Warhammer: The Old World - Defenders of the Great Bastion Models

Games Workshop are expanding the armies of Grand Cathay with the release of the new reinforcement box for Cathay. This box focuses more on the ranged units, wizards and peasants here to support your Jade Warriors and Sentinels on the battlefield with it containing a foot and mounted Astromancer, 30 Peasants, 12 Iron Hail Gunners and 8 Crane Gun Teams. As always with this kind of review article, thank you to Games Workshop for sending over these models so we could build/paint them and bring you this review.

Astromancers

The new wizards are an outstanding kit and the pose below is without a doubt my favourite food model in the Cathay range and people really should be building this pose as a matter of urgency in my opinion. You have a host of options with swords and staffs but and the end of the day you're looking to build your favourite pose from the parts available. T

The only real downside with the kit is that because the right arm of the horse mounted model holds the reins of the horse you end up not being able to transfer over the (nicer) right arm to that model as well from the foot version. It doesn't mean the stock build version of the mounted version is bad, in fact it's the opposite, but it's just something to be aware of when putting them together.

Peasants

These cheaper troops will bring numbers to the table and come with two configurations, spears or bows. Lack of any shield on these mean you'll only usually see the bow armed ones on the table but luckily they're the better of the two poses to my eyes. Each one follows the pretty standard Games Workshop set of having to build them in specific ways but some minor swaps here and there are possible. These are normally 7-8 piece models with front/back body parts and occasionally a separate leg, two arms and then a bow on there which either has one or two join points. Finally we have a quiver of arrows and a choice of heads, but due to the quiver you have to use the ones without the hats as a result. I do like the straw-hat the spear armed peasants wear but least these ones with the small face guards will be easier to paint.

When it came to painting my peasants I’ve had to really think about the colour choices to make them appear different to the rest of the army but still tie them in. I’ve done this by extending the red which was the bottom underclothes colours for all my previous Jade Warriors etc into being the base layer for all these models, ontop of that they’re been given grey cloaks to tie them into the greater army as a whole but lack the bright green jade colours found elsewhere in the army. This should hopefully give them the feeling of being part of the army but different enough to easily identify them as peasants and not trained warriors of the guard.

badusernametag: I was really excited when I saw these on the preview and for the most part I was not disappointed. They’ve got some classic aesthetics of Cathay/historic China in here and they will be such a nice unit on the table. As Liam says you can build archers or spearpersons and there is a lot of variety and representation on these regular citizenry of Cathay. Not just mixed genders, but also body shapes now. With some taller and broader, some smaller and some with a a thicker figure. Some are obviously female or male and some bodies offer the ambiguity of the previous Jade Warriors kit. You have some great little domestic additions, like hanging ducks or legs of ham, which really add character to these guys. Obviously not as wealthy as the Jade Warriors, they are short of kettles and such. LOADS of heads and a good mix of expressions as well as the aforementioned genders etc.

Cathay Peasant Archers- @badusernametag

Wizzard, Standard Bearer, peasant archer with cleaver- @badusernametag

Archers in Twilight colours- @badusernametag

I am actually going to have to disagree with Liam here, load outs aside if you’re looking at this kit you are blatantly here for the HATS. These hats are iconic for fast east Asian peasants and they look really cool as well as selling the whole bit. Sadly most of the standard poses for the archers (probably the more popular load out) don’t work with the hats, as either the hat fouls on the bow and/or the quiver of arrows. BOO! I want cool hats AND a bow!?? I’ve managed a couple of little kit bashes that manage both that you can see below. These kits also add to the range and give us space for some more kit bashing (you need more than one kit to make things interesting!!). Couldn’t help myself but build a wandering ronin. With spear and sword both she’s leaping from a rock. This only used parts from the various kits in the Cathay range, shaving and carving the angles and carefully switching hands between different arms to get it right. Really great kits for experimenting with what are really quite genuine and real feeling human models. Fun.

Kitbash wandering Ronin- @badusernametag

As with the Jade Warriors before I was disappointed to find only one pose for the champion here. The theme running through the OW ranges seems to be a lack of variety in command models and this is a shame in a game which promises massed hordes of infantry. There is some space to bash here though. Made mine into a (more humble than the Astromancers) Wizard. Dragon from gate masters kit tops his staff and a re-positioned bow drawing hand makes a fine ‘magic fingers’ right arm. Neat.

Kitbashed Wizzard- @badusernametag

Overall this is a great kit that is packed with character and potential.

The only painting I’ve done on these is to continue the ‘Twilight’ scheme I tested on the Jade Warriors Captain. Kinda love the muted and restricted palette with extreme contrast. Not sure I’d do it for a whole army, but fun for a warband. Now that I have a good few of these guys I think they’d make a fine Frostgrave Warband (one of my favourite skirmish games) and I’m going to get them all painted up for that.

Peasants, armed deadly and painted- @badusernametag

Crane Gunners

These are in effect the human version of the old Skaven Jezzial Teams but really brought up to speed and look far sturdier than anything the Rats of the Underworld ever put on the tabletop. Long ornate guns are balanced on top of a large shield supported by two Cathayan Soldiers. These are, after that above Astromancer, my favourite models in the box and I'm going to try and fit some into lists where I can as a result. There are only two set configurations of models and while Gunner A is meant to be with Shield A you can certainly mix them up meaning you don't get repeats in the unit until you add that 5th model combination. The shields look extremely sturdy and look like they can take a punch which I really like and the shield carriers are holding on to either a grenade of their blade ready to thwart would be attackers.

They go together very smoothly but don't have a lot of variation in the models which I'm a little disappointed with. I know they're only really going to be smallish units on the tabletop but I'd have loved to have 4-5 different standard combos of soldiers within there so once you mixed them up you could have 10-20 on the table without the exact combo of two soldiers repeating.

Here and with the Ironhail Gunners I’ve tried to match them as much as possible to the heavily armoured Jade Warriors/Lancers and the crew of my lanterns but outside of the shield and some under garments on their arms I’ve once again stayed away from lots of the Jade colour. It’s not a lot different but the lack of tuffs on their helmets really changes the overall colour feel of the models more than I thought it would. I’m really happy with how they’ve come out and little flashes of blue on the rifle lenses shines out more as it an entirely new colour to the scheme compared to everything else in the army.

badusernametag: I can but reiterate what Liam is saying here; great kits, detailed and absorbing, but the lack of variety is a little meh. Multiple units of these will all be very much the same. You can vary the heads (switch in some from your peasants and so on), but there’s not much else to do here.

One way I thought of to mix it up would be to drop the kneeling guy altogether on some of them. So I used a rock (bit of wood) to prop up a shield and took the kneeling guy to make a very stoic looking halberdier. Using a Halberd from the Jade Warriors he really looks like he’s braced to receive a charge from cavalry. A whole front rank of these in your Jade Warriors would look really impressive.

Assembly note here that also applies to the Archers and Iron hail gunners is the classic ‘two-arms-weapon’ fiddly assembly issue. It’s well done here, as GW kits are slick and nicely designed to go together in the modern era. But there is still a knack to lining them up well. I tend to test fit them quickly and then do a small amount of glue on all the connection points. Then stick the arms on and once they’re on but still malleable slot the weapon in. With plastic glue and some fast work you still have time for a little adjustment if they need a wiggle.

Crane Gunners- @badusernametag

Converted kneeling Halberdier- @badusernametag

Iron Hail Gunners

The last set of models in the box are the Iron Hail Gunners. These spare a sprue with the Crane Gunners with each one having 2 Crane Gunners and 3 Iron Hail Gunners. This does indeed mean we only have 3 out of the box poses for the Iron Hail Gunners which again is a little disappointing. If you've read the rules review *LINK* however you know I don't think this'll be a problem as I' m struggling to see a way to get these into the army list, so outside of the ones I've built/painted for this I doubt I'll be doing many more.

The models themselves are really nice and go together as you'd expect any modern Games Workshop kit to do so. Similar to the other kits in the box front and backs of upper bodies go together before a leg is slotted in, arms, guns and heads all finish the model meaning that while you don't get to change the slightly variants in weapon arms can lead to slightly different looking models, not that I think you'll notice those minor differences unless you're specifically looking for them.

Badusernametag: This is some clever sprue design that completely threw me when I was making these!? What are all these spare bits from my crane guns I exclaimed?! Whilst it is a little sad the little poses and variety you get on these two units, the fact that they have made two ranged units out of one (small) sprue is very efficient and makes for a more diverse and varied army overall. Building a new range from scratch takes time, and if you look at an army like the Kruleboyz (swamp Orcs) in AoS the lack of number of units in the range can really impact on what you can do with it in list building and tactics overall. I’m impressed that they’re expanding things and maximising the resources they have to support the army.

Of the blackpowder units these are actually more interesting and I love the dragon sculpt on the barrels of the blunderbusses. It’s a stocky brutal looking weapon that speaks of close quarters firefights and explosive destruction. Big fan.

Final Thoughts

Despite some quibbles it's a really nice box, the models all go together extremely well and this new style of Games Workshop kit to the Old World where specific parts only interact with other specific parts is clearly going to be something we're going to have to get used to as the ranges grow or get models replaced with newer versions, as both these and the previously released Marauder Kits for Chaos have the same, for lack of a better word, issue. The trade off for this however is even better models than we've ever had for a Games Workshop Rank and Flank game and I think if I'm honest with myself I'm OK with the limitations of this style of kit while they continue to make beautiful models.

Beginning of the Twilight Warband- @badusernametag

Twilight Ronin-@badusernametag

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Tags: miniature review | The Old World | Cathay | grand cathay