So I was thinking about this and wondered what my fellow Dakkaites think is the hardest model to put together?

Since I only have limited knowledge with the armies I have I was wondering if there was a model that you just thought was the worst to put together.

Also if after they are together how well they stay together is a big factor too.

Space marine drop pods have a special place in my heart.....I will never buy a new one unassembled again. Trying to stick the 5 fins together and lining up the bottom plate and top engine thing while keeping all the doors lined up was a dark day in my model building career.

Never again.....

Metal tomb spider

Monolith, if you want it perfect.

Old Talos

The old metal thunderfire cannon. Never built one myself, but it's the only mini I know that could take sane, reasonable people, and turn them into curse-slathering maniacs.

Penitent engine. Top heavy, metal, and dozens of smaal points of contact that require pinning.

Metal Sammael

 Carnage43 wrote:
Space marine drop pods have a special place in my heart.....I will never buy a new one unassembled again. Trying to stick the 5 fins together and lining up the bottom plate and top engine thing while keeping all the doors lined up was a dark day in my model building career.

Never again.....

I usually enjoy building models, and my brother hates it. So we made a deal, I'll make his models.

Then my brother turns around and buys 3 new, unassembled drop pods.
Curse him.

Me and my friend were joking...

Prison warden "if you can build this drop pod without any flaws but tonight you may have your freedom"
Prisoner" YES!!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!

6 hours later...

Prisoner"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
'throws drop pod into prison wardens face and escapes.

Moral of the story: there's only one thing drop pods are good at... Throwing.

From what I read the manta is supposed to be a nightmare.

Anything finecast, because you will always have to re-sculpt half the model.

According to my friend it is the metal wraithlord, or from my brother it is the old metal hive tyrant

Daemonettes.

...it's those arms ...sooooooo, so fiddly.

 Ailaros wrote:
The old metal thunderfire cannon. Never built one myself, but it's the only mini I know that could take sane, reasonable people, and turn them into curse-slathering maniacs.

This!!!!! I pinned that metal beast and put it on a stand for good measure... evil infernal device, to this day I still curse.

The metal sponsons for the LR crusader was the true nightmare: you line up all those ammo feeds to all the guns and get it all to go together... I just pinned the guns to the ammo box and made a pivot point through the box: it saved my sanity.

The metal Thunder Fire Cannon.

Metal thunderfire. Older pewter+ Plastic kits and metal Elves/ other dainty jointed models.

Penitent engine, my nightmare.

Built a frame for it to rest on out of popsicle sticks, pinned it, SOLDERED IT, and it STILL broke, twice.

I didn't even keep the bits after the second one I had broke. I think it carries a curse

Excorist tank.

Tomb Stalker from Forge World.

I've been fairly lucky, the worst I've had is the weapons/arms on my Noise Marines. Getting both metal arms to line up with each other and the plastic torso took some doing.

That does exclude some of the conversions/kitbashes I've had to do though. Building and attaching wings to my Sorcerer generated a special kind of angry.

Nightbringer. Because that scythe was apparently meant to never be assembled I just converted the bastard into a nurgle daemon with wings and sword.

 Carnage43 wrote:
Space marine drop pods have a special place in my heart.....I will never buy a new one unassembled again. Trying to stick the 5 fins together and lining up the bottom plate and top engine thing while keeping all the doors lined up was a dark day in my model building career.

Never again.....

This. If someone offered me free one I'd have to think about it. Also SM heavy weapons I just can't seem to get everything to line up and stick together.

Penitent engine. The sisters do not build things to last. It's like a one use war engine. "She'll be dead after one game anyway!"

ClockworkZion wrote:
Penitent engine. Top heavy, metal, and dozens of smaal points of contact that require pinning.

soooo many pins.


I am going to go for the old WHFB maurader giant. Getting his tree trunk and hand attached to the arm requires some major pinning. I used 3 pins made of coat hanger and it still broke


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Anything finecast, because you will always have to re-sculpt half the model.

and once it breaks you are truely screwed

bodazoka wrote:
Tomb Stalker from Forge World.

I wanted to mention the same thing. It was terrible!
Most glue won't work decently and all.. those.. little.. feet!

The old metal Daemon Prince was a nightmare, more recently Ive had trouble with Valkyries. Those door gunners just dont want to stay in there.

For me it is the old metal havocs.

As a few posters have mentioned, the Penitent Engine brought a new meaning to the phrase 'Glass Cannon'.

Every single joint had to be pinned or the whole thing would break apart. Even the epoxy resin I used was only a stop-gap solution.

Ended up soldering the damn thing together.

It will probably have to be one of the large metal kits. I remember having a hell of a time with my old tomb spider's legs and getting my obliterator's weapons to stick to the arms. Fine cast (although people complain about quality) has really made building these kits much much easier.

I always hated putting together basic troops though. Its not that they are difficult - they are just extremely annoying. I put together 12 fire warriors yesterday and it was a brutal experience. Their mold lines are terrible so I spent an hour hunched over just running my knife along the edges off them.

Wow that more reply's then I thought this topic would get.

My vote if I had one would be the Necron Ghost Ark, I'm still not looking forward to getting more of those things, especially if you put all the people in it.

It was also my first model to fall off its flying base and break most of its guns off in one game.

I always found that the metal Hive Tyrant was the worst model I had ever made, full of gaps, didn't fit properly and at the time, didn't know what pinning was so many a curse word was said that week.

DE raiders are easy to build but impossible to keep whole. All those thin little bits break every time you put them in the case

Having done both penitent engines and thunderfire cannons, I have to go with the thunderfire. Pinning is trivial. The thunderfire requires a lot of metal grinding just to get the pieces to fit together.

Metal Hive Tyrant..... scant minutes before completing this beast for my younger brother the fool knocks it on the floor...... now he has no Hive Tyrant.

I forgot about the old metal tree beard it's feet were rounded trying to get that thing to stay on a bas was a nightmare.

Penitent engine was easy, I've got three of them kicking about somewhere.

The thunderfire, I built one for a friend, that was a nightmare.
Another bad one was the Screaming Skull catapult.

 Redbeard wrote:
Having done both penitent engines and thunderfire cannons, I have to go with the thunderfire. Pinning is trivial. The thunderfire requires a lot of metal grinding just to get the pieces to fit together.

you didnt have to grind down your body pieces to get them to fit together? Lucky you.

I'm going to say the forge world greater daemon of slaanesh. On top of the normal mess you need to sort out on FW models (scrubbing release agent, sanding smooth areas to fit, rebending, filling bubbles, sawing off parts to pin) there's somewhere around 150 spikes that all need pinning or else they'll fall off. Oh, and the claws/hair? Yeah, that's all straight and needs bending into your own position... which you need to do almost at completion so it fits properly. I've never made one but before that model I'd never seen anyone almost throw Forge World resin across a room in rage. Nothing I've seen comes close.

Eyjio wrote:
I'm going to say the forge world greater daemon of slaanesh. On top of the normal mess you need to sort out on FW models (scrubbing release agent, sanding smooth areas to fit, rebending, filling bubbles, sawing off parts to pin) there's somewhere around 150 spikes that all need pinning or else they'll fall off. Oh, and the claws/hair? Yeah, that's all straight and needs bending into your own position... which you need to do almost at completion so it fits properly. I've never made one but before that model I'd never seen anyone almost throw Forge World resin across a room in rage. Nothing I've seen comes close.

I'll second this... SOOOOOOOOOO many little spikes, it's insane, and god forbid you drop one. A close second for me has to be the Forgeworld Elysian kits, the arms on those guys never line up correctly, and you end up sticking the tiny little bits to your fingers instead of the model (especially those shoulder pads). Every time I've added guardsmen to my army, I end up with fingers covered in superglue and having to greenstuff half of the shoulder connections because the arms don't fit right.

For me, the Penitent Engine. I planned on getting six. After two I just gave up. I've built super detailed gundam models in less time and with less frustration.

 Carnage43 wrote:
Space marine drop pods have a special place in my heart.....I will never buy a new one unassembled again. Trying to stick the 5 fins together and lining up the bottom plate and top engine thing while keeping all the doors lined up was a dark day in my model building career.

Never again.....

Huh, I had no problems keeping the fins together, or lining them up the button plate, and sticking the top engine in between them. Even without glue the fins stuck onto the base of the pod and the harnesses well. When I assembled the fins, I just put the engine against the first fin and put one of the fins opposite of the first fin in to hold the engine. Put the others on easily, pushed the engine back up, glued it, done. Very pretty pain-free.

Only thing that was annoying for me with the kit were the doors. Even a nanometer of extra plastic on the bottom sides of the doors meant they couldn't close properly/fully. Meh.

Pentinent engines and Exorcist tanks. First one because of how little contact is given to the amount needed. took me a lot of green stuff, pinning, and eventually gorilla glue. The Exorcist was up there as well. assembling the box the organist rode in, plus lining the missiles up and covering the gaps. then asking it nicely to stay together. Metal hive tyrant is bad as well, but I actually had a dremel at the time to help me out.

 Chaos Santa wrote:
Wow that more reply's then I thought this topic would get.

My vote if I had one would be the Necron Ghost Ark, I'm still not looking forward to getting more of those things, especially if you put all the people in it.

It was also my first model to fall off its flying base and break most of its guns off in one game.

I just recently fully magnetized a ghost ark. Each warrior has its own magnet. It can be a ghost ark or a doomsday cannon. Not one of those "cannon on top" doomsday cannons either. The only problem is the gauss is upside down when its a doomsday, but oh well.
It was a fun challenge, but I don't wan to do it again. I did enjoy assembling the model though.

I believe this is a model that requires 2 of those skimmer bases, the thing feels so wobbly!


Anything metal that is larger than a TDA is probably a horrible kit to put together.

I've been pretty spoiled since I play Tau, so all of our kits have been easy to put together, but I really hate Pathfinders! There's some poses (especially the unit leader if you want him talking on his headset) that are almost impossible to line up right if you don't have some way of tacking the model in place before you glue it.

And don't even get me started on my custom posed Riptide...trying to line up all the joints without some way to keep the model together without gluing it was a nightmare.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
I always found that the metal Hive Tyrant was the worst model I had ever made, full of gaps, didn't fit properly and at the time, didn't know what pinning was so many a curse word was said that week.

True story.

My old metal Tyrant and Zoanthropes were both extremely frustrating.

The worst however, no doubt in my mind, was the metal Venomthrope. Curse you, GW, curse you!

Exergy wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
Having done both penitent engines and thunderfire cannons, I have to go with the thunderfire. Pinning is trivial. The thunderfire requires a lot of metal grinding just to get the pieces to fit together.

you didnt have to grind down your body pieces to get them to fit together? Lucky you.

I've built nine of them, not one came close to the amount of grinding that the thunderfire required. A couple of penitents needed some filing, but none needed power tools. I wouldn't have been able to build the thunderfire without my dremel.

Hmm. Metal venomthrope and tyrant are up there... of course, 4 tyrants would drive anyone crazy. One would have been enough.

The metal venomthrope took me 8 hours straight, counting drying time. I will build a scaffold for it next time.

Since almost everything mentioned being vehicles or mc, I'll say that I still try to put my metal Swooping Hawks together in a way that they don't fall apart at a glance.

Definitely metal thunderfire. I've built drop pods, penitents, ghost arks, and I have to say the TFC is just miserable. I don't think it can be done without pinning or some sort of two part epoxy.

I'm pretty spoiled model wise,playing Tau and just instead of using the Pathfinder Models, I would use Carbine Fire Warriors without shoulder pads, but I gotta say Crisis Suits.

The jetpacks NEVER set right for me EVER.

All these posts...and no one remembers metal Ghazghkul?

Nightmares, man. Nightmares. @_@

Actually he's not that bad, though his bloody horns tend to break off..

Another real pig, for me at least, was the old metal and plastic chaos pred...

 marv335 wrote:
Penitent engine was easy, I've got three of them kicking about somewhere.

Agreed, I have 4 and I have managed to build them without pinning them. A little green stuff helps a lot.

The old metal Skorne battle box. Holy crap that was entertaining. The metal gladiator and cyclops were pains in the arse!!!!!

Metal Bloodthirster...

It just... won't... STAY... TOGETHER....

As much as I love the Red Terror, he's a serious pain in the butt to build. his 4 giant scything talons are metal and heavy, the waist didn't fit right, and the tail he sits on is 3 pieces that attach very awkwardly. more often than not I ended up gluing the tail pieces or one of his scything talons to my finger instead of actually on the model.

On the plus side, for a short time I was able to reroll 1's to hit in close combat...

I must have broke six of my Necron warriors during construction. their arms are so freaking fragile.

My vote goes to the old Chaos Dread in metal.....That and the FW Incarnate elemental of fire made me weep to no end

Anything in metal .

 Peregrine wrote:
Anything finecast, because you will always have to re-sculpt half the model.

Gotta be the thunderfire cannon. That thing broke me.

The vampire lord on zombie dragon had me cursing to all the gods! The arms and sockets have to be perfect or it all falls apart, having managed to build it once it then collapsed on me and pretty much put me off of VC all together,

Eissel wrote:
All these posts...and no one remembers metal Ghazghkul?

Nightmares, man. Nightmares. @_@

That big metal behemoth is the best thing in metal I ever built. The notches held the arms easy and the legs to torso as well. Grabbed a second metal one when they were phased out to convert into a mega armored warboss. Even for metal, It was an easy process.

Old metal Hive Tyrant, Red Terror and Lord of Change were the bane of my existence.

Conversely, I have a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon, wasn't too bad but maybe my brain is inured to the horrors of building models thanks to the old metal monsters.

 Peregrine wrote:
Anything finecast, because you will always have to re-sculpt half the model.

What i was going to say!! Besides that,.. anything not made of plastic sucks! But even amongst plastic there are some hatefull models...

Lychguard... yeah lets glue that hand with a sword... break... again...break..again..break...again... waaaaaaaaaagh!
Any dark eldar... they keep breaking wth is up with that?

GW Buildings (ruins) OMG wtf is up with them? They keep breaking,.. tried glue,superglue from gw... might as well glue with water... Now i have superglued them to a wooden base with superglue that is ment to be used by construction workers... They have managed to survive more than 3 battles now... my hope is growing!

After assembling a metal Obliterator, I vowed never to buy another one until they were available in resin. Soooo many tiny pieces to glue into holes they don't actually fit in.

Drop Pods will be the death of me

Metal warwalkers refuse to stay together. It is their recurring mission to try to end each day in more separate componants than they started...
And the metal Blood thirster. Even pinned, his parts have so much weight they still break the glue.
Halfway through my last game, I realised I could actually move his axe arm to make chopping motions...

What about the land speeder that just wouldn't go together as the top half and the bottom half were different sizes even the Gw store manager at the time I bought couldn't help

Seekers of slaanesh...

I had no problems building my drop pods, nice and easy. The Thunderfire wasn't too bad after a spot of grinding and some strong epoxy.

Metal Thunderhawk has to be number one, each side made up of multiple metal panels that have to be glued into a box shape, meaning that has significant pressure (due to it being metal) on each corner joint from two angles, making it very very hard to pin the corner joints properly. Add on some very thick parts for extra weight, the molds not being 100% and its a total nightmare. For good reason are the kits offered unassembled.

The resin Thunderhawk as it currently stands isn't much better as the molds are in a bad way causing more than normal amounts of bubbles and warpage. With the length of the pieces and the fact that they need to be ruler straight makes it painful to get the thing together, even just offering it up without glue is an exercise in frustration.

Both the Death Guard Power Armour and Terminator Armour sets from FW were in a pretty bad state, both had lots of flash and a huge big hunk of resin on the cup that sits on the ball at the top of the legs. I wasted a major amount of time grinding out the resin for these.

From the tone of the posts in the thread, I'd really happy I joined the hobby after metal got replaced.

 sing your life wrote:
From the tone of the posts in the thread, I'd really happy I joined the hobby after metal got replaced.

Alas us Sisters players are not fully free...

Kinda worried about my idea to field nine Engines in one army now...

It's pretty trivial compared to others, but Gretchen give me trouble because of their small size. Nothing serious, but it is annoying.

 Super Ready wrote:
Daemonettes.

...it's those arms ...sooooooo, so fiddly.

You drop one on your black carpet and nothing can contain the hour-long rage-induced search which will ultimately be in vain.

Iranna.

I'm going to have to second the Slaanesh daemons. Those arms refuse to stick to the bodies and the heads never seem to set right for me. And the dang Steed of Slaanesh refuses to have its one point of contact stay glued to its base, as well. And also, the plastic daemon prince refuses to stay glued to his base for me (though this may be a side effect of his conversion).

Ghost Ark is no fun.

Sammyp91 wrote:
The old metal Daemon Prince was a nightmare, more recently Ive had trouble with Valkyries. Those door gunners just dont want to stay in there.

I named the left sponsons gunner private A-hole and gave him rules and stuff.

For 10 pts, you can upgrade your left sponson gunner to him, first time you get a weapon destroyed result, it automatically falls on said private who falls off, on a roll of 6 he survives the fall and break his legs, its now an immobile guardsman with a heavy bolter.

Hoitash wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
From the tone of the posts in the thread, I'd really happy I joined the hobby after metal got replaced.

Alas us Sisters players are not fully free...

Kinda worried about my idea to field nine Engines in one army now...

It's pretty trivial compared to others, but Gretchen give me trouble because of their small size. Nothing serious, but it is annoying.

Don't despair mate, you might get plastic models some time.

 sing your life wrote:

Hoitash wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
From the tone of the posts in the thread, I'd really happy I joined the hobby after metal got replaced.

Alas us Sisters players are not fully free...

Kinda worried about my idea to field nine Engines in one army now...

It's pretty trivial compared to others, but Gretchen give me trouble because of their small size. Nothing serious, but it is annoying.

Don't despair mate, you might get plastic models some time.

I remain hopeful for plastic models and a new codex.

I'm either the world's greatest optimist or the world's most deluded 40K player (probably both.)

Kheres assault cannon, 1 was hell and at some point i will need to assemble 5 more

oh god... all the old metal tyranid monsters were a PAIN... no accelerant back then too (at least gw stuff)... i remember having to set up stuff with blue tack, rubber bands and make shift supports so that hive tyrants would stay in place long enough for the glue to harden....

barring that... hordes simply for sheer #'s

a fat guy wrote:
Metal Bloodthirster...
It just... won't... STAY... TOGETHER....

I built that monster, it was the wings!
Talk about top heavy.
I performed major surgery and went for extra large pinning and about 1/8" into either side to feel confident.
Also a ton of green stuff to ensure a gap free join.

 Talizvar wrote:

a fat guy wrote:
Metal Bloodthirster...
It just... won't... STAY... TOGETHER....

I built that monster, it was the wings!
Talk about top heavy.
I performed major surgery and went for extra large pinning and about 1/8" into either side to feel confident.
Also a ton of green stuff to ensure a gap free join.

This.

I pretty much did the same with two pins in each wing after grinding down the attachment nub as the wings wouldn't fit onto these as was. Greenstuffed as above.

Also the old metal Killa Kans. Multiple pins again and held in a vice to set as the two body halves were warped.

I earned my pinning wings with these!

The Monolith or any of the Greater Daemons except Papa Nurgle (lawl it has no wings)

Oh, you think the Monolith isn't that bad? Try putting one together when any of the 4 bigass wall panels are even sliiiightly warped (which, with a piece of plastic that big is pretty easy). Padre got one of those and it was a complete nightmare to try to reform that panel so it would actually fit together. Oh, and I forgot to mention: The kit literally does not go together AT ALL if any of the wall panels are warped.

Big monsters with wings are a pain in the ass and 2 of the 4 Greater Daemons are no exception, and the KOS just suffers from Big Metal Model Syndrome and refuses to go together. The Bloodthirster is probably the most unruly of all of them, the wings are HUUUUUUUGE and I've yet to see someone who owns one with a fully intact whip arm.

Ork Battlewagons and killa kans. The hulls took forever to put together and the bad thing with the kans was you had to make 3 of them!

The metal Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun. The only way to build it was to get the gun, the tube, and the hand holding the tube's end piece glued together on the model at the same time without any of them falling off.

Heirophant. Anyone who hasn't done one needs to give it a try.

If anything goes then the old skaven vermin lord. It was a longvtime ago and before I knew anything about pining. He kept losing his rail and head.

 -Loki- wrote:
Heirophant. Anyone who hasn't done one needs to give it a try.

I actually enjoyed that. Maybe it's because I cheated and magnetised the limbs and tail, but the only annoying part was sticking all the little spikes on the body.

Metal Swooping Hawks deserve a special place in hell. The wings are heavy enough to fall off with the slightest breeze, and there's no 'safe' angle to position the model while the glue dries. You end up needing to hold each wing in position for at least a minute until it's strong enough. Made me really appreciate the finecast version.

 xttz wrote:

Metal Swooping Hawks deserve a special place in hell. The wings are heavy enough to fall off with the slightest breeze, and there's no 'safe' angle to position the model while the glue dries. You end up needing to hold each wing in position for at least a minute until it's strong enough. Made me really appreciate the finecast version.

And they end up so top heavy they fall over and break if there's even a slight cough in the same room.

 Chaos Santa wrote:
Wow that more reply's then I thought this topic would get.

My vote if I had one would be the Necron Ghost Ark, I'm still not looking forward to getting more of those things, especially if you put all the people in it.

It was also my first model to fall off its flying base and break most of its guns off in one game.

Oh god I hated this thing. It is the number one reason I won't ever play an ark convoy list. I haven't put a pod together, but at least that model would have larger sections. Holding together a half-warrior, in a middle piece, while lining up the connectors that hold the guns, and attaching the giant U sections all at the same time nearly made me throw the model on the ground. Twice.

I leave the guns off mine. You can't pin them, and the contact area is too small for a strong enough bind with glue alone. The kicker is that it just barely stands up on that base, woobles every which way when the table is bumped.

Everyone told me the monolith was a nightmare, but I put it together faster than most models and the only pinning needed was the large back piece near the crystal. The 2nd one I put together was only bad because one of the sprews was super warped, so I had to unbend it (that took forever to get right).

Not so much hard, but annoying as goes out to every model similar to the Trygon kit. In what part of the process did GW think it was a good idea to have 54 spikes NOT attached to the model, and leave huge indentations where they should be put so that you can't leave them off and still look fine.

It's been mentioned quite a few times already here, but metal Bloodthirster. I got him for like $40, but I now realize that this is the first model I'm going to have to pin. The wings for sure, Hopefully, not anything else, but maybe the legs to the base. Everything else seems to go on just fine except for the wings.

Pin everything on him. Trust me. The last thing you want is an arm dropping off mid game. You won't want to hold the game up for long enough to fix it back.

Do it once, do it well

 Chaos Santa wrote:
Wow that more reply's then I thought this topic would get.

My vote if I had one would be the Necron Ghost Ark, I'm still not looking forward to getting more of those things, especially if you put all the people in it.

It was also my first model to fall off its flying base and break most of its guns off in one game.

*bro-fist* Until now, the GA is the most infuriating kit I assembled until now. I'm sure I will face bigger challenges but it wasn't fun, not one bit. I didn't even put the Necrons inside: spare bits!

I already gave up trying to glue back 3 of the side weapons.

Metal thunderfire here, because you had to put the cannon and the techmarine together. Bad combo. Nothing else comes close. Also the cannon mold always seems off.

Metal Lord of Change sucked. Thin body with big wings. Yay.