New Blood Angels Dreads Built and Reviewed.

Well Dis took a crack at the new Storm Raven and I must say he did a fantastic job!  It certainly was a far more daunting task than I would want to have taken on even with some faxed over instructions!  Having seen the model first hand I now know I want at least 2 for my Blood Angel army, which means I will need a dread or two as well!  Seeing as Dis built the Storm Raven he asked if I wanted to build the new Furioso Dread preview we got.  After the break you'll find pics and a review of the model.

This model is beautiful.  The details are extremely nice, well done, and not too overpowering.  I actually feel the Death Company/Space Wolf boxes are way to detailed and need to be spread out among regular Space Marine bits to make it work right.  This dread kit does not feel that way at all; there is a very nice balance between detail and blank space making the model ornate, but not overly so.  The Furioso Dread kit has three variations available.  Death Company Dread, Furioso Dread, and Furioso Librarian.  All the parts you need to make all the possible variations and weapons are available.  The kit was extremely easy to put together.  Having built 8 or 9 plastic dreads in my time, including AoBR/Ironclad/Venerable plastic kits, the Furioso was a piece of cake despite the lack of instructions.

The legs are simple, same as the normal plastic dread and Venerable Dread.  I like to put the torso bottom piece on before assembling the rest of the top, just personal preference on my part.

The top, sarcophagus, portion of the dread goes together exactly the same as a normal dread.  I didn't glue the front on so I could see what each one looked like before choosing which one I wanted to build.

Once I had looked at all the Sarcophagus front plates I went on and built the different arm options.  I decided to put blood talons on all the fists, even if I don't always use them, I also built the Magna-Grapple, and Frag Cannon.  Once I had them all built I put them all on and placed different front plates on to try and get an even better idea of how I wanted it built.

I have to admit this kit is really nice.  The Magna-grapple is a very cool, simple addition to the top of the sarcophagus but looks quite nice.  The Blood Talons go together easily as does the Frag-Cannon.  The frag-cannon is one of my favorite parts of the new kit, but I don't like the rules for it so it probably won't see to much time on my table top.  The various leg and arm plates you can put on the dread are all nice with good detail, and the sprues come with several crux terminatus and purity seals.

Having seen all the different load outs I decided to go ahead and build a Furioso Librarian.  The Force Weapon is a really nice piece with nice detail on the blade.  There are a lot of extra parts for the Furioso, from leg grieves and plates for the arms, extra talons for the fists.  I figured that I could use the left over front and armor plates with a normal/venerable dread kit to make some really nice looking dreads for my fledgling BA army.  I think one of my favorite parts about this kit is all the extra bits you get to build other dreads.  If you are handy with magnets you could magnetize the front plates, arms, etc so you can have one dread fielded as whichever type you want!  Here are some shots of the Furioso Librarian finished.

All things considered this was probably the easiest preview model I have ever put together.  I love the continuity between GW Dread kits so that they are all interchangeable.  This makes the BA Furioso, Venerable, and Ironclad kits even more valuable; especially with the plethora of bits available with each kit.  There are going to be some great kit bashed BA, SM, and SW dreads out there!

So what are your first impressions?  I am really excited about this new dread kit, maybe even more than when the Ironclad came out.