In this video, I crack open Shadowspear — the 2019 battlebox that introduced the Vanguard Space Marines and completely reshaped how we think about Primaris Marines. This box has been sitting in my collection for a while now, and going through it again is a reminder of just how much it changed.
What’s in the Box
Shadowspear packs 35 miniatures split between two forces: Vanguard Space Marines of the Ultramarines 2nd Company and a Daemonkin warband of the Black Legion.
On the loyalist side, you get a Captain, Librarian, and Lieutenant — all in Phobos armour — plus 10 Infiltrators, 3 Eliminators, and 3 Suppressors. The Phobos armour was brand new at the time, and it gave Primaris Marines something they’d been missing: a covert ops identity. Before Shadowspear, Primaris were mostly bigger Intercessors and Hellblasters. This box gave them spec-ops units that actually felt different to play.
The Infiltrators are probably the standout kit on this side. Ten models with a clean, tactical look — less bulky than standard Intercessors, more gear strapped everywhere. The Eliminators with their camo cloaks and sniper rifles were an instant hit too. Three models, but every one of them looks like it belongs on a Kill Team board.
The Chaos half is arguably even more significant. The Master of Possessions, Greater Possessed, new Obliterators, and the Venomcrawler were all firsts. Ten Chaos Space Marines round it out. The Venomcrawler in particular became an instant favourite — a daemon engine that looked nothing like anything GW had done before. It’s all spindly legs and warp energy, somewhere between a spider and a crab. The Obliterators got a complete redesign too, going from the old bloated Finecast lumps to these hulking, weapon-fused nightmares.
You also get a campaign book set during War Zone Vigilus, plus two mini-codexes with datasheets and unique psychic disciplines for each side. The Vanguard Librarian got the Obscuration Discipline, which was all about cloaking and denial. The Chaos side got the Malefic Discipline — summoning daemons and tearing open the warp. Both saw serious play.
Why This Box Mattered
Shadowspear is one of those box sets that looks more important in hindsight than it did at launch. The Vanguard range that debuted here — Infiltrators, Eliminators, Phobos characters — became core units in competitive Space Marine lists for years. The Infiltrators’ deep strike denial aura alone shifted how people built armies. Suddenly every Marine player needed a unit of Infiltrators screening their deployment zone, and that meta stuck around for multiple seasons.
On the Chaos side, the Master of Possessions and the Venomcrawler became staples. The Greater Possessed eventually got rolled into other datasheets, but at the time they offered something genuinely new for Chaos Space Marine players who’d been kitbashing possessed from ancient metal kits. The new Obliterator sculpts were a massive upgrade — the old ones had not aged well at all.
At £105 / $175 for 35 models, two codexes, and a campaign book, the value was absurd. Individual kits that came out of this box later retailed for well over double the box price combined. Compare that to what army boxes cost now and it feels like a different era of pricing entirely.
The Vigilus Connection
The narrative side of Shadowspear tied into the War Zone Vigilus campaign, which was one of 8th Edition’s bigger storyline pushes. The Vanguard Marines were deployed to Nemendghast — a corrupted region of Vigilus — to hunt down Vorash, a Master of Possessions leading a Black Legion Daemonkin warband. The campaign book includes six linked missions that tell this story, and they’re designed to be played in sequence. It’s the kind of narrative packaging GW does well when they commit to it.
Is It Worth Hunting Down?
Shadowspear has been out of production for years, but you can still find sealed copies or split halves on eBay. The sculpts hold up — these are push-fit monopose models, but the detail is sharp and they paint up well. If you’re starting a Phobos-heavy Space Marine force or building a Daemonkin collection, tracking one down is still worth it. The models are all still legal in current 40K, and most of them remain competitively relevant.
As I go through the sprues in the video, you can see just how clean these kits are for push-fit. GW was clearly investing heavily in making these accessible, and it paid off. The monopose limitation means you won’t get a lot of variety if you buy two copies, but for a single box the poses are dynamic and well-designed. The Suppressors with their grav-chutes look great even by today’s standards.
