I've been a Warhammer 40k fan for thirty years, three times as long as I've been a father, one and a half times as long as I've been with my life partner. That's long enough for anyone to get a little jaded: decades of the same Warhammer 40k factions going through the same update cycles, the same rules problems rearing their heads, the same community controversies. And then GW shipped me a review sample of the new Defiler miniature, and I'm as giddy as a schoolboy.
I never owned the original Defiler: it released while I was still collecting an allowance, and by the time I had returned to Warhammer 40k as a salaried adult, it was the oldest model left in the Chaos range. But I remember what a huge deal it was when it originally dropped - this gun-toting mech with spider legs and lobster claws was completely unlike anything else I'd ever seen. It was a statement of intent for the Chaos Space Marines, a burst of sheer imagination you'd normally only find on a metal album cover or spray-painted onto a van.
The original Defiler had the biggest footprint of any plastic kit at the time it was released, making it one of the first widely available centerpiece minis in the game. There are so many more centerpiece kits today than there were in 2004, and the new Defiler isn't the biggest of them, but it is still an absolute eye-catcher. Bristling with guns and crawling with bladed weapon limbs, the model is a declaration of violence, a scream in physical form.
I haven't painted the kit yet as the photos show, and the Chaos trim promises to be a nightmare to paint, but the building process was a pleasure. (In fact it was so much fun I forgot to take photos while I was doing it).
It's a very user-friendly kit. If you want to run multiple Defilers, there are several cosmetic options to make each machine stand out, including a choice of armor plates, two midriff sections for posing, and free limb joint movement. The chest cannon isn't glued in place and you can hot swap the two options. The limbs are also extremely magnet friendly - I've been able to magnetise everything except for the nipple guns.
And as a final treat, it's also a beast on the tabletop, with near-Knight levels of damage output, the maneuverability to bring all its weaponry to bear irrespective of tabletop cover, and (unlike an allied Knight) full access to its faction rules. The hardest choice I'm facing is which army to run it in - I had marked it to serve under the warpsmiths of my Iron Warriors, and got as far as giving it a steel undercoat, before I saw those juicy World Eaters rules…
At $145 / £88 this model costs as much as a Combat Patrol starter set, yet pre-orders are already sold out on both the US and UK Warhammer stores. That's despite everyone knowing that the Warhammer 40k 11th edition launch box set is on its way this summer. This is one hyped up kit - but I get it. Building the Defiler made me feel like I was a kid again.
I'll share pictures of my Defiler build in the mini-painting channel in the Wargamer Discord community as I get to work on it - assuming I make up my mind which faction it's going to be part of. For a round up of all the best stories on Wargamer each week, make sure you subscribe to our regular newsletter!