Shoulder pads are an essential bit of kit protecting the soldiers of our far future (or far-gone) wars. Many kits come with their own, but if you're finding them too bland, there are plenty of companies making alternative pads. Today, I'll be looking at one of Kromlech's varieties, the Stygian.


This pack, like all of Kromleck's pad kits, comes with ten pads on sprues, in five different varieties. This particular type fits 28mm Heroic scale models, and are ideal for models such as Games workshop's Space Marines, or Kromlech's and Maxmini's own sci-fi warriors. This pack will cost around £5, depending on your supplier.


These particular pads have an Egyptian theme, featuring scarabs, eyes and the Ankh. Such styles are great for Egyptian themed forces, and make great alternative pads for models such as Thousand Sons.


The quality of these pads, and many of Kromlech's products, appears to be second to none. I've never had any serious bubbles or damage, and the little damage there happened to be was an easy fix. these shoulders are no different, void of any serious imperfections

Kromlech pad on the left model, regular GW pad on the right

My main gripe with these pads is that the banding is too thick, in my opinion. On normal Space Marine pads, the edging is much thinner than on Kromlechs (compare the two models above), which makes matching shoulder pads impossible unless you use two per model. In all honesty though, this is nit-picking, there's not a lot to hate.

 If you are an utter chaos-purist, you may need to avoid the pad with feathered wings, with a passing resemblance to the Aquila if you look squint.

In short, I think that these are a great project, and will add a nice amount of variety to your forces. Here are my main points:

PROS

-Great designs
-Relatively good value
-Fantastic quality
-Will fit standard Space Marines (non-terminator)

CONS

-Edging is a bit thick
-Some designs maybe unusable, depending on your own style tastes



(1st image property of Kromlech)