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I’ve wanted to put together a swarmlord and some tyranid prime models with dual boneswords since I first got my hands on the new Tyranid Codex. Unfortunately, my skills at making boneswords out of green stuff and strip styrene weren’t up to the challenge.

Fortunately, a couple recent releases by garage companies look like they’ll fill the bill. Chapterhouse, Maxmini, and an Ebay seller named Resinjunkie are all offering some workable substitutes for Tyranid boneswords.

I ended up buying two sets of both the monstrous creature arms and the warrior arms from Chapterhouse. I really like the look of the sword being more integrated than just an arm holding a sword.


Warrior Bonesword Arms

I’ll start with what I liked best. First up is the warrior sized Bonesword arms:

Style: I think this is going to be a case of either you love it or hate it. The integrated sword blade with the “fleshy” bits on the sides and wrapped around the front really isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s a pretty radical departure from GW’s stock bonesword, but I like it. It really looks to me like it grew out of the arm itself, instead of something it picked up. On the plus side, the fact that the arms are resin means you could shave off the details on the blade without too much trouble. The only thing I wasn’t happy about were the ball joints on the arms. They’re facing almost perpendicular, forcing you to mount them too close to the body for me. On the prime I put together I had to modify them slightly to allow the arms to swing out more to the sides.

Quality: The cast resin is top notch. My arms had no warping, very little flash, very few mold lines and only one bubble. It was about pin head sized and out near the end of one of the left blades. No trouble to fill it with a dab of greenstuff. I had two arms cleaned up and ready for mounting in about five minutes. I’m a little hesitant about resin though. It gives crisper detail than metal, but won’t be as strong as metal if the model makes an accidental trip to the floor.

Here are a few pictures of the arms mounted on my Tyranid Prime model.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/TyranidPrimeno1unprimedFront.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/TyranidPrimeno1unprimedLeftSide.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/TyranidPrimeno1unprimedRightSide.jpg

MC Bonesword Arms

Next up are the MC sized bonesword arms. These things were both a joy and disappointment in one package.

Style: As with the warrior sized arms, I think this look is probably going to be a winner or loser to most folks without a lot of middle ground. Again I like the look. However, here’s the big disappointment. These things are HUGE! I have a magnetized metal tyrant. I had figured I could just magnetize these arms and presto, I’ve got a standard tyrant or the swarmlord with just a swap in arms. Unfortunately, as you can see from the pictures below, that isn’t going to work. These arms are just too big for the model. IMO they’re maybe 20% too big. The tyrant’s arm holes are just too close together to find a natural looking arrangement.

In desperation, I tried them out on my Carnifex and Trygon models as well (both magnetized). The Carnifex was better, but not great. The Trygon torso was big enough though that the arms look like the best fit. Good and bad news I guess. I could put together a swarmlord with carnifex lower body, a trygon upper body, Chapterhouse arms and an appropriate head, but I wasn’t really looking to put together a dedicated swarmlord model. I’ll probably proxy him a few times to see if I really want to put in the effort of a whole new model.

Quality: Again, like the warrior sized arms these things were great. No flash, no warping, no bubbles and very few mold lines. I had all four arms cleaned up and ready to go in just a few minutes. With these arms resin definitely seems like the right call. They seem quite solid and should stand up to gaming just fine. The lighter resin (versus metal) means that a 1/8” diameter, 1/8” tall rare earth magnet holds this the arm in my socket quite well. Whatever model I end up using these on should take magnetization without a problem.

Here’s a few pictures of the arms mounted to a standard metal hive tyrant:

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/SwarmlordTestno1Front.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/SwarmlordTestno1Back.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/SwarmlordTestno1Left.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/SwarmlordTestno1Right.jpg

and a few with the arms on a trygon/mawloc body:

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/SwarmlordTestno2Front.jpg
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb70/rwwingate/SwarmlordTestno2Left.jpg

Any comments or critiques welcome.

Those are the ones navarro sculpted arnt they?

Great work

Not good news for me, since I am waiting for my MC arms to my swarmlord... Hope I can make it work somehow.

The Prime swords are cool, but the MC swords are way too big. Thats a little bit disappointing. :(

i'm in the "hate it" camp. i really like the *IDEA* behind them, which makes more sense than the bonesword GW makes which looks like an actual sword. i like the concept sketches. but the execution just doesn't do it for me. but i'm glad there are products out there so you don't have to buy 4 Hive Tyrants to make 1 Swarmlord...

one question though: what did you use for your Prime's legs? i was breaking-repinning regular warrior legs, but having some difficulty. suggestions?

catharsix wrote:one question though: what did you use for your Prime's legs? i was breaking-repinning regular warrior legs, but having some difficulty. suggestions?

They are the legs from an old OOP tyrant guard (the one with the shield). I was stripping mine down for repainting when I started on the prime and I decided to sacrifice a set to make the prime bigger than a standard warrior. I didn't like the "embiggening" look others were doing by repositioning warrior legs. Here's the parts list I used:

Legs - OOP tyrant guard from 2001
Lower torso - Plastic warrior
Tail - Plastic Ravener
Upper body - Plastic Ravener
Deathspitter - Plastic Warrior
Boneswords - Chapterhouse
Head - Plastic Warrior
Horn - Carnifex bit
Plus a fair ammount of green stuff and epoxysculpt.

thanks for the info! i think i might have to try to come by some of those legs myself, rather than use the repositioned plastic ones...

yea, i like the chapterhouse ymgarl genestealer heads, but these arms didnt do it for me, i got mine form resinaddict, and theyre pretty sweet really,

http://www.resinaddict.com/blog/2010/02/boneswords-for-the-masses/

were more to my taste. got a set of 3 pairs of normal sized and 2 mc sized sets.

It does appear as if those sword arms could have been shrunk some 10 to 20%...

Ah too bad, I was looking forward for these, but they really are too big. Shame... :(

Hate it. They look like butter knives.

Each to his own, I guess?

I think the warrior arms look great, though I think the tyrant arms would look better if you didn't have them sticking straight out to the sides...

Not a fan, I'm afraid.

I think they are quite big but not too big, more like bodybuilder arms. I will get them to have a more Alien look than by the classic hand plus sword design.

kill dem stunties wrote:yea, i like the chapterhouse ymgarl genestealer heads, but these arms didnt do it for me, i got mine form resinaddict, and theyre pretty sweet really,

http://www.resinaddict.com/blog/2010/02/boneswords-for-the-masses/

were more to my taste. got a set of 3 pairs of normal sized and 2 mc sized sets.

I have to concur; I got mine from Resinaddict as well and they are sharp, and to be frank, a little closer to what I had in mind. Chapterhouse does great work but I feel like they are a little off the mark on this one.