Magnetising the Tervigon/Tyranofex kit

I haven't blogged in a while unfortunately. I originally intended to make a post at least once a week but St. Paddy's weekend really threw me off! Anyhow despite not posting for the last 2 weeks I actually got a bunch of stuff built. For this post I will show ye how I magnetise the Tervigon/Tyranofex dual kit.

More Gribblies

I'm still feeling excited about the new Nids so I continued with putting together some of my old kits.

First up is the Tervigon/Tyranofex kit. Oh my is this kit a beauty to behold. GW could not cram more bits into these sprues.

I originally intended to build just the Tervigon since I always wanted to run the Termagant spawning list. However given my recent magnetising endeavours I thought there was no harm trying to magnetise it so I can play both a Tervigon or a Tyranofex. It's always good to have options plus I like the feeling that I'm getting my money's worth with two models for the price of one!

Main arm sockets drilled

I lined the interior end of the hole with GS

Grade N52 6X2mm magnets are inserted which 'sits'on the GS

Once the two body halfs were glued together I proceed to magnetised the heads.

An N52 6X2mm magnet is placed slightly above the centre point as the neck actually curves upwards. This ensure the head will look straight forward as oppose to skywards

Very important when doing the head that it is as centred as possible

Magnets were then inserted

I even went as far as to magnetise the little claws on the body for the Tyranofex build.

Using a hand drill, I made small recesses for the magnets

I did the same with the little claws

I then used the tiny N52 2X1mm magnets on the body..

..and the claws

Viola!

For the Tervigon build, I did some quick research on the internet on how others have magnetised the birthing sac and went with the one I think looked best.

With the help of GS I placed an N40 3X2mm magnet at the end of each half of the birthing sac

At the front I drilled a hole through to the Gant on the 'right' half of the birthing sac

The idea is that the Gant is glued to the left half but is magnetised to the right half so that I have magnets at both ends of the birthing sac for additional strength

I then moved on to the arms and man does this guy have a lot of arms!

Like all my drilling, I start with a small 'pilot' hole using a hand drill before moving to my electric drill

The arm sockets were just big enough for the N52 3X2mm magnets (seen in the middle)

Shooty arms also drilled

This is how it looks with the Acid Spray. Hmmm beastly.

Lastly I magnetised both legs to the base to ensure ease of access to the model's belly area to switch out the birthing sac. It would be very difficult to reach that area if the legs were glued to the base.

Once again, recess for the big N52 6X2mm magnets for strength

Precise holes drilled into the base

And that's it!

I didn't glue the model together as I will be 'sub-assembly' painting the various parts. It would be too hard to reach certain areas if it was glued on. However I did dry-fitting it to see what it would look like.

Does this birthing sac make me look fat?

I'm too sexy for my carapace...

In closing, if you have the kit I would really recommend magnetising it. It's not particularly easy especially the arms because you have to be pretty precise with the magnet placing. But like everything the more you do it the better you'll get.

New White Dwarf Magazine Impressions

I picked up GW's new White Dwarf magazine a couple of weeks back out of pure curiosity. I'm not a collector of hobby magazines in general but I do have a small collection of White Dwarf magazines that I purchased when I was a nerdy teen first starting out in the hobby.

So when I heard that White Dwarf was getting revamped (again) I thought I'll get one to see if I'm missing anything.

I picked up Issue 4 on 22 Feb 14 which focuses on the recently released Imperial Knights. Here's my impression of the product.

Contents

White Dwarf is now a weekly magazine that can only be picked up at a GW store (for €3.20). I assume this was done to coincide with GW's new strategy of weekly releases.

The magazine has 32 pages broken down broadly as follows:

Page 1: Opening Salvo (Editor's intro) and table of contents;

Pages 2-13: New Releases - Imperial Knights, a couple of digital supplements and Black Library books;

Pages 14-17: Imperial Knights - info on the fluff of the Imperial Knights and their creation by the Studio team;

Pages 18-21: Paint Splatter - brief painting tutorial for two Imperial Knight houses: Terryn and Raven;

Pages 22-23: Sprues and Glue - some tips for assembling the Imperial Knight;

Pages 24-27: The Rules - some teaser rules for the Knight Paladin and Knight Errant;

Pages 28-32: The Week in White Dwarf - random stuff

Impressions

I'm no Sherlock but it is pretty obvious the magazine was designed as a platform to promote the current week's new releases (or in this case pre-release).

Of the magazine's 32 pages, 26 pages is devoted to covering the week's big release: the Imperial Knights. The coverage is pretty comprehensive as it gives us lots of pretty pictures to drool over, some fluff to give us a feel for the new faction, some ''behind the scenes" commentary by the creators of the Knights, some hobby tips to give you ideas and lastly some teaser rules to wet your appetite. The last bit really surprised me as I have not seen rules in a White Dwarf in a long long time. I call it teaser as they don't actually give you enough to field any Knights. You'll still have to buy the Codex to do that.

The magazine does feel really short as you can go through it in 15 mins. However I do feel there is a good balance of photos and content. With the focus on the big release of the week there is a lack of contents on other areas of the hobby. However this is clearly what they were going for as each issue will target a specific portion of their market i.e. 40K Imperial players for this issue, Fantasy Dwarf players for the previous issue and so on.

Given that I was interested in learning more about Imperial Knights, this magazine was a satisfying read. In particular, I really enjoy the interviews with the original creators: Jervis Johnson and Jes Goodwin and their take on the new Imperial Knights.

The rules section is a bit weak in that it is not functional i.e. you can't play the unit with the rules printed. However the intent is clearly to give potential buyers a glimpse into what the unit can do i.e. Superheavy, D weapon chainsword and Ion Shield. Oh baby.

The last section is a hodgepodge of random stuff which I found a very entertaining read. The Codex Apocrypha gives some wiki like descriptions of in-universe terms relating to the current week release. In this case Adeptus Mechanicus techno babble such as scrap code and Lingua-Technis. A funny take on readers letters in Ask Grombrindal (i.e. the White Dwarf) and my favourite Gaze of the Inquisition where the White Dwarf team speculate about some 40K mysteries including who they think is the "giant of a man clad in baroque power armour" referred to in Trazyn the Infinite background. Adam Troke argues it is the Primarch Vulkan. Man I love all that fluffy shit.

Verdict

Like a lot of hobbyist I get a bit nostalgic when talking about White Dwarf. However I think the mentality of "everything was better in my day" tends to introduce too much negative bias. With that in mind, here is my verdict from a scale of "Pyrovore" (Buy at Your Own Peril), "Bolter" (Not Great But Not Bad) and "2++" (This Will Blow Your Mind!).

2++

This is a short magazine that wouldn't appeal to everyone. I myself will not be picking this up every week. However if there is a release you are really interested in, a copy of the new weekly White Dwarf is not a bad way to spend your hard earned €3.20.

Master Builder: Part 3

With the recent release of the 40K 6th Edition Tyranids codex, I decided to return to my long forgotten Nids.

I had painted up approx 1,000 points worth of Nids back at the dawn of 5th Edition. However I never really played it as I was at the time more preoccupied with my other 40k love: my Blood Angels army.

Tyranids, IMHO, has one of the best model ranges in the entire game. No other army has such consistency in the quality of miniatures available. This is partly due to the fact that the majority of the kits are relatively recent additions to the range and benefits from a unified design philosophy (which also makes sense fluff-wise).

Now with regards to the rules, I disagree wholeheartedly with what the internet says as I think it is decent and very fluffy. I am of course not blind to some of the more derpy rules (i.e. Pyrovores, Trygon tunnels, Rippers etc.). This is where I think the rules fall down a little as nothing jumps out as being super exciting unlike some of the unique army rules available to Tau and Eldar i.e. Supporting Fire and Battle Focus respectively. Personally, I think the main reason Tyranids can't compete with the more powerful armies is almost entirely due to having no access to allies. This means it can't play Deathstar 40k which seems to be the only way to play competitive 40k in 6th Ed. Hence, my main aim of revisiting my Nids is to paint up some new bad ass models (Exocrine/Haruspex I'm looking at you) and use them more to tell a story while throwing dice around (forge a narrative anyone?).

40K: The Great Devourer Returns

First thing on my to do list was to dig out some of my old purchases and get them to the 'Prepped for Painting' stage on my Kanban board.

I assembled my metal Death Leaper and Venomthrope. In the case of the former I pinned his scything talons and for the latter I pinned its arms/tentacles as they looked pretty flimsy.

Death Leaper parts

Death Leaper assembled

Venomthrope assembled

Given my ultimate plan of using a Tervigon, I knew I needed a boat load of Termagants. As such I opened up the Tyranids' Batteforce that I bought a while back and assembled the first 8 Termagants. I forgot how long it took to assemble these guys and I plan to have at least 80. Yikes!

Nids Batttleforce still in its shrink wrap!

Yummy plastic crack

GW has come a long way in its plastic kits. Look at all those empty spaces!

 Termagants parts half assembled

8 Termagants ready to be painted

 Given that I already have approx 1,000 points worth of Nids , I will also be 'refurbishing' these minis which will mainly involve repainting all the bases from old school goblin green to a more modern earthy brown, magnetising all the arms of the existing Carnifex and varnishing the army's current paint job (which I'm still happy with).

So much to do but so little time!