It came from below

The veer-myn infest everything, living and breeding beneath the very cities that the GCPS calls civilization.  And when it is time for them to go to war, they turn their huge tunneling machines toward the surface, and arm them with heavy weapons.

The Veer-myn tunneler is both a tank and a transport for the rat like creatures.  Every general fielding these creatures will want one, both for it's underground advance, as well as it's sheer power in battle.

So let's see what we have.  Like all their kickstarter models, you don't get the commercial packaging, just a big baggie of pieces.

I tried to group these logically, so you have the pieces for the front weapon

The drill bits

The main hull

The treads and other final pieces

So how does it go together?  It is not too difficult a kit, once you explore it a bit.

The first thing is to glue the side panels to the body.  These only fit one way.  I think that if you got the formation then you may have gotten some alternate panels - my kit just came with the two.

They fit vert snug.  I didn't notice it at first, but they have a convenient arrow on the panels to indicate the front of the model.  The front and back are subtly difference, and while you could assemble it backwards, things just don't fit as well.

After the panels, then glue the two halves of the hull together.

Then glue the treads on.  Each tread could go on either side, and you can thus choose the orientation of the wheels inside the treads (two on top and three on bottom, or the reverse).  I like having the treads 'pointing' forward myself.

Next glue on the conveyer.  This is where you can see the difference between the front and the back.  If you orient the flat part of the belt to the front, it fits flush to it.  If it is backward, then it stick out.

The back hangs over and fits into the back of the hull.

The back hull/hatch glues on easily

Next comes the front - which has a large adapter ring, as well as 'bumpers' to help move the rock out of the way.

These both go on the bottom of the ring, with the rivet details outward

Then the ring fits onto the body.  Again, if you have the formation, then you will have an adapter ring to allow you to join two tunnelers together.  For just the single body however, you have the dig ring.

And the base body is done.  Now for the digger / weapon options.

There are three hinges that go on the front ring.  These drop in - you generally won't want to glue them.

Each hinge snaps into the ring.

The hinges then rotate to bring the dig bits in or out

Inside of this is the cover for the weapons.  If you are only using this for a transport, then you can simply use the closed ring.  I want to make mine convertible, so I'm using the open ring.

There is a small notch in the hatch ring - I line this up with the top of the outer ring.  This fits fairly tightly, but you still need a little of glue OUTSIDE the hinges to get it to stay, as the pressure between the rings is what 'locks' the drill bits in place.

back of ring

hinges open

hinges closing

There are two weapon options - each has a notch in the base that fits in the inner ring.  I did attempt to remove the base on these, but these are particularly thick items, and it just wasn't working without the potential to ruin the weapon AND base.

weapons and ring

back of ring with weapon installed

Super Heavy Ray Gun

Chem-Sprayer

After trying a few options, I finally decided on magnetizing the ring - this way it would come off and either weapon could then be put in.  If you are just doing a transport (without a weapon) it does leave a hole unfortunately.

So to do this, I drilled 1/8" holes on either side (so they won't interfere at all with the top and bottom tabs.

I then glued in neodymium magnets in each hole.  I set these back so that the matching magnets on the ring would NOT have to be drilled in - they would instead fit in these holes.

One trick when you magnetizing parts where you have magnets together (as opposed to magnets on metal, where polarity doesn't matter).  I have a bunch of skulls glued to magnets (that I used for my old GW ogres) - this allows me to easily make a stack of magnets, and always know the polarities are correct.

So I used this to glue in the magnet, but did a small stack (three).  This still left a lip so I could set the outer ring in place and glue the top magnet of the stack to it.  After the glue dried, the top magnet stuck to the inner ring, the bottom stayed on the outer ring, and I then easily pulled off the middle spacer one.

outer ring with magnet stack

inner ring with magnets after they are set

Then the drill bits can then be glued to the hinges

Putting the inner ring on the body without a weapon allows the drill bits to close for the transport.

Either of the two weapons can now be put in place

Chem-sprayer

Super-Heavy Ray Gun

With magnets on both pieces, even with the heavy drill bits on everything easily stays in place

Finally, I thought I'd do a size comparison with the Tunnel Runner.

It took a bit to figure out how everything went together, but after that it wasn't hard to assemble the model (ok, adding the magnets is a little more advanced).

Weight of Fire did a nice video of both the main and the secondary compartment kits.  I grabbed some screen shots. First is all the components for the add-on kit.  As I mentioned, there are three sets of panels - so this gives some good options.  Plus the connector piece.

This pieces is quite easy to assemble.  If you wanted to keep your options open, then I would say to NOT glue the back on, and only glue the middle connector to the front.  These fit tight enough you probably won't even need magnets.  Just pop the back off, add the secondary, and pop the back onto it.

And here is a shot of the both compartments together.

So now that the rats have a tank - how are the Forge Fathers going to respond?

Because it is all fun and games . . .