Going up for pre-order last Saturday was the standard special edition boxed set for the new army – in this case the Emperor’s Children, who finally have a force of their own with a codex to match – find our review of the book here. Also in the box however is a plethora of models from the upcoming Emperor’s Children range, giving players a preview of the new plastic kits. In this review we’ll talk about the box contents, the models within, and what you need to know about the new kits if you’re planning to play Emperor’s Children.
We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of the boxed set for review purposes.
The Box
The box itself is a pretty standard size for these things; it’s packed with sprues and contents but not as big as the larger edition boxed sets. The contents have been packed with a protective printout of the box art made of card – this is in there to stop the sprues from scratching up the other contents. Once you open the box up and take out the sprues – more on those in a bit, you’ll find a decorative box designed to hold the special edition Codex, the datacards, and the assembly instructions for the plastic kits.
There’s a cardboard spacer in there as well to hold the cards in place and stop them from sliding around. I don’t expect you’ll want to keep that, but the box itself is pretty nice and a good way to package your cards and codex for travel, plus you’ll have extra space for dice and a measurement tool.
The special edition book is very pretty, with foil inlaid icons, and the datacards have pink foil around the edges similar to how the marine datacards use gold. It’s a very nice-looking set, though both are relatively thin compared to other books.
The Miniatures
Let’s get on to the models already. There are a lot of models here. Specifically, you get one Lord Exultant, two units of Noise Marines, and two units of Infractors/Tormentors in a dual-build kit. All three of them are great and we’re going to go through each kit separately and talk about assembling and painting the kit, plus what you’ll have left over when you’re done.
The Lord Exultant
TheChirurgeon: The Chaos Lord equivalent comes with his own small sprue in the box, and as a result he’ll almost certainly be sold separately at some future point, packaged by himself. There are several ways to build this guy and your game options are:
- base config: plasma pistol + power spear
- spear + fist or spear + whip
- plasma pistol + sword or plasma pistol + screamer pistol
You could probably make a case for double pistols but I think the spear is the most powerful option and as a power weapon it’s a better choice if you want to win best painted competitions than a fist (though the fist looks very cool). Spear + whip is going to be your go-to if you want a melee lord to join Infractors most of the time and that’s how you’ll want to use him. The use-case for the power sword is that it has [PRECISION], which neither the spear nor the fist have.
The Lord Exultant comes with two left shoulderpads, depending on which melee weapon you use – the spear one has a raised arm, so that uses a pad with a dangly bit at a different angle. He comes with two different heads as well, one helmeted and one without.
Regardless of how you build him, when you’re done you’ll have quite a few extra bits that will be very useful for converting other more “standard” Chaos Space Marines. The shoulder pad is especially good for that, though most of the joins on the model are flat, and the arms are easy to use on other kits.
The Lord Exultant is pretty straightforward to assemble but he’s got a number of bits that are a real pain in the ass to work around – specifically his combo cloak/tabard/toga doubles as his right shoulder pad, and glues together in two pieces at the top of his shoulder, with the draped cloak connecting on the left side at the bottom corner of his shoulder pad there. Because of this, when I painted him I decided to use a four-part sub-assembly:
This let me get at the hidden parts of the model pretty easily and paint the underside of the cape and tabard as I went, while also letting me easily prime them a lighter color so I could do the white fur effect.
The base model is relatively unexciting, though I mean that in a good way – it’s a very solid model with good details that never feels like it’s trying to do too much. The Emperor’s Children models in this box generally have a little less trim than the Thousand Sons and even standard Chaos Space Marines, and that’s delightful.
Speaking of that fur cloak, this was my first attempt at painting a fur cape. I’d see some painters do this online and wanted to try my hand at it, though having done it now I’ll say that it seems like it’s a lot easier to do this when you’re doing it with brown than with white. I started with the primer coat of Grey Seer, and then shaded using a 3/0 brush in small, short strokes with Apothecary white. I then came back and did lighter layers of those strokes as highlights, mixing Grey Seer and Reaper Pure White. the spots are painted in similar fashion with Black Legion Contrast, then I did a final pass doing small, thin hairs with Reaper Pure White. I’m very happy with the final result, though it looks a lot more impressive from a foot away. It’s an ambitious choice for the model and while I’m happy with it, I also think I only got like 90% of the way there in terms of selling the effect.
And if you’re wondering – the freehand is just Fulgrim Pink, thinned and painted over the base pink, which is a shade of Pink Horror to Emperor’s Children. I don’t have a set idea in mind when painting these; I just know they need to be organic, swirling shapes. A good reference point for these is looking at the etched designs on ornate suits of armor from the late Medieval and Rennaisance periods.
Noise Marines
TheChirurgeon: The box contains two units of Noise Marines, and each of these numbers six models – five plus a champion. A single unit comes on three sprues, and you’ll have a choice of either running five sonic blasters or dropping two for a pair of Blastmasters – this is always the correct choice. For his part the champion can either have a sonic blaster or a screamer pistol and power sword. The screamer pistol is basically a 12″ sonic blaster with Pistol but I suspect going sonic blaster so you don’t lose any range is the better play.
As with the lord, you’ll have an absolute assload of parts left over after you build these, though most of them will be related to the Sonic Blasters you aren’t using. This kit comes with something like 15 heads, which is great because honestly you’re going to want 18 Noise Marines for your army anyways and having this many heads will make it easier to avoid doubling up. The other very important thing to note here is that you end up with six extra Shoulder Pads which do not feature the Emperor’s Children icon on them. This is both great for your conversions but also fantastic if you plan on adding a unit or two of these to a Renegade Raiders army, and want to paint them to match the scheme of your legion or custom warband. I went with power sword + screamer pistol on my champion for this unit, so if you go blaster you’ll have extra pistol+sword arms you can use as well.
The thing to note about these guys is that they’re pretty large – they’re sized more like Havocs, and come on 40mm bases. This fits with their new T5 profiles and means that if you want to use those leftover guns they’ll likely look better fit on Havocs than standard Chaos Space Marines. Your big challenge is that you won’t end up with any extra backpacks, so you’ll want something to supplement that with.
Of course if you aren’t as concerned with making extra Noise Marines, you can use the sonic blaster parts elsewhere. John Lennon from the Art of War used the sonic blaster heads – which are separate parts that glue together vertically – to pair with the headlights on his rhinos and the effect is fantastic.
Liam: The Noise Marine models are very flexible; all of the bodies appear to be totally agnostic as to their weapon options – you can put your blastmasters and Champion build wherever you like, letting you really mix and match as you see fit. The range of heads and shoulders here is decent, and they’re the same size and attachment as others in the range, so you can kitbash freely to up the variety.
The Tormentors/Infractors
Liam: These are set up so that two sprues builds five models, so it’s a pretty dense sprue, and although the box advertises them as two units of ten you can easily build four units of five instead. There’s a decent range of head and shoulder pad options here, though they may get a little thin after a while – fortunately you have the massive CSM range to work with to get a few different choices in there. The instructions guide you to use a specific body for the Champion, mostly because he’s on a hero rock, but you don’t actually need to do that – all the options in this kit are body-agnostic, so you can swap stuff around as you please. That’ll help to keep it fresh, though again you may want to bring in CSM melta and plasma guns here for some visual differences.
TheChirurgeon:Â I haven’t finished painting these yet but I’m making good progress. They feel like Chaos Space Marines with more organic shapes and less trim, which is a good thing. This kit comes with a ton of extra parts – something like 18 heads, plus shoulder pads and weapon options, and whichever kit you don’t assemble, you’ll end up with the parts left over from the other one. I built a unit of Tormentors, then decided I shouldn’t let the Infractor arms go to waste. I also had some older Noise Marines I’d converted who were now tragically very obsolete sitting around…
While I liked these, there was no world in which I was going to rebase them and re-use them with the new, much superior version already on my paint desk so I ripped their arms off and gave them Infractor arms. As with the Berzerker kit, all of the arm joins in this kit are flat, which is a blessed and wonderful thing, meaning you can broadly assemble them however you like.
The effect looks great, and while I used more standard shoulder pads there you’ll have extras you can use covered with extra stuff – though by my count, not necessarily a lot of extra legion icon pads to work with. If you have extra Legionaries sitting around and want to repurpose them, this kit will very much accommodate you – though I’d note that Infractor melee arms are better for that purpose than trying to fit the two-handing-a-weapon pair for Tormentors.
One of the best parts about this particular kit? The icons. Like with Chosen, this kit comes with a backpack add-on to which you can mount an icon, and it comes with three options for doing so: One icon of Slaanesh and two for the Emperor’s Children, one facing each direction.
In a show that the designer of this kit was an absolute genius who loves us very much, these all have perfectly flat backs, meaning they’re amazing for adding detail to vehicles like Rhinos and Land Raiders. I used an icon of Slaanesh for my Rhino, while John is using the Emperor’s Children icons for the front of his Heresy-era conversion.
I love how John’s used these here though if you’re doing a 40k Rhino instead of a Heresy one I’d recommend using the Emperor’s Children logos on the large side panel doors instead, where they add a lot of great detail.
Other Considerations and Conversions
TheChirurgeon: There are a ton of great parts in this box and for the most part they’re all compatible with the existing Chaos Marine range, giving you some easy options for converting your Terminators, Vehicles, and Sorcerer. As I write this, I’ve done a Sorcerer conversion identical to the one in the Codex, simply doing a headswap from the Noise Marine kit:
The head fit in there pretty naturally, though something with a less-pronounced chin might look a little better fit-wise. Still, it gets the point across and helps add flavor, and if I hadn’t already assembled this guy completely (except for the head, which was originally going to be a Thousand Sons helmet to make him a standard TSons Sorcerer), I’d have replaced his left shoulder pad with a sculpted Emperor’s Children one.
How Many of These Kits Do I Need?
TheChirurgeon:Â I wouldn’t buy more than two of these boxes if you’re trying to get multiples. You won’t need more than three units of Noise Marines, though if you’re like me you’ll get a fourth or fifth to run in Renegade Raiders. If you’re looking to build an army with the singles kits, I don’t know that you’ll need more than one Lord Exultant and a unit of Infractors, though you’ll likely want two units of Tormentors to infiltrate and score secondary VP. SO in that regard, this box is an insanely good mix of units.
What Do I Buy Next?
TheChirurgeon: If you’ve already pre-ordered this box, you have most of what you need already. My plan is to build 15 Tormentors, do the converted unit of Infractors and build another so I have 15/10, and then buy another two units of Noise Marines.
If you have this box, your next step should be to buy Rhinos. You’ll need at least two and as many as three or four if you want to run the Rapid Evisceration Detachment, and you’ll want Lucius the Eternal when he comes out, plus a unit of Flawless Blades. I don’t know if you’ll need a Land Raider for them, but I am almost certain you’ll want at least one Winged Daemon Prince and possibly two or three, and Maulerfiends are cheap enough to play as well.
Final Thoughts
Liam: As new ranges go, this is exactly what you want to see – great-looking kits with lots of flexibility. They’re fun to build and full of character. The composition of this as a launch box is solid, too, with a bunch of your core units and a key generic character in there – you’ll likely end up using more or less all of this in your Emperor’s Children armies.
TheChirurgeon:Â All of these kits look great, they’re easy to assemble, and they come with a load of extra bits for conversions. The flat arm joins and interchangeable bits are fantastic, and this box on the whole is filled with some of the best Chaos kits to-date. It’s a great box if you can still get a copy of one, and if not it’s worth it to buy these kits standalone after they release.
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