The Kratos is a new, never-before-seen Heavy Assault Tank from the early hours of the Horus Heresy, now available as a model for the first time, and then in all plastic too! In this review we look at all the sprue, check how well it magnetises and do a size comparison.

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Kratos Heavy Assault Tank Review
This item was kindly provided by Games Workshop. Thoughts and opinions are our own.

The Kratos Heavy Assault tank has been available for pre-order since 4 June and will be released on 18 June. The RRP is £75 / 100 € / $125. Contrary to some rumours it won’t be a direct-only item, but available from independent retailers as well, with discounts available at our partners Wayland Games, Element Games, and Taschengelddieb.

Kratos Heavy Assault Tank review

The Kratos is a completely new model and closes the gap between the small or medium-sized Predators or Sicarian tanks and the large Legion Baneblade variant, the Fellblade. The design is inspired by the Sicarian chassis, sharing the characteristic half-covered tank tracks. The Kratos has been name-dropped a few times in the background before, but until now there has been no model for it, which makes the Kratos a completely new addition to the armouries of the Legiones Astartes. I think it looks absolutely amazing, bursting with weapons, but still with that angular and functional design of the Legions that looks really functional and not too cluttered. Related, yet very different from the tanks of the 41st millennium.

This behemoth of a tank comes in a quite compact box, which is filled to the brink with six sprues of plastic, an assembly guide, and a small transfer sheet with Sons of Horus and Imperial Fists insignia. Four large sprues build the chassis and offer all three turret options (the Kratos battlecannon, melta blast-gun, volkite cardanelle), as well as a co-axial autocannon and the bits to build a dozer blade), and the hull-mounted guns (autocannons, heavy bolters, lascannons, and volkite calivers).

Then we have two smaller sprues, one of which is the generic tank accessoire sprue that also comes with the Spartan Assault Tank and Deimos Rhino. This one has hatches, gunner options, pintle-mounted weapons, secondary weapons, a hunter-killer missile, search-light, and smoke launcher. The final sprue is a generic side-sponsons sprue we’ll definitely see reused for the announced plastic Sicarian and probably for a plastic Predator as well. This sprue has pairs of heavy bolters, heavy flamers, lascannons, and volkite culverins. It’s great to see that all army list options are included in the kit (apart from a flare shield, but maybe this is something that doesn’t need to be modelled on).

Kratos Heavy Assault Tank Sprue 5

Magnetizing the Kratos Heavy Assault Tank

The turret guns aren’t that hard to magnetize, just cut away the axles and insert magnets in their place, as demonstrated by Chris Frosin here (2nd picture):

Note that both the melta blast-gun and the volkite cardanelle also have an extra cover that attaches to the top of the turret, but maybe you can hold them in place with a piece of blue-tac.

The hull-mounted guns have pegs and don’t really need magnets, though they wouldn’t be difficult to magnetise either, just drill two holes and place the magnet there, just as Chris did.

The sponson-weapons are the most difficult to magnetise, as they are mounted on thin two-part axles that are connected with the augur unit on top of the sponsons. You could remove the axles and replace them with magnets, and place magnets in the suspensions at the top and/or bottom, though then you will lose the movement of the augur units.

Size comparison

To get a better idea of the scale of the Kratos tank, check out this size comparison with a Deimos pattern Rhino from our former contributor Amy Snuggs:

A few days ago, a leaked image of a Kratos and Spartan from above also made the rounds, in which you can see that the Kratos without dozerblade is minimally shorter, but slightly wider, so that the mass is similar.

Value

A few years ago, I would have found £75 / 100 € / $125 to be exorbitantly expensive, but since the modest and over 20-year-old Land Raider in the Crusader variant now costs £75 / 85 € / $125 as well, this is probably the new normal. And since the Horus Heresy community is used to Forge World prices, I’m sure the Kratos will sell well. Especially since you no longer have to deal with warped parts or bent weapon barrels.

As the new plastic Horus Heresy range is also available through the regular sales channels, you can benefit from attractive discounts at some retailers, e.g. up to 20% savings at our partner stores Wayland Games, Element Games, and Taschengelddieb. During the launch weekend, the first batch of Kratos tanks ran out of stock relatively quickly at Games Workshop, so check right here to see if the tank is still available:

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More Horus Heresy content is on its way – check back later this week for a Sons of Horus painting tutorial. Let me know what you think about the tank in the comments below, cheers!

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Pros

  • Giant behemoth of a tank, as massive as a Spartan
  • Comes with three turret weapons and an array of hull and sponson weapons
  • Free datasheet for use in Warhammer 40.000

Cons

  • No comparison with Forge World prices, but still an expensive kit for being plastic

Final Verdict

For me, the Kratos Heavy Assault Tank is one of the highlights of the new edition of The Horus Heresy. Unlike most of the other models, it's not a plastic translation of a resin model, but a never before seen tank that has joined the arsenal of the Space Marine Legions. The model has countless weapon options and combinations and is a delight for all tread heads. I can't wait to paint mine as the centrepiece of my Horus Heresy collection, so stay tuned.