The new
Mechanicum heavy support boxset goes up for preorder and with it some great
heavy support options to expand on the growing range of plastic Mechanicum units. As always,
a big thanks to Games Workshop for providing us a free review copy.
The
Thanatar Calix and Karacnos tank are variants of the Thanatar Cavas and Triaros, respectively, we saw with the initial release of the plastic Mechanicum, meaning these will already be familiar kits in a way. The chassis of both models are the same, only changing out a sprue or
two for the new kits. The Karacnos tank can be modeled with the mortar bays opened or closed.
Switching to the bipedal, the Thanatar Calix comes with two different poses for the legs and
arms, with multiple options for the claw. The main weapon is slightly moveable if it’s not glued into the chassis. Rules for the Calix allow you to upgrade
one Thanatar in a squad to the Calix, swapping its infantry killing plasma
mortar for the deadly las weapon that will punish even the heaviest of armor.
You can also take a Thanatar Calix ias a single unit and upgrade it to some
tasty rules using the paragon of metal upgrade.
The Karacnos assault tank can
lob a massive blast round that with flesh-bane, shell shock and pinning will
make any infantry squads quiver. The lightning lock weapons on the side with
rending, shred, and exo-shock adds versatility to the Karacnos.
The entirely
new (in plastic) model in the box is the Krios tank, which can be built in one of three
variants:
- the strike tank with a larger blasé version of the lightning lock
weapon on the Karacnos
- the Venator for your dedicated anti-armor which gives
you 4 shots at S 9, AP 2 and ordinance, and
- the new variant we saw released in
the Martian civil war campaign book, Irradiator which gives you either the very
large hell-storm flame template weapon profile with flesh-bane and rad-phage or
a 16" beam weapon with similar profile.
While the Krios is a nice addition to the boxset, anyone wanting to
fill out an entire squadron of tanks will have to wait for individual release
as buying multiple boxsets of the heavy support box is not feasible as the
Thanatar Calix is limited to one per squadron and the Karacnos isn’t a squadron
vehicle.
