At the recent NOVA Open, Games Workshop previewed the Legiones Astartes Battle Group boxed set containing new models for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy. In this review, Jack takes a look at the new plastic Deredeo Dreadnought. As ever, we would like to thank Games Workshop for supplying us with this review copy.
Like all the other Heresy dreads, this is as close to a 1:1 copy of the original resin kit as it was possible to make. As nice as that is for continuity, in this case I think it’s a huge negative that really hurts this model. The legs are fully posable, and do come with some positioning detents that help you build it in one of two preset poses. They’re not very strong detents and its fairly fiddly, but it could be worse. Strangely the stepping foot is designed for the toes on the side of the foot to be flipped up. I’m really not sure why the kit wants you to do this, but a quick trim lets them be extended like you can do on the flat foot.
Where I start to really have issue is with the front torso, and you can see the gaps in the image above. While everything fits together perfectly on the computer where this was designed, you have to be an incredibly precise modeler to get all sprue nubs perfectly flat without taking off any extra material, and then get everything aligned perfectly, otherwise you end up with sharp seams that don’t look very good. It has options for either heavy bolters or heavy flamers, including predone magnet locations to make them swappable. You don’t need the magnets though – even without paint the fit is poor and you’ll need to shave down the guns for them to fit in at all, and there’s still plenty of friction to keep them in place.
Moving on to the arms, this is where I’m least happy. They truly are a direct replacement for the resin – there are a lot of pivot pieces in the arms to make them posable. However, with resin, you can heat up and bend the cables that connect the weapons to the torso. In plastic, this is a solid piece. It’s super fiddly to get in place, and it locks the arm into a single pose. Very disappointing compared to the cool ammo feeds on the recent plastic Cerastus Knights. As a double hit, the default arm pose sucks, with the arms not even pointing in remotely the same direction. Like the torso they do have magnet holes so you can swap between plasma and autocannons. That will, however, make it a bit harder to get the weapons into a decent pose. With glue and clamps I think you can force the cables to behave with the guns looking better, but if you’re relying on the magnets then it’s going to be a huge amount of work to change their position.
If you’re on the fence about liking Deredeos, I would not buy this. If you really like them and are willing to put in the work, this certainly can look decent, but I’d recommend picking up the resin weapons so you can reshape the power/ammo feeds to allow you to pose the arms.
