Scott: The long-awaited Death Korps of Krieg Army Box has finally arrived. This box contains Lord Marshal Dreir, an Epic Hero to lead your ten Death Riders, which are also included in this box. To round it out, we’ve been provided with five Krieg Combat Engineers and an Artillery Team. This box is a perfect way to round out an existing Death Korps collection. Most players will probably want two of these boxes, with the most dedicated Krieg fans probably needing three.
We would like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with review copies of the Death Korps of Krieg Army box for this review.Â
Lord Marshal Dreir
NotThatHenryC: The force is led by Lord Marshal Dreir from his bionic not-horse-thing. You have some options with his pose, either pointing with his sword or unleashing the devastating firepower of his laspistol.
In terms of assembly, I found he went together very nicely and there were barely any mold lines to clean up. I did discover a mistake in the instructions, which could cause issues. It tells you to stick both of his legs onto the not-horse before sticking his torso on but that doesn’t work. Due to the way the torso is keyed, I had to stick on one leg, then the torso, then the other leg. Watch out for this, especially if you want to paint the torso separately.
The end result is a nice heroic-looking leader, posed like he’s ordering forward another wave of infantry and/or an artillery barrage. He doesn’t look like he’s galloping along with the Death Riders, but he still looks good alongside them and stands out nicely from the unit thanks to the impressive mound of Hero Mud on his base.
They have really gone to town on the base, which features skulls, unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, and other battlefield detritus. If you wanted to base your Death Korps somewhere other than a morass of mud then you could still do so by leaving off the barbed wire and applying some other texture stuff over the rest.
In terms of painting Dreir, you soon run into just how many different textures there are on this model. He’s got a coat, armor, various different straps, bionics, horse-thing-flesh, mud, barbed wire… the list goes on. I base-coated him using contrast paints, which reduced some of the steps I’d have to take, then highlighted the more prominent parts. I had a bit of fun doing the muddy base and a few puddles around the edges of his big muddy hero-lump.
Death Riders
Rockfish: These are close enough to horses that if you’ve assembled or painted horses by GW or other companies you should already be feeling the f e a r, and sadly it’s a bit real here. There are a ton of pieces to each model, a ton of different textures and layered details, so expect to be building and painting these for a while. Fortunately, you are rewarded with some really lovely models once you’re done. Every model has a dynamic base pose and comes with at least three variations of weapon and gear which means that you won’t be lacking in visual interest or variety amongst the models of your army, even if you go wild and do a full thirty models. Don’t do that, you’ll die of horse overload.
James Workshop did take mercy on you, the humble modeler, where they could. They’ve included nice quality-of-life things like having pieces marked with tiny dots so that it’s easy to keep track of what piece goes with what model. I will warn you that the reins on the horses are at high risk of snapping when you clip them; keep that in mind while you are working through building them. I’ll also comment that the piece placement on the sprue is a little c u r s e d at first, but will start to make sense once you’re a couple of models deep on the squad.
NotThatHenryC: They’ve been quite clever here with the variety of poses you can achieve. Each rider is paired with a horse’s head, which the reins they’re holding fit on. You can stick this rider and head combo onto any of the horse bodies, allowing for many different potential poses. In practice, some of the poses are fairly set for a particular horse but, there’s a lot of flexibility here, especially as each rider has a lance, gun, and sword to choose between.
I found that there were more mold lines on the Death Riders I built than I’m used to seeing on GW kits. This is a bit of a shame when you have well over 20 pieces to clean up and assemble per model. I didn’t have the same issue with the rest of the stuff in the box so I don’t know if I was just unlucky. I can’t say I’m looking forward to repeating that process though.
Krieg Combat Engineers
Rockfish: This was such a fun kit to paint. There’s a bunch of fun little guys with a nice variety of weapons and gear; with a bonus buddy robot. If you’ve done the previous Kreig Kill Team kit, there’s a lot to find familiar here. This kit has good dynamic poses on relatively simple infantry models but with a nice heaping of random technical nonsense stuck on. I loved the variety of different backpacks and load-outs for the models, and while I’m sure there’s an optimal loadout with them, being a bunch of cheap little Guard, you probably shouldn’t be too fussed if you build by rule of cool.Â
This does bring me to the one real complaint I have with the kit: it’s absurd how many parts each model has. The guy with the controller for the robo-friendo is eleven to twelve pieces. That count varies depending on if you choose a multipart backpack. The preceding is not a sentence you want to read about wee infantry models. Ultimately, this isn’t too big of a deal since most of the parts are nicely indexed and everything assembles easily. The largest complaint I have is that they were a bit random in their mix of well-indexed hands and wrists and classic flat-faced ones. Honestly, the fact that those two bits are the largest complaint I have about the kit is a great thing. Honestly, it’s a fun and straightforward kit that’ll be an enjoyable night or two of painting!
Artillery Team
Rockfish: Oh boy, they went over the top for this model. If you remember the Field Ordinance Batteries from the last guard release and how big those seemed to be, they decided to go far past that this time. The artillery team is on a ludicrous 130mm base, which means that it’s got a similar footprint to a Rogal Dorn. It’s shorter but they made up for that by giving you all the bits for a diorama. Between each of the crew having multiple builds and a hefty collection of boxes, tools, and crew weaponry you’ll have a good number of possibilities for how you want yours to look. I would suggest keeping the sandbags in the intended locations, as it does affect the unit profile a decent amount.
As for the gun itself, they’ve continued the last Guard release trend of trying to have a good verisimilitude to the designs. They’ve nicely rendered the gun and carriage to make it have all the things you’d expect to be there, but they did have some interesting choices that seem like they limit how practical they’d be, like lacking a horizontal traverse. Fortunately, there’s nothing that really is going to throw your brain unless you overthink it, so good job there GW. The four weapon choices are mostly believable, though the quad launcher is very silly with its hoppers of fat little bomblets.
Getting into the building side of things, I think it’s worth starting with the most interesting design choice, they’ve made the weapons swappable in a way that might actually work out in practice! The weapons are held in place by a slight bit of tension on a couple of flattened domes on either side of the weapon, it seems like they’ve nicely balanced having the two sides of the cradle pressing hard enough to hold it in without feeling like you’re scraping the paint off to remove it. The gun does feel a little floppy but it’ll stay where you put it with the gear teeth on the underside, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue in practice. The biggest complaint I can have for their system is that the middle crew member normally has ammo that is associated with a specific weapon and the only generic option looks goofy, since a guy stepping up to the gun with a wrench and tool kit doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the crew clearly in midst of combat. If I were to build the gun swappable I’d probably skip the third crew member entirely.
Beyond the swappable gun, this kit is almost unremarkable just because it’s simple and there aren’t really any issues to find. This is a compliment, but doesn’t leave me much to gripe about. My biggest piece of advice is that you ought to do sub-assemblies if you want to keep applying the texture paste a manageable task. Ask me how I know. I’d probably glue down the crates and sandbags to the base then do the gun and any crew on it entirely separate.
NotThatHenryC: I’ve gone for sub-assemblies but, as I haven’t finished painting it, the whole thing remains sub-assembled. As Rockfish says, this piece feels more like a diorama than a gaming piece. I’m looking forward to doing the base for mine with plenty of muddy puddles. It looks great and the swappable gun is an excellent design choice that I hope to see more of.
Good luck trying to find places on the battlefield to hide three of these side plate-sized things, plus a few Basilisks or Manticores. As well as being huge they’re also very slow, so if they get in your way they’ll be stuck there.
Conclusion
NotThatHenryC: This was my first try at doing one of these army boxes to a deadline and I failed. My desk has the gun, Death Riders, and Engineers, all in the early stages of painting. Although I am glad I was able to get Dreir done for this article. This is a set of models with a ton of pieces to assemble and a lot of detail to paint. That’s great if it’s what you want to do – you’ll be rewarded with a fantastic-looking set of models – but this isn’t a job you’ll complete in an afternoon.
I had a plan to make a Death Korps army using this box, 20 models I had from Kill Team, and some Solar Auxilia tanks, which I’d like to find sponsons for. Honestly, I don’t know if I have the resolve to take on a project like that. It would be really cool, so I might do a small-ish force and see how I feel after that.
Scott: Thanks to Henry and Rockfish for your thoughts on these models, and for carrying this article to its conclusion. One note in closing on the box set: If you’re dedicated to collecting a unified set of miniatures for a regiment other than the Death Korps, converting these models to make them fit into a Cadia or Catachan army is going to be challenging.Â
You can see in the pictures of my gun for the Artillery Team, that I’ve swapped the wheels to tires to match the looks of the Cadian crewed Field Ordinance Batteries. Once I find a way to kitbash a suitable Cadian crew to man this artillery piece, this conversion will be complete.
Unfortunately, the other mdels included in this box are going to be much more complicated, if not impossible. Drier and the Death Riders might be possible with some head swaps and green stuff work but will take a lot of time and effort to execute. The Engineers will be nearly impossible without using another regiment’s body as the base, at which point you’re not really using this kit as a basis of conversion anymore.
As a takeaway, this box doesn’t miss if you’re a Death Korps fan or looking to get into the army. If you’re a dedicated Guard collector of a different regiment, you’re signing up for a tough time if you’re committing yourself to the conversation work that is going to be required to get these models to fit the looks of the rest of your collection.
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