Another ‘Nid Flyrant

Have you ever had a model that you were really enthusiastic about, but never managed to make any momentum on and ended up being an absolute chore? That’s what this guy was for me...

I originally decided to build a Flyrant about 2 years ago when I bought my first Tyrant model (still metal back then...) and one of the torso pieces were missing. GW were great and immediately gave me a replacement kit no questions asked and let me keep the original one. I then managed to pick up the missing piece off a bitz store for about £3 – so win!

Although in 5^th Ed Flyrants were prone to being shot to hell Turn 1, I always liked the idea of having one, so I picked up some WFB Dragon wings to make a simple conversion.

I then decided to completely repose the model as if it were just landing and was flaring its wings. I cut apart all of the leg joints and changed the angles of the shoulders with GS, but I could never get it how I wanted and the sheer weight of the model kept breaking the pinned joints. I quickly gave up and remodelled it based on a standing position which annoyingly looks exactly like the stock model. Oh well.

It got armed with a pair of Scything Talons and a single pair of Devourers primarily because I didn’t have the extra set of Devourers to make it a Dakka-Flyrant. Ironically enough, after a few games proxying weapons with my FW Flyrant, this is actually my favourite configuration; the Devourers give 6 S6 Twin-Linked shots (re-rolls to-hit) and Vector Strike or psychic Witchfire count as my secondary shooting attacks. The Scything Talons allow for re-rolling 1’s to-hit in combat. With all those re-rolls and the fact the Flyrant is often away from the rest of the army, it makes the need for the Old Adversary upgrade (grants the Flyrant and units within 6 inches Preferred Enemy) redundant and saves me 25pts!

The thing then sat in my “back-up WIP box” for around 18 months waiting to be painted until 6^th Ed came out and I had loads of fun playing my FW Flyrant.

Painting seemed to take forever and the model weighs a ton, but needs to be held at weird angles so you can paint everything. I would constantly paint one colour and then go off and work on something else...I think I’ve been painting it for about 6 months now... and to top it off, the Purity Seal frosted slightly around the top of the model (luckily most of it was covered by a gloss varnish on the talons).

Overall I'm really not a fan of the model, but I'm hoping to pick up one of the new Tyrant/Flyrant kits to magnetise and make a better job of it.

My first Forgeworld piece (its a Flyrant!)

I have wanted a Forgeworld piece ever since I first laid my eyes on their site when started collecting again a few years back, but I always end up weighing up the price of one of of their pieces against the ever growing “to buy” list and always opted for the latter (especially because most of the ‘Nid FW pieces can’t really be played in most games).

Just before 6^th Ed dropped I managed to pick this guy up off eBay for about a quarter of the normal FW price (with the new focus on flyers, I bet it would have gone for more now) and according to the seller, the model just needed the head gluing back on, but was otherwise “pro-painted” (I really hate that term) and in perfect condition.

When it finally turned up, it needed a little more attention than the seller let on, unless it got damaged in transit and all of the broken parts mysteriously disappeared from the shipping box....

The central horn on the head was broken, as well as the Tyrants tongue – simple enough jobs to fix (I reshaped the the rear of the head and the tongue and you can’t tell unless you have another model to compare it to). Also the model was in about 20 different parts...

I left it in parts and started stripping the “pro paint job” (which was two colour minimum and looked like it had been applied with a trowel). At this point I thought the model looked nice but didn’t see what all the FW fuss was about – it had no more detail than a regular GW model...and then I stripped off the top layer of paint. And then the next. And the next. And another one...about 5 coats in all until I got to the black undercoat...and I have no idea what had been used to undercoat the thing but it was now a black tar that was so thick and viscous that it could be moved around the model and took impressions of your fingerprints when you touched it – horrible stuff! Dettol and Power Spray wouldn’t touch the stuff, so it took hours of scrubbing with hot water (trying not to warp the FW resin too much) to finally get rid of it all – and there it was...FW detail! And it was niiiice!

The model then went back together nicely and was actually relatively easy to paint – here it is: