Chimera Alternatives

For those of us Guard players who don't like the stock GW Chimera, there are plenty of alternatives out there.  Not being much of a Chimera fan at all, I haven't tried very many but I was given the opportunity to the other week when I went over to Zzzzz's place (for the Big Apocolypse Doom Game)  He gave me this kit to build up - a Hammer APC from War Chimera.

It was an interesting challenge, doing something totally different and non-GW, and opened my eyes to the possibility of varying the stock options in a GW army.  Let me talk you through some of the pictures.

What have we here?  All a little bewhildering at first ...

But it slowly comes together.

And finished, at last!  (Eagle eyed readers will notice from the desk-lamp light
 that it's dark by this point, that's how long it took to build).

And a closeup of some of the lovely rivet detailing.

This was a tricky kit to build.  It took a lot of dry runs to get the feel for how it was supposed to go together, but most annoying was the inconsistency of the parts.  You can see from the track guard above that a lot of the bits didn't fit together well - the wheels especially were a nightmare and took huge quantities of filler and Green Stuff to slot together.  A lot of superglue was required here.

Having said that, once the kit was (eventually) together it looked very nice indeed, there's obviously been a focus of effort on the top because the sides are totally flat bare except for the wheels - but as I say that shouldn't detract from what is a very nice looking model.  You certainly get value and, while I've stressed the difficulty I had in building it to be fair the actual quality of the resin was high, and even FW resins have warping problems.

If I had got this to replace all the Chimeras in my army I would be happy.  A little apprehensive about repeating this galling experience with the rest of the kits but that would be outweighed by how cool they look.  If you're considering replacements, think carefully as lots of effort and some skill is required.

Having said that, you only build a model once,  and then you game with it for years, so I know what's more important out of building or gaming.

Thanks to Zzzzz for the chance at doing these, a painting update will follow at some point in the coming weeks.  Comment below if you've had any experience with Chimera alternatives!

Thanks for reading,

The Colonel