughts as test models for this. It’s a totally different method from my Fists, with a Leadbelcher spray and then painting in the armour panels. I think they look quite good but I’ll pause the project for now, till my Fists are finished. My Dark Mech and Mortis forces are on muddy bases and I’m not sure whether to match that for my SoH (I probably should), so these aren’t based for now.
A True Poster: These were very well placed on the sprue leading to very little mouldline removal, especially on the legs which the armor plates covered most of the flashing. The instructions for building the Graviton weapon were a little unclear where the extra tube goes, but referencing images of the full size one got me the information I needed. And standing next to the Contemptors they are HUGE.
Araknae Platforms
NotThatHenryC: These come with four platforms to a sprue, meaning you get eight of them per box. The sprue is crammed with enough guns to build two with quad autocannons, two punishers and one with missiles. If you’ve been counting, you’ll see that that’s five sets of weapons for four turrets and you could easily magnetise them if you wanted. The guns all attach to different hard points, which stick on the backs of the turrets. I decided to just stick them on though.
I decided to make two quad autocannons, one punisher and one with missiles. They went together easily, except for a bit of confusion at first with the autocannon mount, which I stuck on backwards. I fixed that and quite soon had the turrets built. I painted them using Imperial Fist contrast, vallejo metallics and an agrax wash. Yellow areas then got a drybrush in Dorn yellow and a glaze in Lamenters yellow, which I realise is unhelpful as it hasn’t been on sale for years.
I like to think that getting installed in a turret, incapable of movement but covered in big guns, would make an Imperial Fist very happy. They’ll also show up nicely on the tabletop. I’ll probably do the other four soon.
A True Poster: Super easy to build, and my goodness these are large. The “legs” were three pieces total, two of them attached to the main hub and two separate on the sprue. All of them are sculpted the same so I was able to batch build them quickly. Building the chassis that holds the weapons is a quick two part build, with a male and female connection. The mould lines here were super quick to clean and didn’t give me any hassle.
The weapon options I chose were the Quad Accelerator and the Punishers. The fit of the quads is a little finicky, and I found it easy to glue them a little off center. At this scale it’s not a very big deal, but something to look out for while they are drying. The punishers were simple to put together, make sure to dry fit the ammo feeds as their connections are set a certain way on the inside and it would be easy to flip them the wrong way around and have trouble connecting them. I didn’t end up building any of the missiles, though looking at how the parts are sculpted I would expect similar potential issues to the quad accelerator, so be mindful when gluing them together.
Astartes Superheavy Tanks
Andrew_N: Like the earlier Solar Auxilia superheavies, the Astartes superheavy tanks come one to a sprue, with two tanks per box. And like all the tanks for LI, they were an absolute joy to build and paint. I was able to build both tanks in a couple of hours, and that was including figuring out how to build both loadouts so I could interchange the tank as needed. GW includes parts to be able to have swappable casemates in order to use each hull as both tank types. For the Falchion/Ascalon set in particular, you want to build the hull up through step 1b/2b, and then do certain steps separate from the hull in order to build the separate loadouts:
- Falchion: 1f, 1h, 1d, 1e
- Ascalon: 2c, 2d
Please note you have to build these separate from the hull; the sides of the Falchion casemate can be a little tricky to get even when doing that. After building the casemate turrets, you can follow the instructions from steps 1i/2e on as normal to finish the tank build. But afterwards, you can easily swap the casemates out with friction fit alone – I found the parts to be very snug after painting. If the fit is too tight, the small tab under the gun shield can be trimmed down to make the fit a bit easier.
Overall, I loved building and painting these tanks. I will definitely be getting more in the near future!
NotThatHenryC: I’ve built all four of these super-heavies and they’re lovely little kits. I also built my Ascalons and Falchions to be swappable, as it’s very easy to do. The Fellblade and Glaive can’t quite be swapped as there’s a piece of hull you stick in for the Fellblade’s Demolisher that has other stuff stuck on top of it. I guess you could just magnetise the Demolisher cannon itself and leave that panel blank for the Glaive, but that wouldn’t look good – and I’m sure I’d lose the tiny Demolisher. You do get all the parts for the two turrets though, so those are very easy to swap.
As you can see, my super-heavies remain in a shamefully WIP state. Oh well, at least it gives you an idea.
A True Poster: The kit came with two identical sprues, and I built one of each variant. I was pleased to see the new Laser Destroyers as an option in the build, since the reveal of the new plastic Fellblade for regular Heresy I have been looking forward to painting these big dumb guns so I threw them on the Fellblade and put the Quad Heavy Bolters on the Glaive.
The build steps for both are similar, only varying once you get to the front of the tank with the glaive having a tank hatch where the Fellblade has a demolisher cannon. The tanks went together quickly, with minimal dryfitting needed for the top turrets to make sure I was putting the pieces for the Glaive in the right way on the sides and the back hatches for the Fellblade. The rail system for the undercarriage needs a little bit of dry fitting to make sure pieces 3 and 5 are correctly placed (make sure the flat edge is facing up and you’ll be in good shape)
For painting I left the turrets off for ease of access to the main body of the tanks and painted them just the same as above. I wanted the turrets to be black and really stand out amongst the crowd of green armor on the table so leaving them separate made this a lot easier. I did a little more work on these compared to the other kits, coming back in with Runelord Brass on the banding of the Laser Destroyers and the Glaive to make them pop just a little bit. I also added some freehand mimicking the Cthonian gang markings found on the Heresy Sons of Horus transfer sheet from Forgeworld.
The Saturnine Battle Group box
The large box contains a huge number of sprues – some old and some new. There are four sprues of Saturnine Terminators and Dreadnoughts, making 4 HQs, 12 terminator stands and 8 Dreadnoughts. You also get eight of the new Araknae platforms. There are also loads of Vindicators and a couple of Mastodons and Fire Raptors.
Whether this box is a good deal or not depends on if you’re using all of its contents. The name of the box sounds like some kind of in-game formation but that’s not the case. Even so, it’s a good collection of new and recent releases at a discount, which is always good news – unless you recently bought Vindicators and Mastodons separately.
Final Thoughts
NotThatHenryC: This release fills in a pretty major gap in the Legion forces, with their largest super-heavies now taking the field. It gives Legion forces access to fun new toys like the flamer template, a beam weapon and a 3″ blast, if only from a little turret. Saturnine terminators give you a pretty shooty and durable unit that can Deep Strike, though maybe not the most effective unit to come charging out of a Mastodon or Thunderhawk, because of all the space they take up inside it. All of this means more options and variety available when constructing your army, which should make the game more fun.
As ever, the models themselves are of impeccable quality. If anything, you’ll be cursing how much detail there is to paint here, especially when you get to the trim on the Saturnines. These are all very good representations of their larger versions and it’s fun to see some new stuff invented, especially the Ascalon.
I’m not sure what’ll happen when they run out of stuff from the big 30k range to make for LI. There are still a few tanks to go and they could definitely do another infantry sprue with things like Breachers, Recon squads and maybe other kinds of guns. We’ll look forward to whatever models come next, as we love putting these kits together.
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