Hiss of the Chimera

Storm of Magic was released, and I was instantly excited.  If it wasn't the DnD player in me, it was the Warhammer player that wanted monsters that jumped for joy.  I play Empire and High Elves primarily, and both those armies are light on the monsters.  Empire has cannons to combat monsters and HE ride dragons into battle next to Iggles.  But all in all, the Beastmen, Dark Elves, all the Chaos books, and even the undead started to make me a bit jealous.  I wanted to use massive beasts too.

Now I can.  Now I can bring up to a quarter of my army points in monsters!  I can take Giants in my Empire (especially useful if you play Ostermark- famous for having regiments of 'agreeable' giants in their armies), I can use Cockatrices in my High Elves, and I can even use a Dragon!  Anyone that's not excited about this is a Momo.

I went out and bought the Storm of Magic book and the Chimera post-haste.  The wife made the fatal mistake of 'allowing' me to spend the money and I pounced.  I bought the monster and went to work.

The steps are easy.  There are only three and they totally make sense.  GW certainly made this kit with the novice modeller in mind.  The whole model is contained on one sprue.  The advantage is that there's no risk of lost parts or mispacked boxes.  The bad part is that there's no extra bitz.  Usually, GW overfills the boxes with as many extra options and bitz as possible, but I suppose a Chimera is a Chimera. 

Step 1:  The body

Very simple, very few parts, totally intuitive.  The only advice I'd offer here is that you should pin the tail.  It's long and thin and that makes the tail vulnerable to breaking.  I broke it twice before I decided to pin it. 

Step 2:  The wings and such

No worries on this step.  I really like the wings.  I hope GW offers them as bitz the same way as old Dragon wings and Balrog wings.  By this point, you'll notice that you might want to fill the gaps and make the joints less obvious, but the model looks good without it.  I didn't do anything to clean it up and I'm impressed with the results.

Step 3:  The head[s]

Watch out for the tusk-and-tongue assembly in the 'beastly' head.  I almost assembled it upside down, but it felt right the other way.  The two flanking heads were a little difficult to position on there, but plastic glue is malleable and I finally found the 'sweet spots'.  It's all a matter of feeling the model. 

And there ya go.  Slap some primer and paint on that sucker, and you'll have yourself a badass monster to use in Storm of Magic.  Remember, it's only $42 here in America, and a good one costs upwards of 225 points.  Add a couple of Giants, and that's 25% of 2500 point games!  Sensing my plan yet?

To finish, here's my almost-done Chimera.  I recently inheritted my old He-Man tiger toy, and I wanted to copy that on this model.  I don't think it's coming out too bad, but I definitely need to put more work into it. 

Happy Hobbying!