From the depths they come

 

With the release of Kings of War 4th edition and the first supplement "Invasion", the Trident Realm received two long awaited hard plastic kits - available in the Oceanspawn Battle Group, or in February individually as regiments.

The first of these are the Depth Horrors.  When Mantic did the League of Infamy kickstarter back in 2020, there were two expansions created (though I don't think the expansions ever made it to retail separately.  The "No Half Measures" expansion created the current GreedyGuts, Sauceror and FeastMaster heroes, as well as Iron Beast.  The "Siren's Wrath" gave us a Siren and Depth Horror Eternal characters, as well as the current Knucker.  There was also a placoderm model - the only placoderm sculpt since Eckter.

They based the new plastic kit after this model.  The sprues were by a different manufacturer than the one in Poland that we have seen recently.  Unfortunately they do not show who manufactured them.  They look nearly identical at first glance, but that is only because they are laid out the same.

Let me say the sprues are very good - high detail and no flash.  The connections are easy to clip and clean off.  Every part is numbered for the model it belongs to - A, B or C.  While the assembly of the models isn't completely straightforward, they do go together very smoothly.

Unfortunately, there is no variability in the models.  Each model can only be assembled one way, and none of the parts from one model are interchangeable with any other model.  This is why in all the marketing pictures, it seems to always show them as troops, and even the regiment picture is two copies of the same troop.

I feel like it is a shame that they didn't make the heads interchangeable (and provide extra heads), and make the arms with flat or ball joints, so that they could be poseable and interchangeable.  Trying to make these models look unique will require expert modelling skills and lots of green stuff.

So again, the assembly isn't hard - all the A parts go together, and only fit one way, and don't fit with the other models.  Start with the two body halves.  (I tried to keep them all A - B - C in all the pictures).

The back of the heads all are specifically keyed to the various bodies.

Head and body B are a little more challenging because the head is in two parts, and those two parts really don't fit together.  The lower jaw easily fits on the tab for the body, then the upper head fits in place.

Like the heads, the legs are also specifically keyed to the bodies and only fit one way, though the fit is nice and smooth.  If it isn't, you haven't got it right and might need to rotate the leg a bit.

Even the tails are keyed to the bodies, but fit nicely

When you look at the bodies, you can see the shoulders are not flat, so the arms again only fit on specific models and are not poseable.  You end up with a really nice set of three models.  And each sprue ONLY makes the same three (admittedly very nice) models.  You can always change up the order and angle of the models on the bases to make them look different.

You can also mix in the Depth Horror Eternal model to give you 4 different ones.  You can base any of these singly to be the eternal (and since it is a Warlord in general there will only be one)

When looking at the sprue, it isn't crowded - it looks to me (and no, I don't know the details of laying slicing and laying out models on sprues) like there would easily be room to add alternate heads.  I also don't see why the arms couldn't be cut flat instead of unique joints.  

At least hard plastic is probably the easiest medium to use for conversions - and weapon swaps are very easy to do at least.

The other new sprue is placoderms.  With 4th edition, there are now two different profiles for Placoderms - the Defenders are the classic Me 4+, De 6+ with Phalanx (i.e. spears).  The new Razorswords are trade Phalanx for Crushing Strength (1), their De goes down to 5+ but the melee goes up to 3+.  So they are trading their spears for 2 handed weapons.

So let's take a look.

It looks like these are done by the same company that did the Depth Horrors.  Again the two sprues look nearly identical, but are just laid out the same.  Same quality, these are very nice models.  Also if you look at the sprues, all the pieces for each model are together on one side.  The one confusing part is there are 4 heads on the sprue labeled E1 - E5.  I don't know why they are lettered E instead of A, B, C & D like the 4 models.  Each head also only fits with the body that is in the same sprue half as the head - so E4 is in the C sprue half, and only fits on that body.  E1 and E2 are both in A - but that one has a few more options.

The numbers are also not as good as they could be - they don't give a lot of help assembling the models.  They go together well so long as you do them in the correct order.

First attach the backs to the bodies.  The bodies are all 1, but the backs are not 2 as you would expect - they are 3 or 4.  (All the pictures are A and B on the top row, and C and D on the bottom)

Next attach the skirt - which also includes a leg except for A - where the leg is separate.  (There is also a solo leg on C).  

there is a flat part of the left leg for A that slips into the slot created by the skirt

For C, the connection is slightly different, but still works.  (Unfortunately when I was gluing the skirt on I put the glue on the body, and put in on the area for the left leg, so when I fit it I had to pull it back apart for the picture (and then put it back).

The spinal ridges are almost identical, so almost interchangeable (if you try to swap them, you will see they don't all fit quite perfectly in the other bodies).

The same with the tails.  The tails are all different, but can be swapped out.  This ends up because that joint doesn't fit great on any of them.

Looking at where the heads go on the bodies it looks like they all have the same tabs - but when you try to change them around they don't.

If you wanted to swap heads it would probably be easy if you cut the tab off the back of the heads.

Heads E1 and E2 both fit on body A

E2 is to make a hero version of a placoderm from the kit (Mantic has the model for Eckter, but no separate model for a Placoderm Tidewarden.  So you can use the helmeted head for it to make it stand out a bit.

Lastly are the arms.  These are interchangeable between models (YEAH!!!!).  Unfortunately except for A they are all 2 handed weapons.  I don't understand why they made the spears 2 handed.  The Razorswords make sense (for many units you can swap the normal weapon out for a 2 handed weapon to gain CS 1).   So why not give the defenders shield to go with their spears - that makes it easier to show how they go down in Defense when they become Razorswords - they loose their shields!  It would also make at least those easier to put together.  Instead 6 of the 8 arms are 2 handed weapons, which are always more challenging to put together.

One of the challenges with modelling 2 handed weapons is you have to connect 2 arms to the shoulder and the two arms together at the same time.  At least with hard plastic models there is plenty of working time to arrange them so things fit.

So first is model A.  It actually has more options - because these arms are separate.  There ae two right hands (one holding a razorsword pointing down, the other holding a spear) and two left hands (one holding a conch to use as a horn, and the other pointing straight out).  Of course, these arms will fit on any of the models.  It is a little frustrating that three of these are still in two pieces.  These made sense in their ordering A7 is the single piece pointing left arm, A8 & A9 are the razorsword, A10 & A11 are the spear, and A12 & A13 are the conch shell

So then I go to put the B arms together - but the adjacent numbers don't fit.  Instead the pairs are B7-B8 and B6-B9.

Same with C7-C10 and C8-9 go together.

Finally D makes sense - D6 - D7 and D8 - D9.

My best advise is ALWAYS work at fitting these before gluing them - use a little bit of blu-tack to hold the shoulders so you can make sure the arm matches up to the hand on the weapon.

I just have the one set of sprues, so it only makes half a troop.  If you build your models as troops of Defenders or Razorswords, then you can combine those to make a regiment by putting the appropriate troop in the front - allowing you to just flip them to use the other profile.

So these have slightly more variability than the Depth Horrors - but again more head would have been great, though mixing up the arms between models will give some good variety.

So at best a mixed review of these new sprues - very high quality, but low to no variability.

I'd like to give a big shout out and thank you to Felix Castro for letting me put together a set of each of these models.

Because it is all fun and games . . .