Kit review: The Forgefiend/Maulerfiend

Initial thoughts

I’ve heard this guy referred to a lot as “Dinobot”. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. I can remember when the 4th edition Chaos Codex showed up. I can remember flipping through it and thinking, well I thought a lot of things about it actually. But the point I’m making is I remember thinking “Where are the monsters?” I mean it was Chaos for crying out loud! You had Oblits, Dreads that were almost as likely to attack your own units as it was to attack the enemy and you had Demon princes. Oh and we had the Greater Demon. Yeah. No comment there. The Oblits were demi-monsters, dreads were… well they were dreads. ‘Nuff said. So… the Chaos Space Marines have all of 1 type of actual monster? There was the defiler but that was very defiantly a vehicle, not a monster. This is a monster! And this is what the Chaos Marines have been sorely lacking in the “Monster” department. That is what this guy is. He’s the big-uber monster that Chaos has deserving for a while now. So yeah, I look at the promo pics of this guy and I don’t see a dinosaur. I see more of a Dinosaur from the Hive Tyrant. I look at this guy and I’m like “OHHH MECHA HELL HOUND!!!!” So lets get this review going.

Unboxing

So I got the kit at my local Games Workshop store… local being a 30 minute drive from work which is itself a 25 minute drive from home for me. Sorry, one of my point of annoyances with Games Workshop is they closed every GW store from Fairfax down to um… I think Norfolk honestly. So now the closest GW store is close to an hour away for me and there’s little else in the immediate area. So, I went to the GW store after work and there were my kits waiting for me (I also ordered the HelDrake which I will be reviewing at a later time). I picked up the kits and meandered for a little bit talking to folks about the kits in question. On the counter there was an assembled MaulerFiend. I wish I had had my phone or camera with me. I would have taken pictures of it. The Mauler is a big ‘un, on par with the Tyranid Monsters including the Tyrannofex. In fact I’m sorely tempted to get a Mauler and Tyrannofex just to model the two clashing in melee combat. The Field’s lashers wrapping around the throat of the Tryannofex, the Tyranno trying desperately to either break free or use it’s bulk as a weapon against the monstrous Fiend…

Sorry, was day dreaming.

Where was I? oh right. Unboxing the monster. So I got the kit home and set to work. I unboxed the fiend and laid the sprues out to get an idea of size and build. At first class it looks like a bigger, less impressive, Juggernaut model. I can’t say whether that’s good or bad. On the one hand it does help carry a unifying look to the various kits, so that if you have a bunch of Juggies next to a Fiend they look like they were made from a similar approach. But at the same time, it’s Chaos. Chaos by it’s very intention avoids conformity. So, I donno. Draw your own impressions as you see fit.

I mean am I wrong here?

I dropped the sprues into some warm water with soap to let them soak and clean off any model release. While they were bathing I took a gander through the instructions. Several people have made comments wondering about the possibilities of placing magnets in the model for the purpose of swapping parts for different configurations. Based on my glance through the instructions I think it is possible to do, so that you will have the ability to field either a MaulerFiend or a ForgeFiend, but it’s going to be rather challenging because most of the joints are ball joints. I think you would need to try and use spherical and ring shaped magnets to achieve this. I haven’t taken a ruler to the parts yet to measure it and figure out sizing. But I did some looking on K&J Magnetics and I found the R822cs-N ring magnets, and the S8 sphere magnets. Using these in combination might just allow you to make the head and arms swappable while more common disc magnets will allow you to swap out of the lashers.

as I absolutely love his bases, I've ordered a pair of Dragon Forge's urban rubble bases, both 120mm by 95 mm. One I'm ordering as a flight stand, the other as the base for the fiend. So I've got the bases on order. I'm hoping they will be in next week. I've got the parts cleaned and am letting them dry right now. I will not be able to get back to the kit until Monday, so my next update won't be until then. I'm afraid. But here is the first part of my review of the Fiend kit. So far my general impressions of the kit are very good. It seems to be a very solid model and a very welcome addition to the series.