Horus Heresy – Legiones Astartes Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank

More than 15 years have passed since I last covered a Super-Heavy Tank kit in 'full scale' on this blog. When the Fellblade teaser was shown at the Dropsite Preview, I was really excited about this kit. You know what that means: we're not doing things by halves here, so we've gone for a full review and build report with 100 (!) pictures!

But let's dive in. The Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank of the Legiones Astartes for Horus Heresy is available for pre-order today, September 20th, and will be released on October 4th. It is a full plastic kit and has an RRP of 125 GBP / 160 EUR.

Prior to this full plastic release, the model was available as a hybrid kit that repurposed parts of the Baneblade plastic kit and featured a resin superstructure. Unlike many other super-heavy tanks and vehicles, the Fellblade, along with its sisters the Glaive and the Falchion, did not have its roots in the classic Epic/Space Marine ranges (super-heavies were limited to the Imperial Guard/Militia back then), and these kits/units were introduced by Forge World with the Imperial Armour and Black Books of the Horus Heresy.

The Fellblade is a super-heavy main battle tank used by the Space Marines during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. Built on the Baneblade chassis, it features advanced technology and weaponry. Its main armament is a twin-linked accelerator cannon which can fire high-explosive and armour-piercing shells over long distances. This is supported by secondary weapons such as a demolisher cannon, lascannons mounted on the sponsons, and various heavy bolters or flamers. Thanks to its advanced design and heavy firepower, the Fellblade could crush enemy armour and fortifications, and also serve as a mobile command centre on the battlefield. The tank had a crew of four, weighed over 300 tonnes and could reach speeds of up to 32 kph while delivering its devastating firepower. Though rare in the current era, the Fellblade remains a legendary symbol of the Space Marines’ technological might and battlefield supremacy.

Based on the Fellblade, the Glaive — sometimes called the Fellglaive — was produced. This variant replaced the twin-linked accelerator cannon with a volkite carronade, a weapon system similar to the Volkite Eradicator of the Warhound Titans. A third variant, the Falchion, removed the entire turret, reassigning its role from Battle Tank to Tank Destroyer and arming it with twin-linked Volcano Cannons. This kit covers the Fellblade variant, but more on that later.

In the third edition of Horus Heresy, the Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank is a Lord of War choice and a unit of its own. It is armed with a turret-mounted Fellblade accelerator cannon, a hull-mounted twin heavy bolter (which can be exchanged for twin heavy flamers), a hull-mounted demolisher cannon, and two sponson-mounted lascannon arrays (which can be replaced with laser destroyers or gravis heavy bolter batteries). All of the unit entry's options are covered by the box, which contains a lot of sprues. A lot of them.

The Fellblade comes with a new decal sheet designed for super heavy Legiones Astartes vehicles. This one is much more elaborate than those included with the Spartan Assault Tank and other large vehicles (see picture on the right). The fact that it is not called the 'Fellblade Decal Sheet' leads me to assume that it will not be the last super heavy plastic kit that we will see. Along with generic decals featuring various numbers and insignia, we also receive iconography for the Sons of Horus, the Salamanders, the Imperial Fists and the Iron Warriors.

The instructions are detailed and cover a lot of variants in a clear, easy-to-comprehend way.

Now, let's take a look at the sprues. There are a lot of them, and they are large. We get the chassis with two mirrored side track sprues.

The middle part of the hull, including the lower plate, underbody and upper plate, is spread across two large sprues.

Then there is the Fellblade turret sprue, which has a fine line in the middle. This could mean that this is a modular mould, where one half can be replaced with a variant (some manufacturers do this to save money on production). Here, the regular or 'generic' part of the turret is on one half, while the Fellblade-specific parts are mostly on the other. These could be replaced with a Glaive variant, or we may see something entirely new.

As the side sponsons cover more weapon options than the Spartan or Land Raider, there is a new, medium-sized sprue featuring laser destroyers and heavy bolter batteries.

To cover the regular arrays of laser cannons, the Land Raider weapon sprue is also included, which is part of the Spartan vehicle kits.

For crew and various options, there is also the generic Astartes Accessory Sprue. Not all of these options are viable for the Fellblade, so please check the Liber Astartes/Hereticus unit entry.

The casting on all of these is superb. There is a lot of crisp detail, and the sprues are tightly packed with bits. Unfortunately, none of these sprues feature any allegiance iconography, generic scrolls or aquila, unlike the Land Raider (Spartan).

But let us start the build.

As usual with our tank builds, we start with the tracks. These are huge side pieces, and the entire group is mirrored for the other side. It's been a pretty solid build so far, and much easier to handle than the resin-plastic hybrid, where you had to align massive resin pieces that were often slightly warped to the plastic Baneblade hull.

The tracks are a new design and are basically a wider/larger variant of the Land Raider tracks that we saw in the new plastic kit in 2022 for Horus Heresy Age of Darkness. You can see a side-by-side comparison in the last picture.

Next, we will add the doors to the sides. This is an update to the design of this model, as it has moved from Mars Pattern doors to Deimos Rhino doors (from rectangular to round). Games Workshop provides the Forge World resin pieces for most Legions (see the third picture). I added the Imperial Fists Legion Deimos Rhino Doors Set #2 to this build. I looked for a picture of Set #1, but couldn't find one. I assume Set #1 had the rectangular Mars Pattern doors.

The plastic pieces are two-part and can be built open, in case you want to create a diorama or something similar.

To connect the two sides, we need to build the middle part of the chassis, which begins with an extensive build unit for the exhausts. There are four exhaust pipes — it is a super heavy tank, after all. The large underbody connects cleanly and securely. There is no warpage or alignment problems. This is a good sign, as even plastic kits tend to warp slightly on longer pieces. However, due to the way these pieces interconnect, you get a stable, well-fitting finish.

This is something I often do with plastic vehicles. I add lead to the hull. I mostly do this with historical kits to make them heavier and improve how they handle on the tabletop (so they don't slip on slopes and so on). This wouldn't be necessary for a super heavy tank, but I added 150 g of balancing weights for wheels to the lower body of this kit to increase its weight further. As these strips are self-adhesive and designed to stay on rotating wheels at driving speed, I don't have to worry about those going anywhere and can now close the hull and add further details to the vehicle.

This includes the fuel tanks at the back and the hull-mounted weapons. The heavy flamethrower and heavy bolters can rotate to the sides, I had some difficulty identifying which were the inner sides of the bolters, and the demolisher cannon can be elevated. Once again, the way these parts are prepared/split clearly indicates that they are also intended for the Glaive, as that tank does not use the demolisher cannon, but instead has an armoured driver cabin with a hatch in that position.

Now, let's move on to the turret. These are impressive components. They are cleverly split to minimise gaps and mould lines, and we get quite a long main gun – two of them, twin-linked to be precise. You can also elevate the main armament of the Fellblade. The turret has a large extension on its back, as well as two hatches for the crew and a pintle-mounted weapon. Don't glue the hatches on yet, as there are different options and we will come to those later.

We can choose the side sponson weaponry for the Fellblade from two sprues. You can choose from Laser Destroyers, Gravis Heavy Bolter Batteries and Lascannon Arrays for the sides, and as some parts are duplicated, you should be able to build two out of the three variants. I would have liked the heavy bolters, but the way they interlocked them, with the ammo feeds clipping into the lower weapons, looked off, so I went for the lascannon arrays. These can be built as moving parts, and there are 'screw-on' connections that fit most Space Marine vehicles. Just make sure they have the long arms; otherwise, they won't fit under the extended sponson guard.

As you can see in the comparison with the regular twin-linked Laser Cannon, the sponson arms are shorter on the Land Raider. The connectors are the same beyond that.

Now, let's look at the various options for the hatches. One option is a pintle-mounted weapon. All options come with a combi-bolter, combi-flamer, combi-plasma, combi-melta, combi-volkite and a havoc launcher, and you can choose whichever you prefer. There is even a tank crewman with binoculars or ready to handle another pintle-mounted weapon. The crew member is a regular crewman from the accessory sprue in Mk II armour.

I have the old Forge World Space Marine Tank Crew, and I have always liked the half-opened helmets. Back in the early to mid-2010s, these gave the tank crew a lot of character, but the new plastic kits have increased their quality. You can mix and match, which I am seriously considering, as the head is the most important bit for me.

As mentioned above, the Fellblade has access to pintle-mounted weapons: a heavy bolter, a heavy flamer and a multi-melta. I don't care about the meta, and as I didn't want to use the heavy bolters on the sponsons due to design choices, I used them on the turret as this makes more sense to me than having a flamethrower on top of the tank. The multi-melta is good, but if something is heavily armoured to the point where you need a melta to kill it, you should have killed it with the main weapon or the side sponsons. Therefore, this is a better fit against infantry and this kind of enemy.

The remaining vehicle accessory options cover a single hull-mounted hunter-killer missile and searchlights. The grenade launchers only provide the smokescreen trait. Beyond that, there are no plastic icons, no Eye of Horus or Aquila. However, you could add these from the regular Land Raider/Spartan sprues if you wanted to. Forge World used to produce iconography bits sets for many of the Legiones, and in some cases, 40k covers some as part of the Primaris bits sets (primarily Blood and Dark Angels, but as an Imperial Fists, you could use some parts of the Black Templar vehicle upgrades).

I usually don't glue everything in place until I have painted it. This is how I split the sub-build groups and individual parts.

I'd also like to show you a scale comparison of this massive vehicle. It completely dwarfs the Land Raider and has a much fresher design compared to the Baneblade. You can see that the detail on these larger parts has become finer and more articulated.

We got a bigger backdrop to capture these larger vehicles for their final shots. Here you can see the Fellblade in all its out-of-the-box plastic glory, alongside another set of pictures showing it with Forge World upgrades, including Deimos Rhino Legion-specific door Set #2 and Forge World Space Marine Tank Crew.

Conclusion

I am quite surprised that we saw these in plastic. When rumours about the release of a Fellblade emerged, I assumed it would be for Legions Imperialis and that we would first see the upgraded Super Heavy Tanks of the Solar Auxilia in plastic for Horus Heresy. This does not mean that we won't see them; just not yet.

This was a very enjoyable kit to build. Honestly, the only thing that was a bit tedious was removing the mould lines from all the track pieces. However, due to their more brutal design compared to others — for example, the Mechanicum — it was still less hassle than the Triaros/Karacnos. You should also pay attention when building the side sponson to ensure you don't mix up the sides or glue moving parts. While the Fellblade is a huge build, it really does fit well together. It's not something I would gift to a beginner, but it's certainly not something you need to be a veteran model builder to tackle.

At £125 / €160, it's not cheap. It is slightly more expensive than the Astra Militarum Super Heavy tanks. While these are over 15 years old, they certainly offer more variety: you can build seven different variants (Banehammer, Banesword, Hellhammer, Stormlord, Stormsword, Doomhammer or Shadowsword), and with individual stowage and accessories. While I don't expect an Astartes vehicle to be packed with stowage and the like, it would have been nice to have for example a special tank commander.

Beyond that, now that we have the chassis for Legiones Astartes Super Heavy tanks, let the Design Studio have their go. Bring out the Glaive and the Falchion! And of course, for all the Iron Warriors players who want to try out an Astartes-looking Tormentor, now is your chance!

• Production Quality: 5/5
• Design appeal: 5/5
• Options / Customization: 4/5
• Value for money: 3/5
• Ease of Assembly: 4/5

Warhammer 40,000 and The Horus Heresy are brands by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.