They’re finally here! The plastic jetbikes we’ve all (well, at least all the White Scars players) been waiting for. Games Workshop have sent me a free box of them to review, and while I haven’t been able to get paint on them yet we can take a look at what’s in the box.
Assembly:
This is, unsurprisingly, a modern GW plastic kit. Fairly easy to build, minimal mold lines. There are three sprues for the bikes and one sprue that has all three riders on it. I do unfortunately need to report that the flight stands are not durable enough to survive being rolled over by a desk chair, though they make a delightful crunching sound when they shatter. The bikes are still on 60mm round bases, so all your old resin bikes are still correctly based.
The one pain point during construction is with the riders. There’s no indexing at all to hold parts in the correct position, so trying to build in sub-assemblies for easier painting is an exercise in frustration. You’ll also need to avoid gluing the back of the bike on until final assembly after painting, as otherwise you can’t get the rider in and out.
What’s included:
The box comes with enough weapons to arm the bikes however you want – there are three each of heavy bolter, plasma cannon, multimelta, and volkite. Unfortunately they’re a bit too loose to press-fit, at least without paint on them. They don’t look bad to magnetize, though you’ll need to get a bit creative on the one in the bike body, either with a magnet large enough to span the hole, or some plasticard. There are also quite a few options for the riders – in addition to being able to have both hands on the handlebars, they come with three volkite serpentas and three hand flamers. There’s one raised chainsword (with an empty holster), three holstered chainswords, and three holstered bolt pistols.
Not, however, included are any weapon options for the sergeant, or any held bolt pistols. If you want those, or a vexilla/vox, you’re going to need to raid your bits box. This part is a bit disappointing to me, I’d rather have gotten space on the sprue for upgrade parts rather than holsters for the default weapons that every squad has, or have made a bit of room by moving some of the parts that are present in triplicate off the rider sprue and onto the bike sprue (which has a bit of empty space in each corner).
How they compare to resin:
Despite looking stubbier in some of the pictures, I can’t find any actual difference. They’re pretty close to identical, except for the riders being in mk6 instead of mk4 armor.
