Desolation Squad Review

The Desolation Marines were released alongside the Brutalis Dreadnought and the new Primaris Lieutenant in the Strike Force Agastus boxset earlier in the year, and provide some much longed for Devastator equivalents to the Primaris range, albeit with none of the flexibility. They go somewhat against the grain when it comes to naming convention as you would expect them to be called Desolators but they went with Desolation Squad and Desolation Marine for some reason.

Credit: Warhammer Community, Games Workshop

The kit goes together with no significant problems with the only real potential issue being that you need to ensure that the belt feeds line up correctly. You can use the innermost cable as a guide while posing the arms to ensure it all goes as intended but this does mean that there is very limited variation in the poses available. The one choice you get here is to have one of the marines holding his launcher up in one hand (bottom left in the image above) as an alternative to pointing it down towards the ground as though he were strinding forward. This is intended to be the sergeant in the instructions but there's nothing stopping this from being a generic guy or strapping a regular rocket onto that rail.

There were some mouldlines of the greaves of the marines and on all of the ammo boxes but nothing too egregious. The sprues biggest issue was the usual pitfall of the sprue attaching to the  rounded bit of the backpack exhaust which can be a bit awkward to clean up. All in all, a squad only took about an hour and a half to assemble.

The sprue comes with enough bits that you can freely change your rocket launcher types as you see fit, but you will need some way to secure them, be that putty, magnets, or just glueing them in. You will have the "wrong" targetting array on their backpack but this is not something I imagine anyone will notice. These arrays are swappable between marines and they seem intended to be facing whichever way the marine is looking so there is a suggested one for each body, but it is not something you need stick to. The kit comes with two options for the left arm for the marine hefting his launcher in one hand; a bolt pistol and the one holding the ammo seen above. It also contains the bare head and helmet for the sergeant, a variety of purity seals, and some bolt pistol holsters as you might expect from a Primaris infantry kit.

The aesthetic of the Desolation Marines has been heavily criticised online and I had actually intended on not glueing the rocket launcher onto the rail on the grenade launcher portion. My thinking was that if I drilled into the lense I could claim the upper portion of the gun to just be a rail rifle akin to what the Votann and Tau use, justifying the superkrak rocket profile. Aesthetically, I am content with that but it does look a bit incomplete, especially knowing that there should be quite a bulky rocket pod on the rail. A common solution is to glue the rockets onto the backpack in place of the targetting array but I personally believe that looks worse than the default on a power armoured model. It would need the bulk of a gravis armoured marine to make it balance out I think. So with that and the inevitable fact that the models are growing on me now I have them in hand, I believe I will just glue them on the default way as Games Workshop intended. I will say that I actually like the look of the smaller superfrag rocket launchers and my main issue is with the bulkier superkrak rocket launcher, but I've reached the stage I can say "I don't mind them". Ultimately, while I understand the complaints, it seems from interviews with old Games Workshop Studio employees that these miniatures were supposed to be canned and were not meant to see the light of day, so I will say that I am happy they did get a release in the end. I would rather they be out there in the world than not.

In game, each Desolation Marine comes with a castellan launcher and either a superfrag or superkrak rocket launcher. The sergeant can then exchange either rocket launcher for a vengor launcher and targeter optics. The targeter optics allow the sergeant to add +1 to his hit roll, and regardless of his loadout he also has the ability to make one model in the squad fire at at BS2+. The intent seems to be to essentially allow him to fire his vengor launcher indirectly without suffering the BS penalty associated with it, but theres nothing stopping him from giving BS2+ to another member of the squad so two can fire directly at a target at effective BS2+. The superfrag rocket launcher, vengor launcher, and castellan launchers all provide effective, long ranged, anti-horde firepower, the latter two of which can fire indirectly. I feel the superkrak rocket launcher is the superior option as the Space Marine range does not lack for S4 AP-1 shots, even if they are indirect fire. The superkrak punches out at 48" S8 AP-3 Dd3+3 and this is something the Primaris infantry did not adequately cover at long range. Desolation Marines are expensive, costing even more than a Hellblaster, and that is their biggest issue; their damage output is high and at long range, but they are very expensive for a power armoured body, so they need to make use of their long range to keep them safe from any return fire.

To wrap up, I have no major complaints about the quality of the Desolation Squad kit but it does lack somewhat in options and poses. Aesthetically, the unit has grown on me but it is definitely one of the goofier looking 40k releases from Games Workshop in recent years. It is good to get some long ranged firepower into the Primaris range as las fusils and plasma incinerators weren't quite getting there. I eagerly await the inevitable onslaught gatling cannon wielding squad.