Whats the most fiddly model you have put together?
The ones where the pieces are small, you have to put real concentration into assembly and overall they arent very fun

For me its Necron Warriors, boy are they a pain!
Honourable mentions to Eldar War Walkers and their silly legs and any sort of marine tank commander/hatch gunner. Boy I hated those guys.

Stormsurge ankles are super annoying.

Tau Drones are by far super easy.

Malcador, no question. The tracks are a nightmare to assemble, the plastic track pieces have to be perfectly aligned at both ends to meet up with the resin track bits molded onto the hull. Even a slight error in alignment will leave a visible gap between the parts. Oh, and because this is a FW kit the parts will be warped and/or the wrong size. Have fun trying to make that fit together. I did it once, it still has a visible (but small!) gap despite my best efforts, and if/when I get another Malcador I'm paying an extra $150 to get the side pieces (which have a different track arrangement) from the Malcador Infernus and converting it.

Currently I'm working on an old all-resin Shadowsword where all of the wheels and track pieces are separate parts. It looks really nice in the end, but assembling and painting 20 wheels then hoping the tracks fit correctly is just incredibly tedious and frustrating. I suspect it will take over the title of "worst to assemble" from the Malcador once I've actually finished assembling it.

Possibly the Sisters of Battle Exorcist tanks; I for both the main parts of the organ don't fit together quite right, requiring a lot of pinning and green stuff that's prevented me from painting them (since I can't be bothered going back and finishing them and just play with most of an exorcist missile launch on top of a Rhino ). But I also love the style of the models, it's a tough dilemma.

Most commonly for me it's any model with two hands on its gun, but with the arms and weapon being separate pieces; if you just want to glue them together then it can be difficult to get everything lined up just right, but if you do anything else to work around it they take longer because you usually have a bunch of them to do. Not sure if it qualifies as fiddly, but annoying certainly.

I had a hell of a time building a Penitent Engine, ended up having to pin it but it's all metal so that's slow going, and even once I was finished the pose isn't quite right (I'm going to try to model it crashing through some masonry to make up for it). This has put me off building the other two, at least until I get a better drill.

Fantasy Skeletons for me. I got the whole VC army I was going to use, discovered that I just crushed the things in my hands trying to make them, and sold the whole thing off for a massive loss.

Drop pods are pretty bad.

Land speeders are not far behind.

Anytime you need to have 3 parts glued at the same time. Things like SM heavy weapon guys. Two hands on the gun, plus the hose to the backpack. Everything needs to be lined up, and hopefully in a position that looks good.

Hormogaunts don't have a lot of parts but they still manage to be a huge pain in the butt, then after building them you have to weigh the base down somehow because they fall forward.

The new Tyrannocyte also has very thin flimsy "legs". I haven't had to transport it but I'm worried for that day.

The old metal Ogre Scraplauncher. Never-fething-again.

Necron warriors are a pain to assemble. Whoever thought that making them with ball sockets is a good idea never assembled miniatures before. Not to mention the arms never seem to be right.

Ditto with the new terradons; they keep falling off their stand.

Raging Heroes models, their resin ones in particular. The resin they use is so greasy, even after several thorough cleaning sessions, that gluing the tiny parts together is a hellish task accompanied by a lot of swearing.

Khador Warjack. Glue seems to NEVER stick to those models. like never.

Malifaux stuff in general. The Necrotic Machine, and Yan Lo's Beard in particular.

 BrookM wrote:
Raging Heroes models, their resin ones in particular. The resin they use is so greasy, even after several thorough cleaning sessions, that gluing the tiny parts together is a hellish task accompanied by a lot of swearing.

I have broken a few of those lovely ladies limbs I can assure you !

For me the ones I hate most are the big old metal GW models, anything I have to pin with a strong rod to stop it falling apart, I know its easy but its just a task I hate to do !

Robotech RPG Tactics Veritechs in Battloid Mode and All Quiet on The Martian Front drones.

I've had some trouble getting metal Hive Guard to fit correctly-the legs always seem to be off somehow. Metal Hige Tyrants are a pain as well. The Fiddliest model I've put together so far would probably be the tiny hands of the KD:M Phoenix.

Aggravating trying to find out where which hand goes without instructions.

For it is a mix between the old Tyranid metal models in general, and the old metal chaos Giant foe WHFB. Ugh that lump of lead should never be sold let alone given to anyone with a sense of decency.
Also the metal centurions and other command elements of the Warlord Hastasi set comes to mind too.

Zvezda orcs. Big figures - lots of tiny parts, including separate hands and weapons and sometimes feet. Plastic, but not HIPS. I have yet to assemble more than the one I put together back around 2009-ish.

For 40k it was the Mechanicus Ironstrider. I had a heck of a time getting the servitor pilot connected right with the legs. No, that isn't true. The truth is I BOTCHED the assembly and then gave up on the model afterward. That bad experience also killed any interest I had in making an Ironstrider heavy Mechanicus army.

For Warmachine I hated assembling any models armed with halberds, so Cygnars Stormguard or Steelhead troops. It was just miserable gluing those bastards together that I never had more than one full unit of each.

Penitent engines are legendary

Also all of infinity... ALL OF THEM!

i hear malifaux is bad too

I'm expecting it to be this one, which makes a war-rig when assembled but came with no instructions in a box with no pictures. I'm not 100% sure which bits are rig and which are sprue yet.

Also, my original restic mantic enforcers are held together mostly by swearing and bits of skin. trying to superglue 2 arms (assuming you picked a matching pair that actually reach the shoulders on both sides) to the gun (with hands moulded to it) to the torso in the pose you want is a rapid descent into madness.

The Kheres assault cannon is a nightmare.

 larva_uk wrote:
I'm expecting it to be this one, which makes a war-rig when assembled but came with no instructions in a box with no pictures. I'm not 100% sure which bits are rig and which are sprue yet.

Also, my original restic mantic enforcers are held together mostly by swearing and bits of skin. trying to superglue 2 arms (assuming you picked a matching pair that actually reach the shoulders on both sides) to the gun (with hands moulded to it) to the torso in the pose you want is a rapid descent into madness.

I'm curious where you got that model? Are there any pictures online as well?

An old goblin spear chukka is kicking my butt. The metal isn't flat where it needs to be. I'll probably wind up using some modelling putty to make it hold together and hope it isn't too obvious.

The metal/plastic land raider crusader box.

Never fething again. The FW doors I had didn't fit as they were too small, the metal sponson hurricane bolters are very easy to put in backwards or upside down, and the metal multimelta actually snapped the pintle mount plastic because of how heavy it is.

Good god that was a nightmare

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
The metal/plastic land raider crusader box.

Never fething again. The FW doors I had didn't fit as they were too small, the metal sponson hurricane bolters are very easy to put in backwards or upside down, and the metal multimelta actually snapped the pintle mount plastic because of how heavy it is.

Good god that was a nightmare

Agreed. I actually ended up hurling it at the wall in frustration after I had glued my fingers together for the umpteenth time.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
The metal/plastic land raider crusader box.

Never fething again. The FW doors I had didn't fit as they were too small, the metal sponson hurricane bolters are very easy to put in backwards or upside down, and the metal multimelta actually snapped the pintle mount plastic because of how heavy it is.

Good god that was a nightmare

This. What a pain in the backside.

And metal models in general= assembly by swear words, fused skin, blood and tears lol.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 larva_uk wrote:
I'm expecting it to be this one, which makes a war-rig when assembled but came with no instructions in a box with no pictures. I'm not 100% sure which bits are rig and which are sprue yet.

Also, my original restic mantic enforcers are held together mostly by swearing and bits of skin. trying to superglue 2 arms (assuming you picked a matching pair that actually reach the shoulders on both sides) to the gun (with hands moulded to it) to the torso in the pose you want is a rapid descent into madness.

I'm curious where you got that model? Are there any pictures online as well?

This is what it should look like assembled. It's from the new Devil's Run: Route 666 game from Word Forge. I expect the retail ones will come in proper packaging but mine was a KS early delivery and I now have such a large pile of unlabelled resin parts for all the vehicles I foolishly ordered (with more to come). It's 20mm (i.e hot wheels) scale - conveniently the right scale for Gaslands as well

Bretonnian metal trebuchet was a bit of a pig, a case of "and with your third hand fit this bit". Not helped by the metal refusing to accept superglue even after a whole slew of degreasing products and washing.

Grail knights, again in metal, also, just due to the small contact patches and the large amount of leverage on the bits.

Ended up pinning them, no choice really.

Not found GW plastics hard to assemble, gave up on fiascocast as far too fragile.

Some of the hardest though, 1/285th scale tank kits with individual machine guns that are sadly really obvious if you leave them off.

 larva_uk wrote:

This is what it should look like assembled. It's from the new Devil's Run: Route 666 game from Word Forge. I expect the retail ones will come in proper packaging but mine was a KS early delivery and I now have such a large pile of unlabelled resin parts for all the vehicles I foolishly ordered (with more to come). It's 20mm (i.e hot wheels) scale - conveniently the right scale for Gaslands as well

I wouldn't bank on it. I bought the retail box set from my FLGS today and it doesn't come with any model assembly instructions. Granted, it isn't that hard to figure out but still...

Thanks for the info larva_uk!

Maybe I need to give it a try as well.

I am also going to be captain obvious and guess the Warlord Titan.

Skitari tiny feet on rangers .....

Model easy. Feet on base tiny contact area

May glue legs first then body to thus secured legs...

For me, the metal thunderhawk was an absolute bitch to assemble.
Just because of having to pin every single damn part in several places.



Second is the forgeworld hierophant, as the legs need to be cut into sections, drilled and rods placed inside them to prevent the legs bending over time.


3rd is possibly the old landraider crusader, only because of the metal hurricane bolters.
Also we tied for 3rd is the metal thunderfire cannon.




That's mine anyway.

I fail to understand why so many people have such big issues with metal models. I've never had special trouble assembling them nor keeping them together - and no, I don't have any special magical glue for lead, it's just standard superglue.

Google metal thunderhawk gunship.


I've worked with metal models all my life and never had an issue, but this thing will test anyone lol.

 Korinov wrote:
I fail to understand why so many people have such big issues with metal models. I've never had special trouble assembling them nor keeping them together - and no, I don't have any special magical glue for lead, it's just standard superglue.

I don't have many problems with them, just every once in a while I get a model that for some reason every post washing, and scrubbing, superglue doesn't work with - e.g. a gel superglue turning to a watery consistency and not curing, its reacting to something.

Not just GW models, had a bunch of relics ones where every joint needed pinning, partly for the above reason and partly for terrible design of the models, tiny contact areas on heavy parts, had some Battlefront artillery that wouldn't go together with araldite either (ended up with low melt solder on them).

Prefer metal generally, when you paint in a hamfisted way the ability to just drop it in acetone and leave it for days and I have a new kit again.

Most problems are the design of the kits though, the oddball metals ones that have some sort of reaction to some glues, GW tend to be decent except the ones that are designed to be pinned they are not clear on, irritating stuff like WW2 tanks that have metal mudflats on a resin hull that are just designed to be knocked off.. over and over...

 Gitkikka wrote:
Zvezda orcs. Big figures - lots of tiny parts, including separate hands and weapons and sometimes feet. Plastic, but not HIPS. I have yet to assemble more than the one I put together back around 2009-ish.

OH man, Zvezda's entire Ring of Rule range was like that. Tons of fiddly pieces that needed to be assembled just so, and in the proper order, just to make a mediocre mini if all goes well.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Gitkikka wrote:
Zvezda orcs. Big figures - lots of tiny parts, including separate hands and weapons and sometimes feet. Plastic, but not HIPS. I have yet to assemble more than the one I put together back around 2009-ish.

OH man, Zvezda's entire Ring of Rule range was like that. Tons of fiddly pieces that needed to be assembled just so, and in the proper order, just to make a mediocre mini if all goes well.

Let me guess, you're totally in love with them, then?

Metal landraider crusader, I pinned the guns direct to the ammo boxes and drilled a pivot into the boxes.
NEVER build as directed, the ammo feeds are madness. Metal multimelta was worth ignoring and fitting a plastic one on.

Robotech RRT Veritechs with their all 3 modes, 20+ parts on barely a 2 inch tall model each. Never mind the decals.

Metal thunderfire cannon... I had to put it on a base to be sure it would hold together.

Original Revel X-wing model kit: fuselage warped, pilot looked like Michelin Man so lacking in detail... utter garbage.

The winner:

Eldar Guardians.
For your normal troops, 11 parts including base... really?
Fiddly tiny parts, Marines seem fun in comparison.

As I'm working with them now...WHFB/AoS plastic Empire Flagellants. Fiddly isn't the word. The word I'd use would have the MOD's on my case, so I choose discretion as the better part of valor. Previous metal Flagellants were one piece, glue the tab right in to the base and rank 'em up. Sure there weren't any cool detail bits and conversions were nigh impossible, but these puppies are trying my patience.

Funny I love the Flagellents.

The most recent one I had problem with were the Electro Priests. Now I've been waiting for my Lighting Lad Bruce Lee Kung Fu Shaolin Jedi Monks since they were first mentioned in what... 1994?

After getting to the 3rd one and trying to put the little electrodes on his wrist I gave up. Ended up trading them away.

I might try and make some of my own.

Maybe out of the Flagellent kit

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Gitkikka wrote:
Zvezda orcs. Big figures - lots of tiny parts, including separate hands and weapons and sometimes feet. Plastic, but not HIPS. I have yet to assemble more than the one I put together back around 2009-ish.

OH man, Zvezda's entire Ring of Rule range was like that. Tons of fiddly pieces that needed to be assembled just so, and in the proper order, just to make a mediocre mini if all goes well.

Let me guess, you're totally in love with them, then?

Another smart remark like that and I'll ship them all to you.


If I could. I'm pretty sure the only way ever to get rid of them permanently is to bake them into a pie and serve them to someone you love. Cruel, cruel Zvezda.

The Warlord Games plastic puma. Jesus Christ that thing is fiddly to put together. You have to assemble the entire suspension system out of thin, plastic pieces in the exact order or else it won't go together right. And if you are off by even a millimeter when gluing it on the vehicle won't sit evenly. The hull pieces refuse to weld together properly and you need to glue on tiny headlights and small, thin antennae. There are parts where if you are not careful with removing excess plastic you can easily cut off half the part. It looks nice in the end but... damn, I would not recommend it to a beginner modeller.

SoB Exorcist, only model I ever gave up on and dumped into a drawer to never see the light of day again.

What, no mention for the old metal Bloodthirster yet? Had to pin pretty much everything and multiple pins to hold some parts due to the weight - I'm looking at you wings! Had to buy a Dremel to grind the nubs on the back down enough so they would fit the socket on the wings only to find out that no superglue or two part epoxy would ever be able to hold their weight. Ended up grinding the nubs completely flat and using multiple pins. I don't know where that Bloodthirster is now, but I do know that he is still in one piece! If it hadn't been my son's model I probably never would have finished it.

With my new found confidence after completing the Bloodthirster I decided to revisit the metal Killa Kan I had given up on many months previously. What a mistake that was. Don't think I had to use the dremel but it did require multiple pins, pliers and help from a vice to get the body halves to line up and stay together.

Most fiddly everyday model has to be infantry with two handed guns such as guardians and tactical marines. Where you have three contact points to line up and glue at the same time. Fiddly to line up and you can't see if everything is properly in place while you are holding it waiting for it to set. You only find out that you attached the shoulder to the ribs when it has partially welded and you dare to move your fingers.

Man... I do love me some metal, but last month I was reminded that I love ONE PIECE METAL MODELS.

Anything else better be plastic.

Thankfully for everyone else my two most fiddly models are oop the metal tomb scorpion all those little legs with minor contact and the metal scrap launcher from ogres you need about 4 hands and 2 tweezers to put that thing together. And an mention must go to the metal black coach as you try to hold 3 sides a top (covered in spikes) and a base with wheels all at the same time.

This miniature:



feth this miniature.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The Warlord Games plastic puma. Jesus Christ that thing is fiddly to put together. You have to assemble the entire suspension system out of thin, plastic pieces in the exact order or else it won't go together right. And if you are off by even a millimeter when gluing it on the vehicle won't sit evenly. The hull pieces refuse to weld together properly and you need to glue on tiny headlights and small, thin antennae. There are parts where if you are not careful with removing excess plastic you can easily cut off half the part. It looks nice in the end but... damn, I would not recommend it to a beginner modeller.

Glad I got the old resin one then. That was a piece of the proverbial.

Metal Thirster reminded me of the metal Tzeentch. I literally gave up, hes still in pieces under my bed somewhere :(

 Ratius wrote:
Metal Thirster reminded me of the metal Tzeentch. I literally gave up, hes still in pieces under my bed somewhere :(

Gah! The wings were the pain with that one.
I had to bend them higher up so I could get a tiny bit more balance out of the thing.
Then I think I used 1/16" brass rod and drilled in about a 1/2" into the wing and back.
First time I used a hammer to insert rod.
Then wads of green stuff... just to be sure and to deal with some slight gaps due to all the bending.

Oooo, also the always "fun" Unseen Marauder II. Arglebarglearglinfdpgjhergdgdr

My battlewagon. One side of the chassis went together easily, the other side wouldn't stick. I ended up using 1/2 bottle of Testors plastic cement just to get the chassis together.

The most fiddly model(s) I've ever built were the Warjacks from the Retribution of Scyrah Battlegroup. There are pretty much no instructions on the box as to how to build them that I can see, and each one comes in so many friggin' parts. I've had that box for half a year now, and the only thing I've built from it was the Warcaster

Wargaming would have to be some infinity guys, trying to line arms up with the use of super glue not fun.

The other one was my Thunderhawk the wings are nearly a kilo but have a tiny surface area to stick on.

My old man is building a scale model 432 tank, it has 400 resin track links that need to be drilled and pinned together with brass rod! Looks one hell of a ball ache, but he is an engineer and loving it lol

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Funny I love the Flagellents.

The most recent one I had problem with were the Electro Priests. Now I've been waiting for my Lighting Lad Bruce Lee Kung Fu Shaolin Jedi Monks since they were first mentioned in what... 1994?

After getting to the 3rd one and trying to put the little electrodes on his wrist I gave up. Ended up trading them away.

I might try and make some of my own.

Maybe out of the Flagellent kit

I know right? Electro priests are just fiddly pain. I just gave up on those wrist and neck things. Now they are quite easy to assemble

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
This miniature:

Spoiler:

feth this miniature.

I'm morbidly curious, HBMC:

a, What is it (other than some sort of walker)?
b, What was the nature of your disagreement with it?

 Dysartes wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
This miniature:

Spoiler:

feth this miniature.

I'm morbidly curious, HBMC:

a, What is it (other than some sort of walker)?
b, What was the nature of your disagreement with it?

Looks like a battle mech and being from battletech, is probably only a little taller than a space marine, all metal, and given all the weapons and spindly limbs, probably a lot of pieces that are hell to put together

Metal Hellcannon.

 Korinov wrote:
I fail to understand why so many people have such big issues with metal models. I've never had special trouble assembling them nor keeping them together - and no, I don't have any special magical glue for lead, it's just standard superglue.

Go find and build a metal scrap launcher and you will understand completely.

Lots of metal parts which can be warped and deformed, not fitting together the way they need to ideally do, can't be reshaped as easily as plastic, and puts more stress on what can be fragile glue bonds with small contact points, which can be a big problem when you have to put pressure on one part to try and get another to fit correctly.

One of the reasons why the metal/plastic GW kits were so reviled, especially the devastator marines. When everything's plastic, it's much easier to work with the model to over come deficiencies in the parts.

I love metal models.

There's that rush of the feeling of overcoming adversity when you finally get those 5^%$&^$%&^%& parts to mate up properly and it stays together.

Plastics just don't do that.

Trevor

Anything from forgeworld is god awful - Warlord Titan, Storm Eagle, Fulgrim

Chinese recasts - I got a box of stuff in a bulk deal on ebay, jesus it could be 1/10th the price and still not worth it - so terrible to work with. Injection points in key areas, flashing like crazy, double mold lines, warping, pitting. I honestly know why people do it to themselves

For small models the Robotech ones I put together were probably the worst plastic kits I've ever built. (defender & tomahawk)

For large models a resin FW Thunderhawk, half the parts did not fit correctly and not meaning warped but were actually 15-20 mm larger than what they were supposed to fit into. The canard wings were more than half an inch longer than the brackets they were supposed to fit into, the assault ramp was a good quarter inch too wide and long to fit properly into the teeth grooves along the side and top, the hinge for the ramp likewise was far too big to fit the bracket. Underside of the main body was neatly half an inch too long and the piece that forms the ceiling and rear wall of the assault bay was a half inch to wide to fit within the hull. Either they didn't use any heat resistant filler and several key parts shrank massively or they accidentally mixed molds from two different sized master models as a number of pieces were far larger than what they should have been. I spent several weeks correcting the parts by cutting away material and rebuilding sections of the model with styrene and greenstuff.

On top of that the underside has dozens of these cool raised vents which look great on the model but they are paper thin and almost impossible to avoid crushing while you handle the model during assembly. The thing weighed a ton and there's no way to lay it down without running the risk of damaging a lot of the fine details. The landing gears are also made from resin and don't properly support the weight of it, it's a good 7-8 lbs when built and rests on tiny 3-4mm thick pegs. The wings also need some serious, serious pinning to keep in place. I work with resin on a daily basis and never run into difficulties like the ones posed by that kit. The model looks amazing when built but it's painful as hell to build.

I've had a few fiddly models in my time. Oddly enough I've never glued my fingers together, even when assembling metal models. The Tau Sniper Drones are pretty fiddly and come apart way too easily, although that could be the result of the cheap glue I'm using for them (not superglue, but something called 527 Multi-use Glue). I'm thinking that from now on I may use my Krazy Glue for assembling Finecrap models. I saw early in the thread that someone mentioned the Stormsurge's ankles. Those were a bit of a pain for me, I had to stack books and stuff around it to get it to stay in the right position relative to the feet. The rest of the model was a relative breeze.

Wyrd's Insidious Madness was probably the worst kit I've ran across.

It's not so much the materials – plastic, so no pinning / weight issues – but it's typical Wyrd cuts (ie, 10-15 pieces for a single 30ish mm fig) for Cthulhu monsters that have no real "up" or "front" or anything.

Everyone I've talked to about them has spent at least 10 minutes just staring at the tentacles and wondering, "Where the feth does this one go?"


Similar problem on the metal Beast of Nurgle from the big Daemons revamp a few years ago. Very little in the way of clear anatomy, combined with a precarious metal sculpt.

 Dysartes wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
This miniature:

Spoiler:

feth this miniature.

I'm morbidly curious, HBMC:

a, What is it (other than some sort of walker)?
b, What was the nature of your disagreement with it?

As stated in the post below yours, it is a BattleTech miniature. It's actually one of the larger ones, part of Iron Wind Metals' problem with scale creep.

Anyway, it consists of the following parts:

Torso
2 Shoulder Guns
2 Arms
2 Arm Guns
Hips
2 Legs
Feet

Note that I list 'Feet' as one component. They're feet moulded to a kinda hex-base, that fits inside a larger hex-base. The feet are not level, the pegs on the legs do not fit into the holes on the feet. The pegs on the hips do not completely fill the holes on the upper legs. You have to balance the enormous torso on the tiny hips that don't get into the holes on the legs that have to keep it together. And it's metal. And did I mention that the feet aren't level, so you have uneven legs not holding onto the hips properly trying to hold up the rest of this monstrosity.

When I built my resin Stormblade the experience was so maddening that I almost threw it against a wall at one stage. But reason overcame me, and I did not do it.

This fething mini though? That got to take some flying lessons the second time I tried to put it together. A friend of mine tried to do it and he gave up as well.

Sounds hellish.

I've always liked the IDEA of having a Thunderhawk, but I've seen the numerous blogs on the internet, that suggest it's anything but fun lol. Can't imagine what the Stormbird will be like!

It's my experience with the Stormblade, and tales like the story above of the resin Thunderhawk that made me swear off buying any FW mini where there was even the tiniest hint of a rumour of it becoming a plastic mini at some stage.

It's why I never bought a resin Trygon or Valkyrie, and in both instances my patience paid off.

I did have a resin valkyrie.

The less said about that abortion, the better. FW's QC was less than stellar and it was the last thing I ever bought from them.

Whoever designed Land Speeders deserve to be shot. Put me off a WS army making one.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Can't imagine what the Stormbird will be like!

I was sooooo tempted to convince some lovely pom to send me a stormbird, but I keep looking at this storm eagle.

Why make 31 flavours if you cant get vanilla right

 paulson games wrote:
For small models the Robotech ones I put together were probably the worst plastic kits I've ever built. (defender & tomahawk)

For large models a resin FW Thunderhawk, half the parts did not fit correctly and not meaning warped but were actually 15-20 mm larger than what they were supposed to fit into. The canard wings were more than half an inch longer than the brackets they were supposed to fit into, the assault ramp was a good quarter inch too wide and long to fit properly into the teeth grooves along the side and top, the hinge for the ramp likewise was far too big to fit the bracket. Underside of the main body was neatly half an inch too long and the piece that forms the ceiling and rear wall of the assault bay was a half inch to wide to fit within the hull. Either they didn't use any heat resistant filler and several key parts shrank massively or they accidentally mixed molds from two different sized master models as a number of pieces were far larger than what they should have been. I spent several weeks correcting the parts by cutting away material and rebuilding sections of the model with styrene and greenstuff.

On top of that the underside has dozens of these cool raised vents which look great on the model but they are paper thin and almost impossible to avoid crushing while you handle the model during assembly. The thing weighed a ton and there's no way to lay it down without running the risk of damaging a lot of the fine details. The landing gears are also made from resin and don't properly support the weight of it, it's a good 7-8 lbs when built and rests on tiny 3-4mm thick pegs. The wings also need some serious, serious pinning to keep in place. I work with resin on a daily basis and never run into difficulties like the ones posed by that kit. The model looks amazing when built but it's painful as hell to build.

I have to ask, are you sure you have a legit thunderhawk kit?

Because the only issue I had with mine was a little bit of warping in the rectangular main body piece which was by fare the biggest piece of resin. There are no delicate vents that make me worry about handling it, and the landing gear are more than adequate to support the weight.

Could be mold age, could be luck.

Look at this obviously genuine storm eagle build - mine is about this bad

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/507545.page

 Bookwrack wrote:
I have to ask, are you sure you have a legit thunderhawk kit?

Yes it was a proper FW kit, I bought it direct from the Chicago Bunker about 15 years ago back when they actually stocked FW in store. It came in the FW bags and had one of their certificates, I was also there when it arrived in their delivery from FW and saw it come out of the box which is primarily why I decided to buy it. At the time it was a little over $900 and a very expensive impulse buy, but I had the money at the time.

After going through the nightmare of fixing the kit I sold it as I just didn't want it anymore and it's kinda of hard to find good pictures of the underside as I didn't take any at the time. There are sets of round vents on the main hull shown here and some oval shaped ones that sit slightly forwards of those, the oval shaped ones were the vents on my model that had very thin walls and easy to damage. The oval shaped vents are also in several locations in the middle of the main hull and under the nose. They are pretty tiny and easy to miss but they are there and until you have the landing gears in place to lift the model the hull wants to sit on top of them while resting. Even though I was being very careful I damaged the ones towards the middle while I was trying to rubber band the hull so it'd hold while gluing.

edit- found a better pic:







The main shaft of the landing gear is thick enough to hold the weight but there's one part that forms a sort of "ankle" where it gets very narrow right before it meets the pad I found that it bowed a decent amount under the weight. If you look at the pic below you can see where the narrow part on the landing gear is about the same width as the heavy bolter barrel which is only 3mm.

Built an eldar Bonesinger once. The assassins were kind of annoying, specifically the Callidus.

Other than that, I play spess mahreeens. What's a fiddly bit?

Some of Flames of War's Russian Anti-tank rifles were painful to assemble.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Sounds hellish.

I've always liked the IDEA of having a Thunderhawk, but I've seen the numerous blogs on the internet, that suggest it's anything but fun lol. Can't imagine what the Stormbird will be like!

The Stormbird will probably be fine, newer kits tend to be better. The biggest problem kits are the first-generation stuff where even new casts are done with worn-out molds and kit designs that were questionable to begin with.

Well, there's this little guy:


He has been resculpted, but I have built two boxes (each box has one of the humanoid "combat forms" and one of the crab "mobility" forms).



The bases are 40mm.

Pictures aren't mine, obviously, first one is by Angel Giraldez, Infinity the game's official painter. The second one is by Penemue in his really good blog http://penofpenemue.blogspot.com.es/

The entire skitarii infantry range. Such regret. Dang things take forever to build/paint.

 paulson games wrote:

 Bookwrack wrote:
I have to ask, are you sure you have a legit thunderhawk kit?

Yes it was a proper FW kit, I bought it direct from the Chicago Bunker about 15 years ago back when they actually stocked FW in store. It came in the FW bags and had one of their certificates, I was also there when it arrived in their delivery from FW and saw it come out of the box which is primarily why I decided to buy it. At the time it was a little over $900 and a very expensive impulse buy, but I had the money at the time.

After going through the nightmare of fixing the kit I sold it as I just didn't want it anymore and it's kinda of hard to find good pictures of the underside as I didn't take any at the time. There are sets of round vents on the main hull shown here and some oval shaped ones that sit slightly forwards of those, the oval shaped ones were the vents on my model that had very thin walls and easy to damage. The oval shaped vents are also in several locations in the middle of the main hull and under the nose. They are pretty tiny and easy to miss but they are there and until you have the landing gears in place to lift the model the hull wants to sit on top of them while resting. Even though I was being very careful I damaged the ones towards the middle while I was trying to rubber band the hull so it'd hold while gluing.

edit- found a better pic:







The main shaft of the landing gear is thick enough to hold the weight but there's one part that forms a sort of "ankle" where it gets very narrow right before it meets the pad I found that it bowed a decent amount under the weight. If you look at the pic below you can see where the narrow part on the landing gear is about the same width as the heavy bolter barrel which is only 3mm.

It might be the age of your Thunderhawk that caused all the problems. Mine is 'only' eight or nine years old, and in the intervening time between when we got ours, they might have managed to fix the really egregious problems you encountered. I never had any fragility problems with the vents, although I definitely made sure to try and not run the rubber bands across it during assembly. It's been sitting on it's landing gear mostly in a display case since 2010 or so and they've held the weight up without deforming.

Which is definitely a good thing, considering how many variations of the Thunderhawk they're pushing now.

StarHunter25 wrote:
The entire skitarii infantry range. Such regret. Dang things take forever to build/paint.

Oh god I forgot about these.

Those were the first infantry kit in plastic I've ever seen where you need to follow the instructions to the letter. Any other kit you can use it for one squad and then be good to go, but for skitariii it's insane just how many parts and bits they have. They look incredible put together, but getting g the coats lined up, properly lining up the hands, trying to get special weapons just right where their power cable lines up with the backpack, ooofda that was a long day.

Onager is pretty nuts too, but that's just because it has a million parts. It's not particularly hard and they are very clever with armor and bits placement to hide areas that might not line up properly. That said gluing in 10+ footsteps per Walker was not an enjoyable experience.

My Caestus Assault Ram.
It took me copious greenstuff just to fit it all together and make it stick, and superglue!
and me being stupid, I then knock it off my desk and have to REASSEMBLE it.
This sucks

leopard wrote:
Bretonnian metal trebuchet was a bit of a pig, a case of "and with your third hand fit this bit". Not helped by the metal refusing to accept superglue even after a whole slew of degreasing products and washing.

This one so, so much. Even with a dremel and pinning it would not stick together well. An honorouble mention also goes out to the shields on the Grail Pilgrims and to the old metal Dark Elf executioners. My boyfriend and I ended up hand-pinning all those little swords they hold up above their head 'cause they would not stay on.

The worst models so far have been the 4th edition dragons: the one from Rakarth and the Zombie Dragon. The metal is so soft that your drill bit gets stuck in it if you use a dremel, nothing fits where it's supposed to fit, it warps and bends easily and it doesn't take glue. Same with Eltharion on Stormwing where one side of the metal fits and leaves a 2mm gap on the other side ):

Okay, now that I'm building Sammael on Corvex I have to say that it is the fiddliest model I've ever done. That eagle on the front just did not want to go on. I had to trim stuff on the back several times just to make it sit right and still there are small gaps. No worry, even the one shown on GW's website has small but noticeable gaps there.

 Imposter101 wrote:
Some of Flames of War's Russian Anti-tank rifles were painful to assemble.

The ones in the metal infantry company box? There were "interesting" for sure, team of two guys with a guy carried between them, sounds easy... you just try lining them up on the base with no guides Ended up with the rear guy for two of them standing on a 2mm bit of card as I glued the front arm on a bit wrong.

They look good when done though, debatable if they are worth the effort though on the table...

MKI Satyxis Raiders. Each horn was a separate piece and far, far too small to pin. The ankles used to break if you looked at them too hard.


Then, Master Necrotech Mortenebra. Each little tiny leg was separate. Rumor is, folks have pinned them all before, but you have to sacrifice a game dev to Cthulu first.

Mine has got to be the Tau Riptide. It was probably the first time I had put a "large" model together and it was definitely the first time I chose to go for a dynamic pose. Without a care in the world I snipped off the pips that allow the legs to sit in the default position!

OMFG I got so wound up trying to use blutack to hold one leg together so I could then hold the other leg together by hand...trying to gauge where I needed to glue things so that it all fitted together.

I think in the end I just gave in and glued the legs by eye...I seem to remember it came out pretty bad. The knees where way too bent and the body was far back from the centre, it looked like my riptide was having a massive poop

Nightmare Whiskey Golem (pictured golem is not mine, which is unpainted).

You see it and go 'AWESOME A KEG GOLEM YEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!!'.



Then you see the instructions. For scale, those Gremlins are the size of your fingernail.

Fiddly? Pah! Just try detailing a 1:35 tank kit with photo-etched brass...

*whimper*

Loki, was your Nightmare edition golem translucent plastic? I assembled the translucent Bete Noir and that put me off the material entirely.

Mewens wrote:
Loki, was your Nightmare edition golem translucent plastic? I assembled the translucent Bete Noir and that put me off the material entirely.

No, basic grey plastic. Just far too many little fiddly bits. Haven't bought into any coloured plastics. I just like painting grey plastic.

In terms of actual pain in the backside from the model itself, the Stormhawk Gunship.

But I find that every Finecast model I've ever built just doesn't want to be glued, no matter how much I clean them they never seem to stick.

Maybe your glue? Every finecast model I've glued has instantly stuck. Quickest bond I've ever seen happen with superglue. Usually with metal or plastic I get a few seconds to move the bit around before the superglue kicks in, but with Finecast it was just boom, done.

The GW Dark Apostle

It has so many mold channels across the whole model it feels like you are just carving the guy out of a block of resin.
Of course it's all warped and uneven so you have to cut and file down large parts while taking care to not brake the super fragile details.

The model looks great though

 -Loki- wrote:
Maybe your glue? Every finecast model I've glued has instantly stuck. Quickest bond I've ever seen happen with superglue. Usually with metal or plastic I get a few seconds to move the bit around before the superglue kicks in, but with Finecast it was just boom, done.

I have had this too, I dont even get chance to position them properly sometimes, it can be a right pain.

Metal Obliterators.....