Goliath/ Rockgrinder Review & Sprue Breakdown

Like every man and woman , we were pretty damn excited to see the new Goliath truck enter 40K. There's been rumours for years of a new wheeled vehicle (most often referred to as for Space Marines) so when this hit, all the rage directed at the Taurox, could be channeled to this cool new truck.
Not only was it cool, it was also a transport and just happened to look pretty easy to use in other forces - again to replace the Taurox.
The Goliath can be built in two configurations - the standard vanilla Goliath that acts as a troop transport and fire support and the Rockgrinder, which is more like an assault vehicle.

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The first thing you notice about the parts spread over the two sprues are the large slabs; from sides, top and back of the chassis. This thing is going to go together quickly!
Below you see the whole front of the Goliath - an excellent piece for the torso of a large robot BTW - and then the Rockgrinder dozer blade, another solid piece that can be easily painted separately. 

The other thing you notice is how the parts are organised - there is a lot of individual parts here that in the past would have been moulded as one part. Below are the grinding blades from the front of the Rockgrinder version of the Goliath. In the past this may have been one piece possibly even moulded onto the dozer blade itself.This extra little detail for modellers is a nice touch.

Another unique piece of this kit are the wheels - I know it's an odd thing to notice - but not only do they look like they would fit on an industrial machine of today (below left), but they are moulded so that the glue line would be hidden by the tread (below centre). Nice little piece of detail there. The wheels themselves are mounted on a small plate that is then glued to the chassis not an axle-type connection.

One of the initial rumours about this vehicle is that it was built onto the Taurox chassis. Though not true, it is around the same size in terms of length, but the rear is wider (below).

There are a few weapons options for the Goliath, with the twin linked auto-cannons moulded as almost entirely singular pieces apart from the split barrel tip. The Heavy Stubber is also moulded as one piece (below lef). A bit of a surprise was the mount for the industrial armament on the Rockgrinder variant - it's fixed and the different weapon options are just different tips to the body of the weapon itself. This means there is no option to point the weapon up or down (below right). 

There are crew for the Goliath, but as you'll see below, they are not multi=pose. The detail on them is excellent though and I'm sure these will furnish many a bitz box.

There's some nice little details, like these cloth wrappings on the stairs and hand holds around the Goliath. There's also details that cover the hatches like buckles and tie-downs, and here (below right) you can see the leads coming off the battery terminals.

As we mentioned earlier, this vehicle was looked upon as a replacement for the Taurox by many people, and thankfully the only Genestealer Cult specific item on the entire vehicle is this small icon hanging from one of the tie-down buckles. Everything else, apart from the crew, is very generic STC Imperial pattern.

Verdict

Overall this is a very nice vehicle, beautifully executed by Games Workshop. I imagine this will be rolling out in Imperial Guard units all over the world very soon - but is it worth the money?
The Goliath retails for $100 AUD - twice the price of the Taurox, Chimera and Rhino - and in a proxy form fulfills the same role in a non-Genestealer Cult army. I admit I was excited to get this and it's great looking, but for the price it's probably not something you would be using to transport a large force. This by the way precludes rules - I'm only talking from a model-in-the-army perspective.
The Taurox has been mentioned a lot here, mainly due to it's lack of acceptance in the community, but this would be a good replacement - IF you want to pay the price.