Legions Imperialis – Dire Wolf Heavy Scout Titans

A novelty for the Legions Imperialis, and not just a repack of a former Adeptus Titanicus or Aeronautica Imperialis boxed set, is the double pack of Dire Wolf Heavy Scout Titans. These are formerly only available as single resin kits by Forge World (we've covered them here as well - Dire Wolf Heavy Scout Titan with Neutron-Laser and Volcano Cannon), and with them moving over into plastic, we even got new weapon options.

This new plastic kit, is available as a double pack from Games Workshop at 62,50 EUR, which makes them a bit cheaper than the resin variant which were 44 EURs each. On top of that, the weapons not only cover the Neutron-Laser and Volcano Cannon, but received a third option, the Conversion Beam Dissipator.

But as this is a Legions Imperialis kit, a lot of questions came up regarding the content and if it is usable with Adeptus Titanicus. In short words - yes, but with and additional comment.

First of all, the bases are the new lower ones, from Legions Imperialis. These are 80mm round bases, and with the flat design, you won't be able to properly add name plates, as many people do with Adeptus Titanicus. Anyhow you can buy the higher 80mm round bases from Citadel if you want, at 4,25 EURs each - not cheap, but not breaking the bank either.

As for use with Adeptus Titanicus, this kit comes with a command board and weapon cards. Wait, that's singular? Yes, that is right. In the shop it says command boards, plural, but my box and a lot of other boxes only came with one set. I got in touch with Games Workshops customer service on April 20th, and just last week, around June 6th, I have received the second set to properly fulfil the scope of delivery. Update 2024-06-08: Games Workshop reduced the content and description on the store to a single terminal and one set of weapon cards.

Beyond that we get a neat decal sheet, especially made for the Dire Wolf, covering the Legio Gryphonics, Fureans, Astorum, Atarus and Mortis. Along with a pretty straight forward instructions, and if I write straight forward, I mean it, because beside of the weapons there are no options at all with this kit. But more on that later.

The box comes with four sprues, two identical sets, each covering a single Dire Wolf and the weapon options. Interestingly enough, the way they are split, one covers the chassis of the Dire Wolf, and the other one the weapon systems, on back as well as arms. This would give them the option to create a second set or further variant of the Dire Wolf load out, as we 've seen with pretty much every Titan kit so far.

The layout is different from the regular Warhound Scout Titan, where we have both models spread across three sprues, one for the chassis, one for the armour plates (covering loyalists and traitors, along with neutral plating) and the third one for weapons (where we got a second variant with the introduction of Legions Imperialis).

Beyond that, good amount of detail, crisp casting, but a few mould lines and some issues with that, which we will talk about later on in this review.

But let us grab the instructions and two of the sprues to get started.

As usual we start from the legs up and this is the first rather disappointing realisation. These do not have any moving joints. Everything larger than a warhound is posable, you can lift legs, angle the ankles and such, and in case of the Warhound, they have fixed poses, but have different fixed poses in their twin kit. In this case, you are fixed to what they give you and you can't even swap the left and right side, to give the second model a different pose. Beyond that, due to the aspect, that the pistons etc. are casted together with the lower legs, they are incredibly annoying to clean up, with the mould line running right down the middle. As well as the armour plates connecting the same way, creating a gap / glue line right across the rivets.

This is not clever model design, and compared to the very flexible and well designed models of the remaining Adeptus Titanicus range a rather odd choice. Posing the resin Dire Wolf wasn't easy, so I was looking forward to the plastic kit. That this one would withhold that option completely from the customers is not understandable. Especially as they could have gone for three mixed sprues instead of two identical sets of two.

Anyhow, we add the armour plates and have the walking pose. I didn't glue down the armour plates but just used blu-tac, so I could remove them for easier painting later on.

In the next step, we build the upper carapace. Well cut, to combine the different armour plates with minor to no gaps. Just a bit sad, that there are no options for allegiance. The arms have slots for magnets, which we will make use of later.

Just add the shield generators to the rear back, and you can put on the torso onto the legs. This just slots in, no magnets used.

Let us add the head, again lacking any options for allegiance. With the regular Warhound you had some spiked armour plates, a bit evil looking design, this would have been easily be included in here, but they went against that. (Just add a nose plate with spikes for example).

We are up to the next step, adding the weapons. This is interesting, as usually the weapon systems in the Adeptus Titanicus range are easily magnetized, with often pre-embossed slots for magnets. Not in this case. You choose one and you go with. But we went a different route. With the Conversion Beam Dissipator, I would suggest you leave of the frontal armour casing for now, as it will make painting it much harder. In our case I just used blu-tac to hold them in place.

And build the Volcano Cannon and Neutron Laser as well. These connect with a tongue and grove on the rear back and are fixed in position with pistons in the front.

If you glue in the pistons, as the instructions suggest, you are fixed with one weapon option. These are not intended to be magnetised from the start, covering no slots or something similar. But for an interesting reason, they come with 3 pairs of pistons, so you can stabilise each of weapon systems, but couldn't swap them, if you glue them (not only for the glue, but for the pin). So I cut of the pin (marked red in the third picture), only glued the top part and kept in in place until the glue bonded. Repeated that for the other two weapon options as well and now can swap between the three options.

Why not make this clearer for the customer? It feels a bit, that they wanted to do that - why else include three pair of pistons - but forgot or dropped the idea halfway through production. Anyhow, easily fixed, but yet another irritating design choice with this kit.

Now for the arm weaponry, these are Ardex Defensor Mega-Bolter systems on each side. And these can be magnetised and are even moveable. Keep in mind, you only have that one weapon option for now, so having them magnetised is more a decision for transportation and making painting easier. The weapons themself are stuck between the cable and the mount, so you can tilt them a bit to the left and right.

Last but not least, you add the armour plates. Once again, just the ones shown, no options for allegiance, which pretty much all other Titan kits have.

And that is the build Dire Wolf Heavy Scout Titan, in his full glory. With the three carapace weapon options prepared in a way, that they can be swapped. The last picture shows the build groups, that I kept the model in for easier handling during painting, just as a help or suggestion.

The plastic kit is a pretty much 1-to-1 copy of the resin kit, just with a fixed pose. No added or changed details (not really necessary, as the kit is just 2 years old) and a brief size comparison with a regular Warhound Scout Titan.

And to close the review, two sets of shots of the new plastic kit, once with the new weapon system and flat Legions Imperialis base, and the second one with the Neutron Laser and the "classic" Titanicus base measurements.

Conclusion

While they made the Dire Wolf cheaper with this twin kit, this is about the only benefit of this transition into plastic with this Heavy Scout Titan. On the one hand, the Dire Wolf is often used as an upgrade to an existing Warhound pack, so I didn't really see the need to make this a double pack, just make it a single one and half the price.

But honestly, the aspect that they cut so many things that were done better in the entire range up to this point, baffles me. People were already mocking the design when it was a resin kit, calling it Chicken and things like that, but then not using the chance, when bringing this from resin to plastic and make it posable, especially if you're going to make it a twin pack, to not have the same exact clone running in the same maniple, is irritating. And while they went with fixed poses, doing it in a way, that makes cleaning the parts harder than necessecary, creating nooks and crannies you can not prperly reach with a mould line tool or blade just adds salt to that "injury". On top of that we get a half-baked carapace weapon system, that is fixed, but only in a "kind of" way, as you see that they had some sort of plan, that was dropped in production. And of course, not only not having any poseability but removing any optional pieces beside the weapons, so no allegiance armour plates, is another cut in value.

By the way, for a certain period, Age of Sigmar / Warhammer Fantasy kits had both bases, squares and rounds in their boxed sets. Why not add the flat and regular ones in this case, just for the Titanicus players? At 62,50 EUR RRP and a EBITDA of 38 (!) % there was surely room for that.

And while customer service took care of my claim, that there was a second set of command terminals missing, I know from others, that their emails weren't answered, and it took them 2 months in my case to fix it. And UPS added their value by stepping on an envelope, that clearly said "do not bend".

Overall this is a release with a lot of bitter aftertaste. I guess, if you split this kit, as you most likely will only need one for your army, you can live with the fixed pose and enjoy the halfed price (especially if you bought it with a discount from a LGS).

The Horus Heresy and Legions Imperialis are brands by Games Workshop.