Scions Kit Has Some Surprises

New and Improved

     The release of the new plastic Storm Troopers (or Tempestus Scions) is pretty exciting for me.  I've had an Imperial Guard army in the works for quite some time.  One of the units I had on my wish list was Storm Troopers, but the metal models turned me off a bit.  The Kasrkins looked alright, but the unit didn't come with the weapons I wanted, so that meant having to buy multiple special weapons models.  The price of a single unit really began to be completely unappealing.  I figured that the Storm Troopers would be redone in the next Imperial Guard codex, and it looks like my guess was spot on.  I'm glad I waited.

     I purchased a box of the new Tempestus Scions ahead of the Astra Militarum codex since I know that I'm going to have at least one unit, and this would allow me to to scope out the models, and plan how I was going to build them.  It has been quite a while since I've purchased a brand new release from GW, and what I found in the box was pretty surprising.

     The density of parts on the sprue meant that they only needed two sprues and they were truly packed with detail.  The one box allows you to build out a command squad or 5 members of a regular Scions squad, including all the options for that.  I am a big fan of the Imperial Guard Cadian Command Squad box, and this reminds me of that.  Lots of extra options and choices for assembling unique models across multiple squads.

     While that's nice, there were a few things that really stood out.  The fidelity of these sculpts is beyond anything I've seen from Games Workshop before.  The details were very crisp, and there was some clever features for helping a modeler assemble the characters properly.  To show off the improved "resolution" of the models, I would like to show an example.  The Hot-Shot Volley Gun has such fine detail that there are actually TINY gaps in between the barrels within the model.  Check it out:

That's impressive!

     The instructions were an improvement as well.  This booklet covered all the different model types you could build out, labeled all the weapons, and showed all the decorative elements.  There are five backpacks that combine with five of the Hot-shot Lasrifles, and five specific sets of arms.  The instructions shows all of these five pairings, gives you sprue numbers and what's great is that the physical arms have the numbers for the set imprinted on them as shown below:

The two arms marked with a "5" pair together with a specific rifle and backpack.

     I'm no fan of Games Workshop's business practices, but there is no denying their technical capability.  This kit is pretty clear evidence of that.  I'm looking forward to assembling these, and when I do I'll be sure to share some more pictures.  Thanks for reading!