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I helped the staff in my local Gw store assemble the new Baneblade kit today. Sorry, no pictures.

There are eight sprues of bits, they are unlabelled on the sprue for the most part and somer pieces are dulplicated on the left and right sides, others you need specific left and right parts.

1. Track and side assembly.

This has been hammed up by GW. the sides of the tank assemblein a manner siimlair to most Gw plastic imperial tanks. you get Left and right hand parts each consiting of two sides with track assembly underneath and armour plates on top. While the box is big enough for the side plates to be single pieces for reasons best known to GW the inner and outer halves of the 'side of the tank are in two pieces. These are glued together initial;ly by a single line of pegs and holes in the middle of the sides. So unless you are very careful it is easy for the sides to skew inwards of outwards.

What is worse is that the road wheels glue to one or other sides, but not both together. you need to assemble the tracks and glue them to the road wheels to properly bridge the sides. although on the instruction sheet this is a different stage it pays to do this while asembling the side plates.

Also on the sides are the fuel barrels, two over each track assembly with thick 'corregated' hose linking them to the main chassis.

2. Chassis assembly.

Glues much like the chassis of any other Imperial tank between the assembled sides. However as the kit is so much bigger, and ther are more side pieces you need to assemble them all in short order in order to adjust them into position before they harden.

The viewports on the chassis are seperate and can be aded later, they have a gothic arch which looks very imperial but a little too ornate for thier tanks.

The rear of the tank has four exhausts partly reminiscent of church organs and a gothic arched shrine complete with ad mech iconography, a sword bearing angel (Dark Angel style) and the ubiquitous skulls. Above this over the engine cowling are details or turbines and engine parts that can be covered with seperate covers or left exposed.

The crew hatches are also seperate partsso they can be left ajar or open. Though doing so will allow you to look fully inside the tank, which has no interior structure or detail.

3. Sponson assembly.

The sponsons are very nice and can be positioned in one of three positions along the flank of the tank. The aft position makes the tank look like an early Epic version Baneblade, centered or forward. The twin linked heavy bolters can be replaced by twion linked heavy flamers. The lascannon and heavy bolter barrels are resonably scaled as per infantry weapons not the ghuge Leman Russ weapons.

The Sponso weaponry should freely rotate, but the way the internal mechanism is handled it might break and flop less if glued.

4. Turret assembly.

There are two command cupolas one very tall and rounded, the second similar to a normal Imperial tank commanders hatch. More on the commander later. There is a heavy stubber with the cupola, no pintel autocannon or heavy bolter options.

Ther hatches are nicely detailed inside and out.

The main battlecannon can be replaced by a much a shorter barreled gun with a flanged dissipator with three large holes on each side. It doesnt look anything like as impressive and it would be difficult to swap out the barrles without a lot of pinning and puttying the back ends of the barrels to accept the pins. The battlecannon, while still an oversized GW gun is more in scale with other weapons and is not a 'bombard' for want of a better description as seen on a Russ.

The pintel mounted autocannon is the same size as infantry autocannon.

5. Front chassis assembly.

The demolisher cannon is mounted in a ball socket so that it can swivel. It might need to be glued as I suspect it will wobble or scrape the paintwork. The barrel end is a seperate piece and show the tubular arrangement of large calibre forgeworld barrels. The smoke dischargers are bigger and mounted on what looks to be miniturrets, though you have to glue them solidly.

6. Commanders.

Here is the good news. You get two commanders half out of the hatch showing the tops of the legs and torso. There is no head out of the hatch option. One is wearing a greatcoat (and can be a commissar) the other standard Cadian dress. There are four heads to choose from, an oddly shaped gas mask, that could be a heretic head, a crew cut head with microphone headset, a Cadian style helmet with extra electronics and a special visor, and a Commissar head with hat and bionic eye.

There is also a standing greatcoated bodywith the same breast decorations as the greatcoat/commissar commander. This will be popular with bitz purchases. To go with this are as assortment of arms, laspistol arm, bolt pistol arm, sword arm pointing arm and two arms holding the trigger system for a heavy weapon. all of which are for the greatcoated body. Presumably if you want a Cadian commander you use normal Cadian arm bits.

The shoulderpads are different and seperate. You get four, two with skulls two with IIRC laurels. You don't need either if you prefer your plastic commissar 'straight'. There are also some other bits, inclusing a toolbox, a large wrench and two shells for the main gun.

7. Overall feeling.

Ther miniature is skull lite compared to some. It overuses gothic arches. The armour plates however are festooned with rivets and have a slab armiour quality that express the size of the tank. Its an inch longer and slightly taller and wider than the Forgeworld kit. The price is steep and the kit is badly thought out for initial assembly, but it should be solid when built and I rather like it. I will be getting one, but not at £60.

Something feels wrong with this review i am sorry but it feels like you dont WANT to like this tank.

Not at all. Just being objective. People like the Land Speeder but also complain about how it doesnt fit together. The Baneblade does fit together, but thepieces are poorly ordered so assembly is fiddly.

I dont like the gothic arches though, great for a cathedral, not so great for a tank.

The local STL GW store has a baneblade. It looks very very nice in person, and looks ten times better than in photos.

I hated the photos when they came out, and vowed to buy a forgeworld kit, however, after seeing it in person, I'll have to say it looks like a very nice model. I would even venture to say that most people will be dissapointed they bought a forgeworld one, unless you bought a variant. (like the shadowsword).

I dunno i would rather get 3 gw baneblades than get one forgeworld baneblade.  As nice as a forgworld one is, its fiddly as heck too, each track and wheel assembly, the annoyingness of working with the resin, the health risks.   No one is saying the gw baneblade is for new people into the hobby.  Any time you get a large model it is assumed you are a experienced modeller and can handle doing things that are not snap together.    Sorry but the whole, oh its not put together in your sleep doesnt really sit well with me.  As far as gothicness , whatever thats a artistic sidepoint that can be changed if you really wanted to with some plasticard.  Overall for the pricepoint i think it is a steal. 

That's a shame they didn't do an interior below the open hatch areas, but not too big of a deal. I'd still like to see the sprues in person before committing to it over a FW Stormsword or Lucius pattern.

Posted By Orlanth on 09/10/2007 1:40 PM

I dont like the gothic arches though, great for a cathedral, not so great for a tank.

But...but...its a cathedral of ...war!

on the whole gothic theme, I can see two obvious options for converters:
- gothic-haters will remove all the gothicy bits and replace them with nice sensible bits left over from Leman Russes and Chimeras etc, or just bits of plasticard with lots of rivets
- gothic-lovers will think it not nearly gothic enough and add heaps of gothicy bits (COD sprues in particular, i suspect) for that 'trundling cathedral' look
And either could look fabulous.

I also look forward to Chaos and Ork conversions. We'll definitely need a 'show us your baneblade conversions' thread soon

According to the rules for the Baneblade in Apoc, it can have a second set of sponsons.

I see a Stormhammer conversion coming on. Now where can I source two Macharius turrets?

BYE

Fear not, as soon as the Baneblade is available, I will be parting out this monster for the webstore:

www.wookiehole.com

So additional soponsons will be available, as well as the 'Commissar/Tank Commander'

Cheers

Thank you for the review, Orlanth. It was interesting reading even though I have no plan to buy a Baneblade.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a £60 kit to have been designed not to be deliberately difficult to assemble. It might not be a snap-together but things like part numbers moulded on the sprues ought to be standard for any complex kit.

Posted By H.B.M.C. on 09/11/2007 1:04 AM
According to the rules for the Baneblade in Apoc, it can have a second set of sponsons.

I see a Stormhammer conversion coming on. Now where can I source two Macharius turrets?

BYE

I'm also planning a Stormhammer. I've seen the plastic Baneblade up close, and I'm trying to work out whether I can squeeze two turrets and four sponsons onto one hull, or if I need to widen and lengthen it with a second kit.

The gun mantlet should hold a couple of Leman Russ barrels (I'm ignoring the Epic Armageddon perversion), the sponson turrets will have heavy bolters, and each of the four sponsons will have three boltguns.

Keeping it old school!

Hmm. you can easily fitr four sponsons on the model. to make your Stormhammer you will need to replace the front glassis plate with something able to hold a turret then build up the turrets and twin linked battle cannon. It should be an decent efficient tank.

Youn will need enough plasticard or Russ parts that I would forget trying Macharius turrets, they are too long anyway, you need a fairly squat turret to allow both to have a good traverse.

Does someone have pics of the sprues or the kit itself as a WIP?

How did the tracks assemble? Each link a separate piece or like the other GW tanks with multiple links as 1 piece?

Tracks asembled just like with a Russ, Land Raider or Rhino. some long 'strips' some single pieces at the drive wheels. However the drive and road wheels only attach to one side of the track section or other, in order to bridge the main pieces of the tank sides you need to glue on the tracks. So the tracks are themselves a 'side of the box' and part of the models structure. This means you need to file, prefit and assemble on the entire side structure, tracks, and track guards and all their component parts (which need their own assembly) in one sitting or the results could go askew.

I'm sure a bit of creative use of shims and styrene strips will solve that fairly well.

Did the kit really come with all the bitz you need to make that fortress of arrogance thingy? or was that a conversion?

And does anyone know if that's a commisar yarrik only kind of thing? I think something like that would be cool for the inquisitor that leads my guard army

No extra bits otherthan whats was mentioned. To summarise you get a Baneblade plus:

alternative Hellblade primary weapon
alternative twin linked heavy flamer sponson weapons

An extra commander torso and a standing officer both with engough arms heads and guns to go around.
two main gun shells
a toolkit
a heavy wrench
pintel mounted heavy stubber

You get nothing else. Apart from the standing Officer/Commissar (which is very nice) its a disappointing raid for bits.

The 40kfightclub has some decent pictures of the sprues.  http://www.40kfightclub.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=98642#98642

You can also get some good pics of the assembled model on Warseer:

http://warseer.com/forums/1903011-post1.html

http://warseer.com/forums/1903932-post41.html

Yeah, I'll definitely be filing off some of the rivets on that thing.

Capt K

Wowsers, that's a lotta pieces

Posted By Orlanth on 09/12/2007 8:39 AM
No extra bits otherthan whats was mentioned. To summarise you get a Baneblade plus:

alternative Hellblade primary weapon
alternative twin linked heavy flamer sponson weapons

An extra commander torso and a standing officer both with engough arms heads and guns to go around.
two main gun shells
a toolkit
a heavy wrench
pintel mounted heavy stubber

You get nothing else. Apart from the standing Officer/Commissar (which is very nice) its a disappointing raid for bits.

Heavy flamer sponsons are so damned stupid. They should have made them into inferno cannons...

it is a baneblade afterall, so no worry about making it anymore over the top.

Or even Volcano Cannons!

I wonder if the toolkit and walloping wrench are lootable.

Those are a LOT of pieces.

Hrmn, would those mini-turrets look good on my ACW land-ironclad? Hrmn.

I'm fairly certain that there is an electric liniment or vituperative serum that you can imbibe to take you out of your Victorian Era doldrums, Yair.

Seriously, get help.

That being said, I'm sure the turrets would do smashingly.

Posted By Jester on 09/13/2007 7:05 PM
I'm fairly certain that there is an electric liniment or vituperative serum that you can imbibe to take you out of your Victorian Era doldrums, Yair.

Seriously, get help.

Says the man with the Oscar Wilde sig.

they have a couple of them painted and assembled at the LA battle bunker by my house, and the things are massive. More than twice the size of a leman russ.

the chaos version is as spikey as can be and the hellhammer is pretty cool looking, but i dont care for the snubnosed cannon much. they do look pretty awesome though.

Some more pics from Warseer of newly assembled Baneblades, also pics of the sprues.
http://warseer.com/forums/40k-news-rumour-discussion/102347-more-baneblade-photos.html