WIP: Tyranid Carnifex Brood

I tackle the single worst GW model I have ever assembled.

GW is known for having the best models in the business. Whatever you can say about their rules, you have to acknowledge that their models have the most imagination, dynamic posing and technical know-how in the business.

But it wasn't always that way, apparently.

I had never built a Carnifex before, and the changes to them in the 6th ed codex seemed like a bright spot, so I bought the new Brood box shortly after the product release in January. I assumed (quite incorrectly, I found) that the models were all new tools, similar to the revamped warrior kit.

Unfortunately, the kit is simply a re-boxing of the existing sprues, which means you get everything that goes along with tools that are nearly a decade old, and have seen thousands and thousands of runs. While I expected pronounced part lines, flash and wasteful, inefficiently planned sprues per the older GW designs, I didn't expect the model to not fit together on a basic level.

I ran into trouble in the first step of the build. THE FIRST STEP. Having snipped and cleaned the lower torso and legs, I went to assemble the three components, only to discover that the leg posts did not properly fit into the hip sockets. The newer kits, like the tyrannofex, fit together solidly at this joint, but the posts on the Carnifexes made barely any contact at all.

You can see from the image above, that the post and socket only made contact at the barest of points around the outer edge of the joint. In fact, this piece fell apart so many times, that I'll have to use a styrene rod to pin them together. Notice in this photo also, the large gaps between the upper hips and the ball joint that attaches to the upper torso. A basic connection that should need no greenstuff work whatsoever.

When I placed the thresher scythe tail biomorph on, it also failed to nest properly, causing a large gap between the armor and the tail.

Combining the halves of the upper torso was also a nightmare. Look at the images closely, and you'll see that the parts simply don't align. And within the parts themselves, there were huge mold lines that were misaligned by nearly 1/32 of an inch. While that doesn't sound like much, at 28MM scale, it makes a big difference.

While I'm excited to add the carnifexes to my hive fleet, it appears I am in for a long, slow build with tons of extra greenstuff work, sanding and pinning before I even get the models in a condition to paint.

Wish me luck.
-trip