Goonhammer Reviews: The New Space Marine Drop Pod

What’s that in the sky? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Oh god why is it coming down so fast, oh god oh god-

Space Marines and Drop Pods are a love story as old as, well, stories about dudes in giant armor dropping from space to fight aliens. In something of a surprise announcement, the Space Marine range is getting a refresh of the 2008 Drop Pod kit, with the promise of new rules to make it less ambiguous to use on the tabletop.

While we don’t yet have the rules, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with preview copies of this kit for review purposes.

Construction

SRM: The first thing I realized when cracking the box open was that the plastic on this was thick, and so were the mold lines. Details are also a little softer than what I’m used to. If anything, this feels like the same plastic that most GW terrain is made of, though it’s not made in China like some of their older terrain. The mold lines are particularly stark, but they’re fortunately running down long, flat expanses of plastic that are easy to trim. Actually building the thing took like forty minutes. You’ve got the base, with the already-open petals down, plus a single half-door that glues on. Aside from that it’s just the five vanes that make up the structure of our ballistic space artichoke, the thruster on top, and that’s kind of it.

You can decorate it with a few aquilas or chapter icons (Ultramarines, Salamanders, Imperial/Crimson Fists, Black Templars, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Black Templars are included) and there’s a selection of rocks you can stick under the doors to make it look more at home with a game board. I left mine off, as transporting this will be hard enough as-is, and they’ll make great basing material for other models with big bases. Compared to the four dimensional puzzle of putting the old one together, this was a snap, but there were some pretty rough gaps in the central column due to that softer detail level and less strict guiding pegs to actually put the vanes on. I don’t mind the omission of a Stormbolter or missile launcher in the middle, as it’s not like that was doing much in-game anyway.

Soggy: As a clearly fake Warhammer fan, I did not have the pleasure of assembling the old Drop Pod kit. If half of the stories I heard were true, it was a fraught experience akin to the most challenging resin kits. That said, putting together this kit was a cake walk. It went together almost too fast, although I have been scarred a little bit working on plastic Mechanicum infantry.

I left the additional rocks off, figuring that some of the less angular bits could be used as hero rocks for characters. I did not glue the base to rest of the model, as I figured this would allow for easier painting and perhaps easier transport.

The biggest downside to this model are the mould lines, which must be the worst I’ve had to deal with since Warhammer Fantasy Battle models – although I suppose time is a flat circle as they are available again. You literally have to carve the length of each fin to clean them up,  of course I missed over a couple which I only noticed far too late once the base coats were being applied. Boo!

Liam: I did build an old Drop Pod, and it was a hateful experience I’m glad not to have to repeat. The new one is much, much simpler to build – I had it off the sprue and assembled in about half an hour, and a lot of that was just shaving off those mold lines which are as horrific as the other guys have indicated.

Something worth mentioning is that although the pod is locked into the ‘open’ position now with the doors down, the footprint is not the same as the old one because the doors are stubbier. It’s still big, I’m fascinated to see if the rules have changed because I can imagine it being very difficult to place on a table, but it’s not the same footprint as the old version.

Note that on the picture of the sprues above, the one with the drop pod base is duplicated and you get two in the box.

Cronch: My pod was not immune to the mold line issue either, but as mentioned they were reasonably easy to clean up given the size and length of the panels they were on. Unfortunately for me, cleanup and building is my least favourite stage of the hobby, so it definitely felt arduous, but it was over pretty quickly.

I do like the inclusion of the chapter icons, but I was a bit perplexed by the number included in the set – 2 of each chapter, meaning that you could put one of your chosen chapter’s badges on each of your pods. The pod doesn’t really have an identifiable front, so I was left wondering how you’d decide where to put it. I suppose you’ve just got to decide which face is going to end up pointing towards the enemy.

MasterSlowPoke: I also had the misfortune of building an old Drop Pod, and I will never look back. This model is almost push-fit – the friction on everything is pretty tight. You’re obviously going to want a little glue on it, but I did it in two pieces – the base with the rocks, and the vanes all connected to the central turbine. I did this both for ease of painting, and also transport. I don’t see any need to permanently affix the two together, and I think it will make foam-based transport much easier. The vanes part goes into the foam, and the base will go under the foam, in between the foam and the cardboard case. This will be a lot easier than trying to transport the pear upright on the base.

When you’re assembling the vanes and turbines, you’re going to want to try to go fast but careful to make sure they’re all aligned. The central console might be a little messed up with noticeable gaps if they aren’t all set right. It is worth planning to paint it black to hide this. I also threw a few spare purity seals on the worst gaps.

The model looks a little barren without the rocks, so I went with them. The instructions don’t provide a lot of guidence on how to put the basing rocks on. Most of them have one side that’s at a steep angle. Put a line of plastic glue on it, and then slide it under the tops of the doors, flat on the table. You should find a decent place to put it, and there’s more than enough pieces that you’ll have some to throw on Outrider bases or whatever.

Jack: Like everyone else, mine had awful mold lines. Some of the thickest I can remember, and you really need to be diligent cleaning them – in many spots missing them will give you gaps in construction. I think you strongly benefit from subassemblies, at the very least leaving the base off. I didn’t and regretted while painting and masking. Depending on what color scheme you’re going for it might be worth leaving the vanes disassembled too if you want to paint the central thruster a different color.

Painting

SRM: Actually getting a handle on this thing is a challenge, given its massive footprint. There is enough room to jam a base under it and attach a painting handle, but it’s unwieldy and I found myself usually just holding the model instead. If I was a smarter man, I would have painted the base and the vanes separately, as actually getting a brush between them to paint the interior is a bit of a pain, and holding the vanes invariably rubs paint off or gets fingerprints on the model.  Because of the sheer prevalence of edges to deal with in there, I just stuck with a couple washes and some drybrushing before going back to pick the details out. In a first, painting this single model feels like a batch painting exercise. With the same vane bit being a quintuple repeat, you’re painting every single detail on this model between five and ten times. Five aquilas on the floor grates, ten sets of doodads and dials on the interior, five of the exact same spires and ten of the exact same vents, and so on. This isn’t a criticism of the model’s design – I think it actually looks pretty good once it’s all painted up – but more a warning to prospective painters. It’s easy to lose your place on this model since the only lodestar is a chapter icon (should you choose to add one) and every time I put the model down for more than ten seconds I completely lost where I was working. Though two of these come to a box and that may seem like an invitation to paint them both at once, I highly advise you take these one at a time unless you’re going for something real easy breezy in your paint process. Your wrists alone will thank you – twisting this conical object that refuses to offer an easy handhold started to really wear on mine after a while. It took me like eleven hours to paint – masking and weathering included. With more time I would have probably stuck some transfers on there, but I was more than ready to call this model done.

Soggy: Despite having a massive Blood Ravens army, with a strong desire to STEEL RHEIN, I instead thought I might see more use for my first drop pod in Horus Heresy*. I hear the Salamanders had a good number of them at the *checks notes* dropsite massacre.

*Yes, it doesn’t have the stormbolter and is slightly the wrong size. While some online folks might want to play rivet counter, Heresy in person is entirely based on vibes so I don’t care lol.

As I didn’t glue the base to the rest of the model, this give me plenty of space to fit my hamfists in there to make an attempt at some of the internal details. I did consider applying hazard stripes along the ramps, but quickly lost interest thanks to the non-optional rocks. I had originally wanted to do the wet wipes trick to do black marble with red/yellow firey veins through it on the fins. Although as it turns out I had entirely the wrong wipes and ended up with a very 70’s firey leopard print – it’ll do.

Provided you scrape off all the mould lines (I didn’t and picked the one angle where you can’t see too many of them), this model is a drying brushing dream with all of the sharp angles.

Liam: I’m gonna be honest, I started painting this and got so bored I didn’t finish it.

Cronch: I went for a slightly different (different, not lazy) approach. Drop pods scream through the atmosphere, right, so there’s going to be a ton of heat. I decided to try and do a kind of charred, burnt effect, with a hint of bare metal (ceramite?) showing through. By contrast the inside is a lot shinier, which breaks it up a bit.

I got the the finished effect by first sponging the pod with Leadbelcher, before streaking black and a couple of browns from the base to the top of the fins using a wide flat brush. I then gave it an all over wash with a black brown mix, mainly to cover any remaining light primer in the recesses, then a gentle drybrush with some bright silver. The inside got blacked out with Black Templar contrast, before the silver drybrush and a further black wash. Some cables were picked out in red.

So there we have it, a charred-on-reentry Drop Pod. It’s a nice quick way of getting them on the table, although looking at what the other guys have done I do think it’s a lot less exciting than a disposable pod also being decked out in chapter/legion colours. Still, at least it could be used for a variety of armies!

MasterSlowPoke: I agree with SRM and Soggy, you’re going to want to keep the two halves separated. I spent about half of the time using a painting handle connected to a 40mm base, and the rest with the model cradled in my grubby gamer hands. Varnish early, varnish often.

When you’re painting a drop pod, its good to remember that this is essentially terrain. Don’t go too hard, and if you make a mistake, you got 4 more sides to get it right. Just make sure to deploy the side with the errant brush stroke facing away from your opponent.

The base is perfect to do with mostly drybrushing, and the internals have enough variety of materials that you can go as crazy as you want to, or just do everything in gunmetal. It is hard to actually see in there in normal practice, so don’t go that crazy.

Jack: I kept getting mad while painting this and knew I should’ve kept the base off. Reaching any of the interior details was a nightmare, so I just drybrushed them all silver. I wanted to do hazard stripes on the doors, but after the first door took me 20 minutes to mask because of trying to reach around both the vanes and the mandatory rocks I gave up. It’s a boring as hell model, and gets an equally boring paint job – but at least it’s much less of a pain than the old ones.

Final Thoughts

SRM: Compared to the original Drop Pod, this iteration is a smidge shorter and a smidge chunkier, with shorter doors and a smaller footprint as a result. Building it really did remind me of building the semi-recent Age of Sigmar and 40k terrain kits, and I appreciate how quickly it was to get from sprue to model. I do wish it was a smidge better engineered in how it actually goes together though, as the gaps in the center are pretty noticeable. I’m not in a rush to paint up half a dozen of these to bring my Steel Rain dreams to the tabletop, as it’s not an especially exciting model to paint. This honestly feels like the rare model where the impetus to remake it was driven by rules, as it’s aesthetically pretty much identical to the old one, just with a better defined footprint and no ambiguity over whether the doors should be open or closed. If anything, that makes this a strictly inferior model to its predecessor, but a far better actual game piece. While the old one will likely be sought after by diorama makers and display board builders, this new one is definitely going to be a more usable model on the tabletop.

MasterSlowPoke: The only downside I’ve found with this new Drop Pod is that the central console is far more boring than it was on the old one. The orb part is probably going to be jacked up by the vanes being slightly misaligned, it’s really hard to see, and it’s significantly smaller. This is also something that doesn’t matter in the slightest, and it’s even a piece most people left off of the old one. It’s a great glow up for a model that needs more prominence, considering how important it is the to game’s background.

Soggy: This is the easiest and quickest build I’ve put together in years for it’s size. While it does have a few flaws, it was a chill build and paint done in a day – it’s a nice vibe. I’ll definitely need to atone for my crime of not doing one for my Blood Ravens, although I’m going to have to double and triple check I get all those mould lines next time.

Liam: I would build 10 of these before I built another one of the old ones.

Cronch: Not the best kit I’ve ever built, but a huge win compared to the old pod and the first legend to put 6 of them down on a table will gain my eternal respect.

Jack: It’s fine. Its a drop pod. Compared to the old one, it was very easy, but it’s still not a fun or interesting model to paint. I’m not sure why the mold lines are so big, but they’re not too hard to deal with, just tedious.

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