What's the biggest modelling disaster you've suffered?

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**Jinx Magiga**

Midway into constructing a Land Raider Crusader i took a break and when i returned my construction manual was gone.
I looked for it for about an hour before giving up,now and then i started filing the mould lines off of the LRC pieces and forgetting where i put them.
The result is the following: i have a LRC that's been sitting on my desk half assembled for months and parts of it scattered throughout the house (still haven't found the manual

)

**feeder**

Buying Malifaux Hired Swords. They are gorgeous but so fiddly to put together, and the details are so fine I feel like my painting ability is suffering a -10 skill check.

**Ensis Ferrae**

For me, it was assembling and then taking my Malifaux minis outside to spray... Of course, for most of my stuff, this is the normal routine. However, on this day, it was rather windy, and the combined weight of the minis was not enough to hold the box down, so I started spraying, the box flipped, and somehow the arm from one of my mannequins broke from the torso, never to be seen again.

**Elemental**

feeder wrote:
Buying Malifaux Hired Swords. They are gorgeous but so fiddly to put together, and the details are so fine I feel like my painting ability is suffering a -10 skill check.

There's still a gap on one of my kneeling Ronin where the thigh doesn't connect with her body. Thankfully, it's mostly hidden by the skirt.

I also put the hip joints in wrong on a Warmachine colossal, so the Galleon was leaning forward at about 45 degrees. They had to be severed completely and heavily pinned to support all the weight. Even now, it will still lean forwards verrrry slooowly when standing up, and need to be tilted back after games to resume the vertical position.

**Leigen_Zero**

Assembling an Infinity Lunokhod Sputnik.

For those that aren't aware, they come with those 'base extenstions' that CB are (in)famous for.

Thought 'I don't like those, they don't mesh with my resin bases, I'll repose it to fit on a 40mm without the extensions'
And so 2 pieces became 4, and 4 became 7, and 7 became 12'

10 minutes later I had completely b0rkeD the legs, so it became a hover-drone...

**Kiwidru**

stupid storm talons have multiple small doodads that must be glued UNDER the shell of the plane, so annoying when you got the storm wing box and it didnt come with instructions... hard choice of prying apart glue, meticulously trimming down the nicknacks, or just leaving open holes in the torso....

**Krinsath**

The ones that have lead to the most frustration have been DFG's Leviathans and completely self-inflicted by not paying attention to the directions. Assembled one of the feet without putting the ball of the leg in and then closed up the screw holes with their covers. Thankfully they weren't glued in so a bit of careful knife-work extracted them with minimal damage so I could actually do what the picture was showing in the first place.

The other was not using enough glue on one of the shoulders so it popped out after the model was assembled. Now I can't get sufficient pressure on the joint to leave it movable and will probably have to just leave it fixed. Not the end of the world, but it just sucks because I didn't use sufficuent glue for such a load-bearing joint.

Don't think I've made any other particularly terrible modelling mistakes on gaming models that come to mind. I'm sure if I rummaged through my collection I could find a few though.

**rayphoton**

getting into wh40k

**djphranq**

Starting the hobby period.... all this time modeling playing games and stuff could have been spent getting out there and meeting women (and or men) so as to get a significant other and then finally get a family.

**angelofvengeance**

djphranq wrote:
Starting the hobby period.... all this time modeling playing games and stuff could have been spent getting out there and meeting women (and or men) so as to get a significant other and then finally get a family.

Amusing...

**jason1977**

TheCustomLime wrote:
I think the worst mistake I have ever made was when I got the Eisenkern Storm Troopers. I had them all nice and assembled. It was a day later that I realized that I had the shoulder pads on the wrong way. All 20 of them. It took a lot of prying to set them right.

Same boat. Many of my deathwing terminators have backward shoulder pads. Havent changed them and dont plan to. Fluff reason: they havent caught a fallen DA so while good they havent been forgiven.

**Mr. Grey**

While I was putting together Beast-09(Warmachine character warjack), I mistakenly assembled him with his hip piece facing backwards. The model is beautifully painted, but it took me about a week to realize that his metal loincloth was hanging down the back instead of the front.

One of my deff dread's lower arms has the magnet glued in with opposite polarity to all three other arm sockets. Instead of prying it out, I simply repeated same mistake on deff dread #2, so I can still easily swap out arms.

**snooggums**

djphranq wrote:
Starting the hobby period.... all this time modeling playing games and stuff could have been spent getting out there and meeting women (and or men) so as to get a significant other and then finally get a family.

I got back into 40k to get away!

**Da Butcha**

This is a tie, for me:

Took some Necrons with me on vacation to paint. Primed them in the Florida Keys. Fuzzy Necrons!

Years, and years ago, painted up my first squad of Space Wolves. Primed them, basecoated them with GW's Shadow Grey spray paint (which they made then). Painted them painstakingly, then touched up any errors with Shadow Grey paint. WHICH WAS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COLOR FROM THE SPRAY PAINT (even checked with my mate who worked at GW at the time. The spray was a different hue than the paint in the pot, but named the same). I don't think I ever painted another Space Wolf.

**Comrade**

I superglued my Leman Russ turret to the hull when I first started warhammer. Rookie mistake, pretty common I hear.

**TheFireDrake**

Every model i painted as a child. Those poor poor models, i guess i can always strip them.

**PrehistoricUFO**

I've never had anything major or noteworthy, I suppose the biggest disaster I've faced was one of those 'frosted' finishes that GW's Purity Seal causes when it isn't shaken long enough/improper temperature/etc. I did a bad ass paint job to my very first Steel Legion Sergeant, and it ended up all frosted. To be honest, it actually went with the gritty Steel Legion scheme anyway, since it wasn't so prominent I just left it.

**SickSix**

Just recently I glued the sponsons onto one of my landtlraiders. My case fits two without sponsons on.... I screwed that up. I meant to magnetize.

**oni**

Using UN-CURE CA debonder on a Land Raider without reading the warning(s).

The debonder melts plastic. :(

**Bossk_Hogg**

I once grabbed the can of white primer instead of matte varnish when going to seal a bunch of minis....

**cincydooley**

Not really a mistake (the placement was), but I had a Warhound Titan fall of a shelf and land on some Dust Warfare models I'd been getting ready to box up to sell.

When I found out it had happened, my wife said I "screamed like I'd been stabbed".

Fortunately the dust models took the bunt of the damage and I used epoxy and pinned most of the Warhound, but I stil had to repair his feet.

**bosky**

When I was younger I kept my minis in a low box, unfortunately right by where I spray painted (first mistake). I was base coating a vehicle, so I put a piece of cardboard over my painted mini box (second mistake). Unfortunately this wasn't the best seal, and spurts of the base coat got in and speckled basically every mini I had painted at that point. :(

**Portugal Jones**

Bossk_Hogg wrote:
I once grabbed the can of white primer instead of matte varnish when going to seal a bunch of minis....

Ha, I forgot about that one. It was really late and I was just finishing off my Leman Russ, so it'd be ready for my first game of Warhammer ever the next morning. I put the last details on, let it dry, and the reached for what I thought was the can of matte sealer. What I picked up instead was gray primer...

Fortunately, I only hit one side of the tank, but I got no sleep at all that night.

**Selym**

Jimsolo wrote:
I'm extremely cautious when I model, so I don't tend to make HUGE mistakes.

My worst mistake has been choosing to prime my drop pods before assembling them. Since I did that, I couldn't plastic glue them, had to be super glue. Since I did THAT, they've come apart like ninety times. I'm really sick of gluing them back together.

Get polycement. Burns down plastic paints, melts a little of the model's surface, and can then be bonded properly with the rest of the model.

**Desubot**

Iv never had anything tooo terrible happen but the first was when i grabbed a can of armypainter daemonic yellow that went on super thick and pitted my first 20 marines

the second was when i spilled a full can of plastic solvent all over my nice 2x4 feet plasticard sheet ruining it.

**rigeld2**

Was assembling a Flyrant. Everything went well, but then I dropped the upper torso. No big deal, everything broke at glue joints pretty much. As I was about to stand up and pick up the pieces my 3 year old son came to the door and said "Daddy I'll help!" He picked up the closest piece (a wing) and ran over to me.

Crushing the head, other wing, and part of the torso in the process.

I couldn't be mad at him...

**dementedwombat**

Assembling my riptide, the first model I had put together for years (bought a ton of new tau stuff when the new codex hit). Was really careful because I knew I was rusty. Following the directions exactly.

Assembled the lower leg, didn't realize that the ball joint for the ankle was on the foot. Had to take a file to the leg until I got the hole big enough to shove the ball joint in, the freeze it in place with copious quantities of superglue.

That was unfortunate. Vowed not to let that happen again. Finished assembling that leg, started on the other leg...did the exact same thing.

I blame the fact that on crisis suits the ankle joint is on the leg! who thought it would be a good idea to attach it to the foot?

**darkcloak**

I used to use my thumbnail as a paint palette of sorts. I was doing some drybrushing with grey and using rather swift strokes, forgot all about the little puddle of red on my thumb. Turned the mini a bit, whipped the brush over it and suddenly, pink.

Had to pretty much repaint the whole figure.

**Schmapdi**

Not strictly hobby related, but because of my hobby skills I am often asked by family members to repair small/delicate things.

My aunt gave me an old, delicate ceramic butterfly that was broken, and needed some paint touch-ups. I glued it back into place, and touched up the broken paint, etc and got things looking as good as new. I was feeling pretty cocky and proud at how quickly and nicely I was able to repair the butterfly. Only took an hour or so.

Just as I was finishing up I fumbled the damn thing. I managed to catch it thankfully, but in doing so I broke the butterfly from its perch, broke off its wings. Bent its little antennae. I basically had to start all over from square one and re-repair it. Immediately humbled by hobby gods I guess.

My only other real disaster involved knocking over a bottle of wood glue and not noticing it for a minute. Long enough for a large amount of woodglue to flow onto my keyboard. But it cleaned up easily enough.

**SamuliA**

When dipping was new and still commonly done by shaking the excess off instead of just brushing, I decided to dip a Confrontation Drune minotaur, which I had pinned to it's base.

After submerging the mino in a pot of woodstain I extracted it and went out into the garden to shake. To get proper G-force, I decided to hold onto the base and rotate my arm windmill style. The mino immediately separated from the base and smacked into the grass. Spent 15 minutes hunting for an arm. Luckily dip was not dry by that time and the model cleaned up fine...