Review: Horus Heresy Sicaran Battle Tank (plastic)

Vroom vroom! The plastic Sicaran Battle Tank enters the battlefield of the Age of Darkness. This high-speed destroyer tank was designed by Ferrus Manus and Guilliman to outflank slower vehicles and has become a fan-favourite for its potent accelerator autocannon and unique design that is so different from the classic Rhino and Land Raider hull based Space Marine tanks. In this review, we’ll check if Games Workshop has managed to translate the model faithfully into plastic or if some corners had to be cut.

The Sicaran Battle Tank will be available for preorder starting Saturday, August 13 2022, and on sale one week after. The model is a faithful adaption of the resin kit and comes with an accelerator autocannon turret, a hull-mounted heavy bolter, and a choice of heavy bolters, lascannons, heavy flamers, or volkite culverins as sponson weapons.

Sicaran Battle Tank review

The box has the same size as the Deimos pattern Rhino and unveils a total of 5 sprues, an assembly guide, and a small transfer sheet with Sons of Horus and Imperial Fists iconography.

Two large sprues build the hull and turret, and there is a medium-sized sprue for all the tracks:

Additionally, we have the side-sponsons sprue we know from the Kratos Heavy Assault tank, which lets you build a pair of heavy bolters, lascannons, heavy flamers, or volkite culverins. Finally, there is the generic tank accessories sprue that also comes with the Spartan Assault Tank and Deimos Rhino. This one has hatches, gunner options, various pintle-mounted weapons, a hunter-killer missile, search-light, and smoke launcher. 

It should be noted that the kit only contains the accelerator autocannon turret. It is unclear whether there will be more kits for the Punisher, Omega and Arcus variants, as the turret is not “outsourced” to a separate sprue like the Leviathan weapon arms. I suspect that these variants will remain available as Forge World resin models for the time being, perhaps converted to upgrade sets for the plastic kit.

A comparison with the original resin model can be found over on Reddit. Apart from the smaller exhaust block, the models are pretty much indistinguishable.

Value

Fortunately, the prices for the new Horus Heresy releases were quite tame so far, and the RRP of £47.50 / 62.50 € is also surprisingly affordable for such a chunky tank. The classic Space Marine tanks like the Predator and Hunter/Stalker have reached a price tag of £40 / €55 by now, and the Sicaran isn’t exactly small, it’s between Rhino hull tanks and the Kratos in size. This is all the more astonishing because the Primaris Gladiator, which has a similar mass, is priced well above the Sicaran at £52.50 / 67.50 €. And let’s not even talk about the original resin version…

The plastic Sicaran is available at our partner stores Wayland Games, Element Games, and Taschengelddieb, which offer welcome discounts of up to 20% over RRP, which makes the Sicaran even more affordable:

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