Metal Winged Hive Tyrant (Part 1)

by | Mar 19, 2024

 Yeah. I have a metal winged Hive Tyrant. Well, the wings are not metal. In fact, I'm pretty sure the wings aren't even from a GW product, but I suspect they're from an old McFarlane dragon toy.  I have never confirmed this however. Regardless I think it looks cool. I got this of. Of ebay before the current Hive Tyrant was released. Back in those frontier times one had to convert wings onto their metal Hive Tyrant models if they wanted one. Usually folks used either the plastic dragon wings that most of the WHFB dragons all used or the LotR Balrog wings. 

Target Alpha, Codename: Flappy. 

The mad genius who put this model together was seriously into magnets. To this day I'm astounded by what this person accomplished on this thing. A series of perfectly polarly aligned magnets dot the back of this model and connect to the piece that the wings are attached to. The arms are all attachable with magnets also. The builder of this thing must have drilled into the model to allow the magnets to sit so perfectly in them. 

Magnet madness.

For reasons that confound me he even drilled into the upper half of the model and built a base on the lower half for the magnets to connect so perfectly. I think transportability was the inspiration behind a lot of these choices. Despite all the greenstuff and other steps used to secure this model, his tail broke off when I moved back in 2014. 

Bug bisected.

Despite all the magnetization and the inherant potential to be able to swap weapons, this critter only came with one loadout, which was the Venom Cannon. And for reasons I don't recall, I simply never acquired the other weapons. Until recently when Mrs. Neverness gave me the gift of the Swarmlord kit. 

New weapons, new choices. 

Now I have the additional weapons and I have attached the magnets to them, I am ready to move forward with this project. (Although figuring out storage is still proving to be a challenge). 

"...help..."

As I was ooh-ing, and ah-ing over this model, while attempting to figure how to paint it, I felt it needed the requisite dead foe bit somewhere on it. I had a left over Sergeant hand from the Assault Intercessors kit and I thought it would be amusing to have it poking out of the rubble in all it's futility.  It, no doubt, belonging to the crushed marine under the collapsed floor or wall that this Hive Tyrant now poses on.

For now this Hive Tyrant will join the queue alongside the Swarmlord (and few other friends).  I hope to be able to paint both of these big miniatures together but we'll see how things in my "real life" shake out.