Showcase: Legions Imperialis Iron Warriors Kratos Heavy Tanks

Shaking the ground beneath their monstrous tracks, the Kratos Heavy Tank rumbles on to the blog today. Armed with a Kratos Battlecannon or a Melta blastgun these versatile tanks can take on Infantry, tanks or structures. Check out my Iron Warrior Kratos tanks, I’ll also share how I painted them with a free recipe card at the end of the article.

Models were kindly supplied to me by Games Workshop. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Kratos Heavy Tank Squadron was recently released alongside Games Workshop’s new Legions Imperialis game. It’s one of the few Legiones Astartes models that’s still in stock at the time of writing. RRP is £30 for 4 tanks (it’s still two full sprues of parts despite their diminutive size). The tanks have great details and don’t suffer any ugly undercuts (no extra plastic for molding over hanging parts), this is achieved by having lots and lots of separate parts. The sponsons are made up of two parts for example. I think the cost is ok, but if you can get them 20% cheaper at an independent retailer I would. It makes the cost for their small size more acceptable.

I recently played a small game of Legions Imperialis using the core box of Legiones Astartes with a Kratos detachment on each side. They proved absolutely devastating to infantry and battle tanks. Two Kratos Heavy Tanks with battle cannons took out a detachment of Terminators in a single round of shooting using it’s 20″ range shot! Once this detachment got within 10″ they could switch ammo types and destroy the enemy Kratos tanks with their anti tank battle cannon profile.

The Kratos heavy tanks are pretty resilient with 2 wounds each and a 2+ save. There is a choice of two turret weapons. The battle cannon option is so much more flexible than the Melta blastgun. This weapon only has a single profile and an 8″ range. The Melta blastgun does have one benefit though. The Bunker Buster special rule, means you can flatten structures and the AP is doubled (so it’s -8 against structures!)

These aren’t the only weapons the Kratos comes with. You get a co-axial autocannon (has to shoot same target as the Maine turret weapon), two hull mounted lascannon, or auto cannon or heavy bolters and Sponson Mounted Heavy Bolters or Sponson Mounted Lascannon. I choose Lascannons for the hull and sponsons. Interestingly, the hull mounted lascannons are listed as 2, so you get two of those weapons, but the Sponsons don’t have a number (you’d think it was two) instead it’s written as lascannon (singular). Two make this even weirder, the hull mounted lascannons get the accurate special rule (reroll to hit) and the sponsons don’t get the rule. Weird.

I’m really enjoying collecting Legions Imperialis models, I’ve painted quite a few now and I’m only just about hitting 1000pts. This will jump up in points as I plan to add titans. I also want to make a board and paint some of the awesome terrain pieces GW make. I guess at this point you could say ‘I’m all in’.