**This review brought to you thanks to the kind support of Clockwork Goblin**

The final of the first book’s USA medium walkers has arrived, and my goodness was it worth the wait!

The model

This is the last of the first book’s Grizzly chassis variants, and the model matches that simplicity.

It is in essence  a grizzly with different arms, and as such the standard warning of dry fit them to ensure they’re not bumping the legs applies.

As ever, the casting is good and crisp, and the large surfaces nice and smooth with mould lines easy to trim. Prep took about 30 mins filing and 15 minutes gluing.
The results however, are impressive!

The Bruin in the game

If we turn to page 158 of our rulebooks, we will see this bear is armed to the teeth!

For 220pts regular you get:

• Arm mounted heavy howitzer (direct fire only)
• Medium AT gun (no HE round)
• HMG

Advantages

• Swiss Army Walker – I can threaten most tanks, any infantry and even use the HMG to terrorise light vehicles. With good positioning and play, this unit can easily hold a flank or hold back an attack.
• Big and Scary – Don’t underestimate the psychological games you can play with this walker. Your dice come up big on one turn and you’ll swing the game.
• Pin Sprinkler – With 3 weapons systems, all with decent ranges, the Bruin can hand out pins like Mardi Gras beads. With the potential to hit three separate targets in a turn and the howitzer doing multiple pins this is a great part of the suppression role the Bruin can do.

Drawbacks

• No Fists – Much like the Kodiak, the Bruin is not great close up. As I’ve said before with the support walkers, if you can get charged you are far too close.
• Weapon limitations – The Bruin’s weapon systems are excellent, but have 2 important limitations. Firstly the Heavy Howitzer is direct fire only, and the danger with line of site is that you can be seen too. Also the AT gun has no HE round. This is less of a limit, as if you are aiming for infantry, it should be Howitzer all the way, but and extra HE vs horde would have helped.
• Big Threatening Target – Your opponent is going to want to kill it and kill it dead now. Its going to be a bullet magnet, so you need to be clever to get your points back but also accept a degree of risk. This will not always pan out.

Overall, I have been looking forward to the Bruin for quite a while and as soon as mine is built it will be hitting the table.

As is traditional, it has been named “Koenig” and will be the command of my tank platoon.

As ever Bossminis.co.uk is more than happy to help with any tank requirements with a great discount on RRP!