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So, this is kind of an offshoot of the "Add a unit to your army" thread, but it got me thinking about it.

For that, I'd mentioned that the Kroot really need a big vehicle smasher and that they should bring back the Great Knarloc, but it also got me thinking of how exactly they would do that. How could they get most milage out of a single kit?

Build correctly, I think they could make a large reasonably expensive interchangeable kit that makes 2 Great Knarlocs and uses them to cover 2 variations of 3 new datasheets. In addition to being an amazing kit, it would enable an entirely new big stompy Kroot playstyle with just a single kit investment.

The current 3 versions of the Great Knarloc kit in Legends are:

1. Bolt Thrower, which grapples to things and makes charges easier.
2. Baggage Harness, which is a close support unit.
3. Twin Kroot Gun, which is a ranged weapon platform.

As you can see, they all function in a fairly different army roll, even while utilizing the exact same datasheet, hence the need to separate them. Ideally, the models would be sculpted in a way that would allow the top sections to be interchangeable between the two, thus varying up the sculpts to keep them from looking samy if you put a bunch into your army.

1. Melee Knarloc:
- One version would be the current bolt thrower, giving it a short but powerful ranged attack that grapples to targets to make charges easier.
- The second would be an armoured variant that has a better save and hits a little harder, but is slower and harder to connect to your target with as a trade off.

2. Support Knarloc:
- One would be the current baggage Knarloc, providing an aura buff to all nearby Kroot units, this would utilize the same place in the kit as the previous two, so you could build either this, or one of the melee variants.
- The second would have a massive carriage on it's back Mumakil style and be a transport unit that can carry 26 and allows assaulting after disembarking as it wouldn't be too much faster than just hoofing it since Kroot are already fast.

3. Ranged Knarloc:
- One would be the current general fire support, utilizing part of the carriage to mount two Kroot Repeater Cannons (or other medium firepower guns) while reducing the transport capacity to 13.
- Lastly, using the base of the carriage as a mount, put a big giant gun on it. Either a massive ballista for something very Kroot themed, something they got from the Tau like a Rail or Ion gun, or something they got from another race. Anything that gives a good ranged punch.

And that's the dream. A single large kit that would massively expand what you could do with the army.

But what are your thoughts? How would you design / implement a specific new unit/kit into 40k?

Definitely a highly customizeable IG Infantry kit. Full sets of alternate helmets, armor, backpacks, details. Make your own regiment flavor type of thing.

Forget the kit. Bring back Vehicle Design Rules and let me make my own monstrosity.

As folks have seen in my other posts, I'm all about the dual-build kit, and specifically, the kind that allows you to build generic versions of named characters.

As a Crusade player, this is absolutely critical, because named characters can grow in Crusade, which makes them far less fun to use. They don't get to participate in the part of Crusade that actually makes it Crusade.

So do I want Kheradruahk, Illic Nightspear and Yriel? Yes, but nowhere near as much as I want Generic Mandrake leader, Generic Ranger leader and Generic Corsair Prince.

Now here's the thing: technically, what we need are the DATACARDS for generic units. I mean, sure, Kheradruahk is likely to have some modelling cues that a generic Mandrake Leader would not, but that isn't required- it's just ideal. If you gave me the singular build model and told me I could use EITHER the Kheradruahk card OR the generic Mandrake Leader card, that would still work. It wouldn't be as good as a true dual kit, but it would be better than "Well, if you want to field a Ynarri army, you MUST take a named character, because we here at GW don't understand why that might prevent you from playing a Ynarri crusade."

As for the specific Knarloc issue- I like the idea of tri-build Knarloc for sure- and I like Melee, Shooty and Support as the builds. But if it's going to be sold in a two-Knarloc box, then there have to be enough bits to double up on the builds. In other words, don't sell me a box of Knarlocs and tell me I can build two of the three options but not two instances of the same option. I'd rather buy a single Knarloc for each unit I field so that if I only want three shooty Knarlocs, I can actually achieve that. I get that you could save money with the two-pack if you wanted two builds, but if you have to buy three boxes of two to get the three shooty Knarlocs you want, the potential for value is outweighed buy the potential burden.

This is why Deathwatch needs three shoulder pad sprues- one for oldmarine/ Primaris Tacticus, one for Terminator/Gravis and one for Spectrus rather than forcing me to buy five upgrade sprues to field a single ten-man Indomitor Kill Team and leaving me with 50 oldmarine/ Tacticus pads I have no use for. GW could have sold me a box of Heavy Intercessors, a box of Eradicators and a box of Aggressors YEARS AGO if they made an upgrade pack with 10 termie/ gravis sized DW pads in it... But I'm not buying those models when I need to buy five upgrade sprues to field them.

 BorderCountess wrote:
Forget the kit. Bring back Vehicle Design Rules and let me make my own monstrosity.

Oh, yeah, not what I was thinking, but a good call. At the VERY least, this should be done for Orks so they can have looted vehicles again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PenitentJake wrote:

Now here's the thing: technically, what we need are the DATACARDS for generic units. I mean, sure, Kheradruahk is likely to have some modelling cues that a generic Mandrake Leader would not, but that isn't required- it's just ideal. If you gave me the singular build model and told me I could use EITHER the Kheradruahk card OR the generic Mandrake Leader card, that would still work. It wouldn't be as good as a true dual kit, but it would be better than "Well, if you want to field a Ynarri army, you MUST take a named character, because we here at GW don't understand why that might prevent you from playing a Ynarri crusade."

As for the specific Knarloc issue- I like the idea of tri-build Knarloc for sure- and I like Melee, Shooty and Support as the builds. But if it's going to be sold in a two-Knarloc box, then there have to be enough bits to double up on the builds. In other words, don't sell me a box of Knarlocs and tell me I can build two of the three options but not two instances of the same option. I'd rather buy a single Knarloc for each unit I field so that if I only want three shooty Knarlocs, I can actually achieve that. I get that you could save money with the two-pack if you wanted two builds, but if you have to buy three boxes of two to get the three shooty Knarlocs you want, the potential for value is outweighed buy the potential burden.

That's a great idea, and it would certainly help GW improve sales on their named characters with no real additional cost to them. Honestly, really surprised they haven't done this already.

That's a fair point. My thought was that as a single kit, they just don't do that many options. I guess they could just do the same thing and release each as an individual kit, so long as some of the parts are swappable between them for those who want to convert, that would probably be the best of both worlds.