Upgraded Cadian Shock Troops

[Lucerne]

Oh they’re not that bad. There are a hundred of them on the table that die in droves, that they’re not miniature statues of David with perfect proportions isnt the end of the world. I’d also like to have your abilities of precognition that say these have doomed us all to decades more of no new kit. These are additions to an existing kit that won’t be disappearing. That’s a good thing.

 

I like the kit and their exaggerated proportions and I’m glad they’re doubling down on them.

I mean there's no nice way to say this but your mentality of "KEEP THE OUT OF DATE MODELS EXACTLY AS THEY ARE, DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES" is kinda part of the problem, and a contributing factor to why Cadians won't be getting any new, updated models. What makes you think GW will ever give Cadians in particular new toys if they realize they can get away with selling the same archaic, malformed bodies to the readily satisfied?

 

Also, even for horde armies, the flaws are glaring- especially the shoulders.

 

The kit is beyond salvage. A standalone upgrade kit- while inadequate- would be fine. Putting it as "the new cadian" while stapling it onto the obsolete kit- something for which the overvocal fandom of the old cadian sculpts are likely partially to blame? That's a very bad sign indeed and might have consequences for Guard models as a whole- and definitely does for Cadians as a subfaction.

 

But if you think this is a good trend, best not to wonder where all the new Cadian releases went.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Lucerne

[USNCenturion]

You raise good points, and you’re not wrong in most of them, but I just don’t see this release as anything but a positive. We don’t know for sure there is nothing else coming down the pipe, and the kit IS serviceable and there are fans of it. I agree the traitor guard and BSF guys should probably be the standard, but I can’t subscribe to the notion this is all we’re getting forever because we tolerate the existing models.

[Lucerne]

You raise good points, and you’re not wrong in most of them, but I just don’t see this release as anything but a positive. We don’t know for sure there is nothing else coming down the pipe, and the kit IS serviceable and there are fans of it. I agree the traitor guard and BSF guys should probably be the standard, but I can’t subscribe to the notion this is all we’re getting forever because we tolerate the existing models.

I dunno. The problem as I see it is

1) I disagree strenuously with the idea that the kit is adequate, but GW definitely took the idea that it'll still sell into consideration when sticking with it rather than making a full wave. That makes sales of the kit- ironically enough- a problem for what we want them to decide for calculations of "should we redo the range to encourage more sales".

2) While new guard are far from impossible at some point, it's very ominous that we got this now instead of a full wave, and I don't think we're getting any more Guard in the near future, as a direct result of GW's decision here. I'd be delighted to be wrong especially if that KT rumor was true (about Steel legion rather than kriegers) but even if wrong, I don't think modern Cadian releases are likely to happen at all now, except perhaps (and I think it's fairly unlikely) as a shoulderpad/head option for the hypothetical Command squad individual character minis that we can guess may be happening from rumor engines...for what little that's worth.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Lucerne

[Doghouse]

My personal take on this is that guard armies have a lot of infantry so suddenly springing a refresh potentially puts a lot of noses out of joint so a Genestealer Hybrid style upgrade sprue does make some sense. I am expecting an increase to £25 to be honest.

 

What I personally think we'll see is further down the line a new Regiment join the Guard and those will be the nicer scaled minis. I could be wrong but that is my gut instinct at the moment.

[Feral_80]

This is simply embarrassing. Nice move GW.

I just refuse to buy this, even as a standalone upgrade kit. No. Way.

[Tokugawa]

Agree to Lucerne. "A fresh new kit would make my old cadians look like !" should never be the reason to harm the evolution of model designing and quality.

 

And, no matter GW release or not release new IG models, ancient cadian kits were . And ARE . And WILL BE more and more.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Brother Tyler
Don't dodge the swear filter

[walter h]

The heroic style goes well with the Primaris, size. They make sense to me and I like the heroic scale, but I also enjoyed the artistic style of the 20's,and 30's.

[USNCenturion]

Those saying the Cadian kit is and always was bad, what don’t you like about it? What do you like about it? How can it change for the better? Has your impression of it changed from 2002 to now?

[duz_]

And yet they still forgot the shotguns :facepalm:

[Mordian Glory]

Upgrade sprue is a clever move on GW. The basic cadian kit is weak but its a fantastic template. It has a huge potential and the only limit really is the how much effort each guard player wants to put into each squad. For example, its incredible what a head swap does, makes the models look 10x better!

 

The other great thing is about the kit is its not monopose, this cant be over stated. Its really easy to avoid the goofy poses in the current box with some simple knife work and/kit bashes.

 

Thats another thing, all the current guard kits are great for drawing on a huge bits supply. I have used parts from the command squad to the chimera kit to upgrade my infantry :)

 

Over the course of my restoration project I have headswaped and kit bashed over 200 old cadians and thanks to the above factors I have been able to each one a unique model.

[WarriorFish]

I don't agree this can be seen as only a positive. With this update it is highly unlikely we'll see another kit update in the future which is going to give the current Cadian range a venerable age. Granted it is not as bad as the Catachan infantry but we're very likely looking at a case where in time it will comparatively be.

 

My hope is this at least means something like there is more time and resources etc for GW to give attention to the likes of the Catachan box, and maybe even returning regiments in plastic, but my hopes are diminished currently. We shall see as always - hope for the best, expect the worst

[Arkaniss]

I've pondered on this release and I had a left of field idea. They should have released a box of all female IG to the same scale as the old Cadians. They can be slimmer thanks to better more modern tech and still fit in with the older design. Won't outright invalidate the existing male Cadians but supplement them as additional model options (with no crossover for kitbashing of course). No idea if this would be well received or not but I think it's better than what they did. Anyone with an existing IG army can add to their male models with their long missed female comrades... and GW can sell yet more Guard to all the no doubt already overloaded with Guardsmen Imperial Guard players :P

 

Updating an old kit with an additional sprue is not a bad idea, it's just that I think that ship has sailed for the venerable Cadian box.

[WarriorFish]

In the GW surveys this was one of my ideas I gave them, as it'd sort my army out nicely but alas it is not to be.

 

It is always possible that the upgrade sprue for the box can be used as part of a fully new box without an extended wait. A new approach yes, but everything new must start somewhere. Stranger things have happened as the saying goes!

[Jings]

Oh, the pricing will be an obscenity. That's all but guaranteed.

 

The Cadians are now misshapen, badly proportioned, low detail, and tiny compared to cultists and their own starved, under-equipped counterparts that turned the other week, aka: blackstone turncoats- and GW has now doubled down on keeping the ugly models that way rather than fixing the problems that have crept into the range with age. This is not ideal.

 

The old cadians are an eyesore that we're now saddled with indefinitely- cadians are now doomed to be completely obsolete and out of place visually, especially if and when other regiments get updates that are guaranteed to not be malformed-scale lol

 

The people cheering this on have doomed the Cadians to irrelevance and possibly dragged Guard down with them.

 

 

 

From a purely aesthetic point of view, a new kit would have been superior - The old figure's kinda look like dwarves / halflings with their stunty limbs, big heads & hands.

A lot of that is the clunky Cadian pattern helmets imo. I used Cadian torsos and arms with third party trench coat legs and ushanka mask heads for my Mech vet army (RIP) and they look fine. These new heads will go a long way in improving the aesthetic.

 

And the legs, and the low-res detailing, and the shoulders...

 

They're a bit plain, sure, but as others have said, when you're fielding 50+ of them per game it becomes somewhat inconsequential. They're a horde army, so uniformity and ease of painting are the top priority which, imo, the current (and improved) Cadian kit does well.

 

I'd have preferred a new kit, but given how deeply Cadians are incorporate into other kits (vehicles etc.) a radical redesign would have impacted the overall aesthetic and this fills a lot of the gaps in the original kit. 

 

At least by going in this direction, kits/armies aren't going to have to deal with a mishmash of differently designed models, while still leaving the door open for other squads of other regiments in the future, or even a soft-reboot with a Cadian Veterans kit. 

 

If anything, my only gripe with the new kit is it doesn't seem to include enough sets of each head to make a squad with them. 10x standard helms, 10x rebreather helms, 10x Mordian-style hats and 10x bareheads would have gone a long way in letting Cadian armies stand out without having to horde bits for specific squads. 

Edited May 11, 2021 by Jings

[The Mad Hermit]

To be honest, I don't mind this.

 

I have almost 100 un-built Cadians still in the pipeline and I detest the idea that I'd be left with all that out-of-date (and in my mind unusable) plastic when/if the entire range gets replaced.

 

I had a whole lot of unfinished Marines when the Primaris dropped and it's only been recently when I've gotten the idea that they might still have a future.

 

I'm fine with this.  This is fun because it proves to me that this community is far from a single-minded monolith.

[Chris521]

Hopefully the special weapons each have a left arm to go with them.  The command squad box was a little stingy on that front.  

[Shamansky]

Every time i was fielding a Brigade-size++ infantry army I had only one question in my head: i'm putting this guys on the table longer than they'll be on the table, so who i was trying to build and paint them for? The dudes are in my army transport case most of the time i own them, even during multi-days tournaments. They look like an army. They wage war like an army. And i don't need to know each of 200+ of them by the name, otherwise i'll go crazy watching my dudes are swept by tens from the table again and again every turn and phase. So i'm perfectly fine with the GeeDubs' move. I have Elysians for esthetics, now for esthetics only. 

[Beaky Brigade]

I could go on at length of why I would want something else, but I've had a constructive idea for the new female heads...

Escher guard armies aren't an original idea, but give a good proportion of them helmets... and suddenly it becomes a tiny bit more plausible in a crazy punk militia way. Paint the helmets in wild colours too.

Though I'm not sure what they'd say about getting a buzz cut...

[Lucerne]

Those saying the Cadian kit is and always was bad, what don’t you like about it? What do you like about it? How can it change for the better? Has your impression of it changed from 2002 to now?

1. Cloth sculpting is dated even for 2002 and it shows when you look too closely at the cloth folds, or side by side with basically any more recent humans.

2. Details are very low resolution and oversized even for heroic 28mm scale, eg: the pouches, the trim, the eagles.

3. Proportions- helmets, shoulders, baggy pants, boot size/ foot armor. The Cadians don't look human, they look too stocky to get across the idea of "the underfed and undernourished humble guardsman in normal clothing with a flak vest".

4. The sculpt's details get worse and worse due to being used well past the best-by date, so a less than stellar sculpt is only becoming more so with overuse. At this point hoping GW drops the master mold might be for the best...

 

I like that it's technically a regular human in basic armor. I feel GW may over-baroque'ify whatever replaces Cadians as the default regiment. I like how it's a simple, functional design (in the artwork, anyway...)

 

Fix it by just replacing it with a cleaned up and "Imperialified" Blackstone guardsman, which GW obviously has the base files for that they edited to make the Blackstone guard.

 

Boom done.

 

The Cadian set was never all that great and has not aged gracefully.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Lucerne

[USNCenturion]

Everything you find unappealing in the kit, I find to be endearing and memorable. In 2003/2003 when it was released it was undoubtedly a great set, especially on the heels of the plastic catachans and solid metal Cadians that came before. To say it was never all that great also does not take into account the kit was designed in the time before the intensive cad processes that came later.

 

As for its current state, yeah, the traitor guardsmen are probably how to do a future guard unit, but this one is still an old reliable favorite of mine. The chunkiness makes for easier painting and identification on the tabletop, it retains a full customization of poses rather than mono builds, and the troopers themselves have a weight to them they wouldn’t otherwise have if they were thinner and more realistic. I’ll also concede that Drukhari Warriors looked 20 times better with their update in 2010; that would be a major positive if Cadians can emulate that in their redesign someday.

 

Tldr: I respect the fact you hate these things with a passion (no offense meant), and they can definitely be improved, but some of us do still appreciate them and are glad there’s a kit coming to add more build options while still letting us collect them at will.

[USNCenturion]

I wonder why they don’t just release an updated traitor guardsmen build as the new Cadian box lol the article said the upgrade will be in every new box, maybe they were being cheeky and there is a new kit coming with a codex?

[Tokugawa]

When I first started playing 40K in 2007, the overall designing quality of GW plastics was not good, and Cadian infantry was a relatively young kit at that time point. But it was already considered having inferior quality at that point.

[jarms48]

Tldr: I respect the fact you hate these things with a passion (no offense meant), and they can definitely be improved, but some of us do still appreciate them and are glad there’s a kit coming to add more build options while still letting us collect them at will.

 

Getting something is obviously better than getting nothing. I think everyone should agree to disagree. A lot of us OG players hate it, a lot of newer player appreciate now actually having all the options in 1 box.

 

What this does tell me though, no special weapon heavy stubber and still no sergeant lasgun.

[walter h]

I don't agree this can be seen as only a positive. With this update it is highly unlikely we'll see another kit update in the future which is going to give the current Cadian range a venerable age. Granted it is not as bad as the Catachan infantry but we're very likely looking at a case where in time it will comparatively be.

 

My hope is this at least means something like there is more time and resources etc for GW to give attention to the likes of the Catachan box, and maybe even returning regiments in plastic, but my hopes are diminished currently. We shall see as always - hope for the best, expect the worst

This is possible. They are releasing the Tanith, as plastics. That particular regiment would be a great start for a new Catachan Regiment box.

Edited May 13, 2021 by walter h

[sairence]

 

I don't agree this can be seen as only a positive. With this update it is highly unlikely we'll see another kit update in the future which is going to give the current Cadian range a venerable age. Granted it is not as bad as the Catachan infantry but we're very likely looking at a case where in time it will comparatively be.

 

My hope is this at least means something like there is more time and resources etc for GW to give attention to the likes of the Catachan box, and maybe even returning regiments in plastic, but my hopes are diminished currently. We shall see as always - hope for the best, expect the worst

This is possible. They are releasing the Tanith, as plastics. That particular regiment would be a great start for a new Catachan Regiment box.

It's a Black Library release. I'd be highly surprised if that had any impact on models beyond those 6 or if anything special for them showed up outside White Dwarf.