[Horus Heresy] Goonhammer Reviews the New MkIII Breacher Squad

Coming in hot and heavy alongside the new updated Cataphractii Terminators, the new updated MkIII Breacher upgrade set is a much needed and welcome refresh of a classic kit from the earliest days of Horus Heresy. In this article we'll be walking through the new kits, how they're built, and what you need to know about assembling and painting your own.

We'd like to thank Games Workshop for sending us an early copy of this kit to review, contained in the new Siege Assault Battle Group box.

A Quick Retrospective

The first version of what we know as a Legion Breacher released with the Imperial Armor Badab War expansions from Forge World back in 2011, widely considered a “dry run” of what would become the formula for releasing the Horus Heresy. The kit was a set of boarding shield-toting left arms paired with a few new right arm parts including the lascutter and grav gun pieces that are now synonymous with Breacher squads.

Original Badab Breacher Kit - Credit Games Workshop/Forge World pre-merger

The next (and up until now, current) Breacher kit would release with Horus Heresy Black Book 1 - Betrayal in 2012. Alongside the original resin releases of the MkII, MkIII, and MkIV kits, this would be the only official for Breachers for over 13 years (unless of course you were willing to convert the later released Phalanx Warder or Medusan Immortal kit.) Yowza. How the time flies.

Original Horus Heresy MkIII Breacher Kit - Credit Games Workshop/Forge World pre-merger

Anyone who worked with these old kits will tell you; they were kind of nightmare. Older Forge World kits were often extremely fiddly to build, with the pieces often being randomly brittle, greasy with mould release, and/or miscast with bubbles and hollow sections. This combined with awkward posing of the paired arms the Breachers had lead to lots of glued together fingers and swears. Even adding them to the original plastic MkIII kit was a nightmare as anyone who has worked with split resin-plastic kits will tell you. I thought I had pictures of my old Blood Angels Breachers to share here, but I think I just tried to block them from my memory by deleting all trace of them.

Despite this, the legion Breacher kit was beloved of many and was an extremely popular unit. In First Edition, boarding shields granted the now ubiquitous invulnerable save and also counted the model wielding it as having ‘defensive grenades,’ meaning that anything charging them had charging bonuses removed. When you’re a World Eaters player relying on your charge bonuses to pop off, a line of Breachers was the last thing you wanted to see across the table. Imperial Fist Void Warfare Breacher companies, blocks of nigh unkillable Iron Hands and Immortals, and World Eaters Triarii-themed Zone Mortalis forces were common sights.

Happily, I’m here to report that this kit is a welcome breath of fresh life into the Breacher unit and I think we will definitely start seeing more of them.

What’s in the Kit

Sorry we got a little excited and clipped some of the parts out before remembering to take sprue pictures.
Credit - meltabombed

Credit - meltabombed

Technically this isn’t an all ‘new’ kit, being as the Breacher part of this set is an upgrade sprue. This upgrade continues the modern GW Heresy kit formula where the kits are designed to be interchangeable among themselves and can be added to the core Mk II, III, or VI kit (hopefully MkIV soon? GW please?) In this case, the arms and helmets are pretty obviously MkIII, with the added armor plates on top of the MkII suit and accompanying trim. However, I think you can definitely get away with putting them on your MkII and VI sets. The arms might be a little off, but they won’t be super visible behind the boarding shield and under the shoulder pads anyway.

In this kit, you get 10 sets of bolter/shield arms, a set of modified Breacher-style MkIII helmets, and a couple of special weapons (namely, the graviton gun and lascutter which both got beautiful new plastic renders; I mean, just look at that lascutter!)

Credit - meltabombed

Even if you don't use graviton guns in your Breacher units (which you should, because they're amazing), you can use them on a command or veteran squad paired with another open hand for some cool poses. Unfortunately, you only get one of each special weapon, which when they can be taken 1 in 5 is kind of a miss to be honest.

One-handed Breacher graviton gun
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Breacher Sergeant helmet Credit - meltabombed

The boarding shields themselves are a gorgeous updated render of the classic kit. One neat detail I really enjoy is the little lip below the carved out gun slot that perfectly matches up with the new drum fed bolters that come in the kit. I love me a drum fed bolter, all my homies love drum fed bolters. About the only thing cooler is a belt fed bolter (see: new Cataphractii kit.)

One-handed drum fed breacher bolter Credit - meltabombed

Credit - meltabombed

Credit - meltabombed

One thing I want to call out specifically here is a game changer that I hope gets implemented in all Heresy kits going forward and something I wanted to make sure to give GW their due kudos for. On the inside contact point of each arm is a set of small pips (similar to what you’d see on a die) to let you be able to tell at a glance which arms go together. Beautiful! Not only does this make a long build session far easier and less stressful, but it also makes long term storage a dream. As someone who HATES having a pile of sprues sitting around, I like to break my unused kits down into bags. Not having to meticulously keep all the arms separated out into their own little baggies is a huge time saver. This quality of life update is sure to save many a headache going forward and is probably my actual favorite part of these new Breacher kits. You plastic-only Heresy kids today have no idea how good you have it! Normalize pose pips on every Heresy kit going forward GW, please!

Pose pips that show you exactly what arms go together, an AMAZING addition in my humble opinion. A+
Credit - meltabombed

Assembly

The assembly on these went about how you’d expect. If you want to get a jump on the post-Christmas release of the Siege Assault Battle Group, you can go ahead and assemble the bodies of whatever marines will ultimately be Breachers; just leave off the arms and head and you’re golden. I suggest using some blue tac to dry fit the poses of the Breacher arms. While the pose pips help immensely with lining up the arms, you’ll want to make sure the pose you’re getting is exactly what you want, especially the first couple times. Plus, there are a couple of different builds for each pose so make sure you’re consulting your instruction sheet. There are what I call “gun up” and “gun down” poses, meaning there are a couple of variant poses where one is the bolter locked into the boarding shield and other the bolter is lowered as the marine strides forward or pivots to find a new firing lane.

basic Breacher build Credit - meltabombed

Also, it should go without saying, if you want to do anything fancy with the boarding shields like having them be a different color or do some cool stripe masking, etc., you’ll want to leave them separate, either securing them in place with a small bit of blue tac or a tiny drop of super glue that you can just snap off later (I prefer the former but sometimes the latter is just easier lol.)

Breached Kit bash build Credit - meltabombed

Painting

These guys paint up as well as you’d expect; outside the above mentioned shield sub-assembly, they paint up just like any other MkIII marine. Obviously, I didn’t get as far with these guys as I’d have liked, but it comes with the territory when I’m trying to hobby on a new kit over the winter holiday week; just too much else going on. Damn you real life getting in the way of my toy soldiers!

But this is where I got to; you can still get the idea. I decided to paint up an Ultramarine Breacher in the style of my Traitor Nucerians (or at least their updated scheme from the one I didn’t really like before.)

Ultramarines Breacher Credit - meltabombed

Ultramarines Breacher Credit - meltabombed

Ultramarines Breacher Credit - meltabombed

I also sprung for attempting to paint up one of these Breachers a new Luna Wolf Chieftain for my old force that I built back before we had MkII and III in plastic. The army was a COVID project back in 2020-2021 that was both a passion project and a study in painting an entire army in non-metallic metal to get better at the technique. Obviously that technique takes some time, so this is where I got with him.

Luna Wolf Chieftain/Veteran Breacher WIP
Credit - meltabombed

Luna Wolf Chieftain/Veteran Breacher WIP
Credit - meltabombed

Kitbashing and Convertibility

Transitioning nicely from the previous section, obviously this kit lends itself well to conversions and kitbashes. Like above, you can easily make these guys into Veteran Breachers or a legion-specific elite Breacher unit armed with melee weapons. On the other side, the beautiful drum fed and (importantly) single-handed bolters also allow for cool poses on non-Breacher units as well. I think these would be really cool on Veteran Tactical marines or even just regular Tactical marines if you’re like me and like a drum-fed bolter. I personally think the boarding shield arms paired with the slightly bulkier MkII Assault Squad bodies would look really cool, like [this.]

MkII Assault and MkIII Breacher kit bash mockup
Credit - meltabombed

Final Thoughts

This kit gets an A+ from me; I think it’s a welcome and much-needed refresh of a (arguably the) classic Heresy kit that brings Breachers up to the modern age and makes them infinitely more accessible. While I appreciate that the slightly smoother aesthetic of the updated kit may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I think that was always going to happen with a kit designed to be modular with the entire modern range. I like them and think they look just as bulky and imposing as they always did, now scaled up to match the rest of the modern range. The added tech of the pose pips are a fantastic change and would be worth rating this kit just as high by themselves. I hope you all are as excited for the new Breachers as I am and I can’t wait to see what cool things people do with them!

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