Some long-winded thoughts on the new Boyz from an old Warboss
I’ve been building, painting and playing Orks for well over 30 years now. I love the Brian-Nelson-era Orks probably more than any other 40K range and, given the recent mis-steps of the Beast Snaggas and the 2021 (?) Boyz kit, I was very apprehensive about the latest refresh. Thought I’d pick up a sprue while they’re cheapish on ebay and see what I made of them.
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Stuff I like:
+ Looks like characterful Ork face sculpts are back on the menu, boyz! As well as the posing limitations, the Snagga and recent Boyz kit (and the buggies for that matter) gave the impression that there wasn’t anyone at Citadel who knew how to inject a bit of personality into an Ork face. This seems to have been solved with this latest bunch. Hooray!
+ For a push-fit kit, there’s a really impressive level of variety possible; if you were just building 20 out of the Armageddon box, I get the impression you’d be able to make 20 Boyz without any exact duplicates. If you start clipping the pegs off the arms (or go even further and start chopping arms off where they’re moulded to the bodies), this opens up even more build options. Great stuff.
+ The engineering on this kit is BRILLIANT. With the usual caveat about trimming down pegs on push-fit kits, these models are an absolute delight to build. Everything fits together really nicely.
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Stuff I don’t like:
- Not super keen on the smashing together of shoota and slugga boyz into a single profile, but as someone who’s given up on trying to keep up with the incessant churn of the latest rules versions, I’m just gonna ignore this. It’s easy enough to build them in a way that looks either shooty or choppy.
- Would it have killed them to include a boy who looks like he’s actually shooting with his shoota? I’d have much preferred this to the guy resting a shoota on his shoulder, which I reckon is the one model in the kit that’s really gonna stand out as being a duplicate pose.
- No heavy weapons, but I imagine this is going to be solved when we get the standalone kit, so somewhat reserving judgement on this count
- The Nob. Probably my least favourite thing in the kit. He’s too big, his head’s too small, the rock is stupid and unnecessary, and no alternate melee weapon option for your second Nob if you’ve got two kits.
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Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by this kit. I think for a single-sprue, push-fit kit, it’s possibly the best GW have ever done (AND they squeezed on some bonus grots too!), and it’s very close to being a worthy successor to the beloved multi-part Boyz kit (and a VAST improvement on the shite interim one). If, as I suspect, there’s a full multi-part kit on the way too, and that uses the same arm-joint shape as these but with different heads and bodies (meaning a pretty huge variety of options and interchangeability if you’re clipping off the push-fit pegs), then I think we might actually have a contender for best ever Boyz kit on our hands. Would be interested to hear what everyone else thinks.