Summary

• Warhammer is shifting focus towards new players, with kits aiming to attract younger audiences.
• The Mechanicum range offers intricate details but complex assembly, a departure from recent push-fit models.
• Building 30K Mechanicum units requires patience and concentration, harkening back to the challenging kits of the past.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Warhammer feels increasingly more set on welcoming new players to the fold than catering to the veterans who’ve been around for years, or even decades, at this point. While there are exceptions, with returning games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Old World, most recent kits seem aimed a🌟t bringing new, younger players on board.

At this point, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Games Workshop is a global business. In 2024, that means shareholders demanding perpetual growth, and the best way of doing that is by bringing new players into the ecosystem. As such, new units are monopose, spare bits are practically nonexistent, and it&rsq𓆉uo;s becoming much more di𒀰fficult to build or convert a unique army.

However, the Warhammer 30K range is a little different. Still considered a specialist game, the huge resin range is slowly being released in plastic. The firstborn Space Marines still have separate legs and different weapon options, the Solar Auxilia offer reems of those rare conversion options, and the Mechanicum, a precursor to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:40K’s Adeptus Mechanicus, mig꧂ht be the best example𓆏 of 30K’s old school ethos yet.

Full disclosure: I love the Ad Mech. I’ve got a huge force of messed-up 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dark Mechanicus. I love the gothic architecture of Mars. I love the priests chanting their canticles in the hopes that they will awaken machine spirits and control the mile-high war machines that will turn the tide of battle. It’s the epi🐻tome of grimdark, and the hyper-religious warriors are everything I love about Warhammer’s setting.

But the new models have tested me. It’s been a while since I’ve assembled a kit with any level of difficulty. And the plastic Mechanicum are fiddly. This isn’t a criticism or praise, it’s just a Thing that I have noticed.🐟 Building an individual robot from the Thallax Cohort requires a minimum of 30 fiddly pieces.

The models are full of detail, with creeping cables and wires extruding from all their technolimbs. You can look at the legs and see how the pistons work and how these creature꧂s would move. Maybe you don’t care about these sorts of details, but I love them (until it comes to painting them all).

Just looking at the sprues is overwhelming. It took me a good ten minutes to find the pieces I needed to build the Castellax Battle-Automata’s legs. The Dreadnought-sized monstrosity is a complex kit, and so many of the partsಞ look similar to one another (but are su𝕴btly different). Building the Mechanicum takes time, care, and patience.

This was so surprising to me because of the other kits I’ve built recently. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Skaventide was almost entirely push-fit miniatures that didn’t even need glue. Before that, I built the new Blood Bowl Gnomes and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Darktide: The Miniatures Game, a boxed game entirely aimed at new players. The tonal whiplash is astonishing. I’ve gone from pushing two pieces of plastic together and coming out with a finished miniature, to needing to balance countless small bits on top of one another in awkward positions in 🅘𝄹order to build a leg, arm, or body.

As I said earlier, this is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It depends on how you like your hobby. I love the🥂 building process, so this suits me well. I also like converting my miniatures, so having more options is always a positive for me. But if you just want to get the models looking like they do on the box as quickly as possible, you’ll probably resent the complexity.

I’ve built a lot of kits in my time. I built three metal Thunderfire C෴annons when they released. I built the old metal Treebeard (but, thankfully, not the Balrog). The 30K Mechanicum are the most complicated kits I’ve built in a decade. They don’t quite rival the old, heavy metal models, but they’re complicated beasts that require prolonged periods of concentration.

I haven’t even moved onto the Triaros Armoured Conveyor yet – I’m still working out just how to Nurgle it up –✅ but the sprue thankfully looks a little more appܫroachable thanks to the large armour panels.

Despite the complexity, despite the length of time it takes to build Warhammer 30K’s plastic Mechanicum units, it feels like a blast from the past. Back to a t෴ime when Warhammer kits weren’t afraid to be intimidating, when they weren’t afraid to let your creativity shine. But I dread to think what I’ll find inside the box if Workshop ever releases the Thanatar Siege-Automata in plastic.