The long wait is finally over. After ten years of waiting the Eldar forces have finally got a transport of their own! And what a transport it is.

The Falcon Grav tank is the first in a planned range of Eldar vehicles for Warhammer 40,000, the others are due to be released over the next year or so and will bring the Eldar up to speed with the Imperials at last.

From the very talented hands of Jes Goodwin, the Falcon is well worth the long wait. I have been a modeller for the past thirty years and this is one of the best-designed kits I have ever had the pleasure to build. The Falcon is a very fast moving vehicle and as with all the Eldar transports and vehicles looks very sleek and as if it could really grace a battlefield.

So what do you get? Well the kit is made up of 26 parts, all numbered and very well tooled. Assembly is very simple and the instruction sheet is well planned out and very easy to follow and even the most novice of modellers shouldn't find any problems.

The fit of all parts is straightforward and my copy required no filling at all. As the Falcon is a troop transport it needs to have a hatch somewhere to allow the troops to enter/leave. This is located on the rear of the Falcon and comes in the form of a nicely detailed hatch that if you follow the instructions correctly, it will open and close.

The Falcon is also a Grav tank and as such should hover just above the board. To represent this, the kit comes with a large clear flying base, with two different sized struts on it to allow the kit to be positioned at different heights. If you use the smaller of the two struts, then you can open the rear troop hatch and it will just touch the floor, while still maintaining the illusion of floating. If you wanted to go a step further you could always follow what Star Wars guru George Lucas did and fit small mirrors underneath to give a further illusion of floating or hovering, but this could be very time consuming and in the end may not work well!

The attention to detail is excellent and if you compare this kit to its Epic scale counterpart it is almost identical. Very fine veins and panel cuts cover the surface of the kit and the cockpits (there are two of them) contain excellently detailed troops acting as driver and gunner. The underneath of the Falcon is a network of almost organic looking struts that run almost the whole length of the vehicle and ending in the engines.

Completing the Falcon are a set of excellent decals with warnings, kill markings, and Craft World icons. They are very simple to use and if you follow the instructions on the back of the decals you wont go far wrong ( Tip: it may be worth investing in some decal softener from your local hobby shop, its cheap and easy to use!). The icons for all of the Craft Worlds (Alaitoc, Biel-Tan, Ulthwe, Saim-Hann and Iyanden!) are given allowing you the choice of which one suits your own army, and full painting schemes are given for each Craft World.

As for working features! Well as well as the opening troop hatch at the rear, the kit also comes with a moveable turret and a Pulse Laser and Scatter Laser that move up and down on it. The canopies open and close and a nasty looking Shuriken Catapult sits underneath the Falcon to rain down death from above.

The Falcon will look great supporting your ground troops and imagine how the Marine player will feel when it opens its hatch and a squad of Howling Banshees or Swooping Hawks exit.

The kit comes complete with a Datafax for the Falcon and is printed in several languages (as are the instructions) and due to its high speed and armament the Falcon can be a very deadly foe or a welcome ally.

The Falcon screams out for conversions (I am already converting one to a Farseer Falcon!) and as if anticipating this fact Games Workshop have made a variety of metal weapons that with a little work can be added to the Falcon. This is the very first in the planned range of Eldar vehicles and hopefully we should see a lot more Engines of Vaul on the battlefields.

All images © Games Workshop 1997. All Rights Reserved. Images used only for promotional purposes.

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