GAMES WORKSHOP HIVE TYRANT BUILD REVIEW

Games workshop has once again given us a superbly bizarre piece to work with in the form of the Tyranid Hive Tyrant. (Yes it has been out for a while) In true Games Workshop style the box art is impeccable and can be used as a painting guide. The backside box art shows multiple variants of the Hive Tyrant and shows a list of suggested paints all from Citadel. I purchased my kit of the Hive Tyrant from The Traveler's Den in Colonial Heights Va, depending on your age you will get this reference , it is like walking into Cheers. “ where everyone knows your name”. In the excitement of the moment the kit did not make it out of the store before being opened and plans being made for the paint slingin to follow. Upon opening the box I was greeted with incredibly well molded parts in a medium gray styrene. There was no flash to be found and everything looked well molded. There are no decals provided with this kit as none are needed. The kit contains the sprues and instruction . Before diving into the assembly and paint slingin to follow , I read through the entire instruction booklet, which is well represented with images in a cad style rendering. There are multiple variants of the hive tyrant that can be built from this one kit. Most of those tyrants variants revolve around various weapon systems which would be the following, a strangle Thorn Cannon a heavy Venom Cannon and a monstrous bones sword and at last a Lash Whip. In addition there is the winged variant as shown on the front box art. For my build I chose to do a variant that is not shown on the box art in total. Choosing instead to show a creature that is more feral looking and primitive. The assembly for this is very straightforward following the instructions is definitely suggested. Total build time was 56 minutes. When building mine I did leave the head off until after final paint. In hindsight it may have been better to leave the wings and arms off also and attach them after final paint. By doing that it definitely would've simplified that a bit but I wanted to see how this would go together as a completely assembled kit as far as paint in weathering is concerned. The styrene itself in the kit has a consistency that makes it incredibly easy to clean up, and its sands very nicely. It also takes paint well. I cannot say enough good about the styrene in general. Circling back to the cleanup aspect, once again Games Workshop has done an extremely good job in positioning the parts on the sprue as well as the sprue gates for the injection mold process. The attachment points are generally in an area that is easy to get to and very simple to clean. The overall engineering of this kit is second too none. There are a few other mainstream model manufacturers that could take some lessons from the engineering involved here. ( They shall remain nameless) I don't believe that games workshop does slide mold technology but the level of detail on a lot of this kit very much resembles that process which allows an incredible level of detail to be brought to the kit. Now for the cons of this build. The cons would be fit issues, of which I only had one, the lower two thirds of the prehensile tail mates to the upper portion of the tail going into the torso or thorax if you will and connects in a stair step manner meaning there is a high and low on each part. This one drawback was very easily remedied by using a very small amount of liquid green stuff applied with a toothpick to fill this tiny he seam. Some people may not even worry about that same seam. For me the seam just would not get out of my minds eye and I had to fix it, with that being said this could have very well been a M. I .E., a.k.a. modeler induced error. In conclusion this kit is highly recommended whether you are playing the game or just want a really cool kit , either way this will look great on the game table or your shelf.

Rating : ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Written by C.B.