Going Berserk!!!

With the latest Clash of Kings supplement released last fall, the Forces of the Abyss got a refresh, including two new hard plastic kits.  The easiest way to get these is with the new Ambush box

The box has the Ambush quick start rules booklet

It also has a reference sheet on assembling the models, and the stats to use them in Kings of War

But of course, it is the actual models that are interesting.  The box contains 5 plastic sprues, 2 for the Abyssal Berserkers, and 3 for the Abyssal Nagari.  Each sprue for the Berserkers makes 3 models, while the Nagari makes a single model.  There are also MDF multibases for two large infantry regiments and a chariot regiment.

I'm going to look at the Berserkers here, then the Nagari in the next post.

First off, these are a large infantry unit - and are pretty much huge versions of the lower abyssals, but with two weapons.

Once again these were made in Poland.

All the pieces are labeled with the appropriate model - A, B or C.  For all the models, you have to attach the right leg - these are all keyed slightly differently - so the A leg only fits the A body, as well as the other two.  These actually fit pretty well, but I do recommend a bit of dry fitting before gluing so you can see how they fit together.

body A

body B

body C

There are three heads on the sprue.  While these are also labeled to match the bodies, they are completely interchangeable since they all use the same neck socket.

Each body then has 4 arms - two left and two right.

A arms

B Arms

C arms

I immediately noticed that you could pair up the arms from the different bodies so that a model could have 2 of the same weapon in each hand (which is what I wanted).

So you have flaming swords from A and B

Battle axes.  Each model has one.  I'm not sure why the decided to make two right arms with the battle ax, although the angle is slightly different.  Personally I would have made the third (or is that the second right) hand hold a match for one of the other weapons instead.

There there are two big spiked clubs.  Unfortunately these are both LEFT hands.  I don't understand why, instead of making one a left and the other a right.

There is also a curved hook - but both of these are RIGHT hands.

That leaves 3 more arms that are 'singles' as well - still 6 left and 6 right arms in total.

I wanted the pairs of weapons for each of models to match - easy enough with the flaming swords and battle axes.

In order to have the other weapons match, it required a simple weapon swap for the arms

before swapping

This was very easy to do - simply use a sharp hobby knife to to cut the weapon top and bottom off the hand.

I then switched the arms

And glued the weapons to the new arms.

spiked club

curved hooks

One reason that hard plastic is so popular for models is the ease of assembly when using plastic model cement.  If you didn't know, this works by 'melting' the plastic, and when it dries the melted pieces mix and become solid again, - so effectively become one piece.  This is different that other glues, where the glue dries and adheres to each part, holding them in place.  Because of this, it is easier to separate the multiple parts even after they have set.  But with plastic cement there are no longer two separate parts - they are fused and often can be stronger than the surrounding plastic.

This is more important for this kit (I feel), not for conversions, but when assembling the arms.  The arm joint for these is NOT smooth, it is concave.

The shoulders are then convex    These are not deep, nor are they even.  I believe the idea is to help with positioning the angle of the arms correctly.

Unfortunately, I feel they have failed with this.  The pieces don't fit together 'strongly' enough for this to act as a guide to the position.   I was not able to determine what was supposed to be the 'correct' positioning for any arm on any body.  

There are, in my mind, three ways to improve this.  One is to make the joint more strongly 'keyed', such that the appropriate parts only fit together one way.  (Years ago, when I was making my 'Grateful Undead' army, GW came out with new hard plastic ghouls.  While the arm/shoulder joint was again concave/convex, it was deeper and strongly made such that the arms could only fit in one way.  At the time I found this extremely frustrating, as I needed to convert 40 of these to have their arms overhead (they were the roadies for the band, carrying various pieces of equipment).  In order to rotate the arms, I essentially had to cut off the joint completely and use a bit of green stuff to fill in the gaps after rotating the arm.  This type of joint is the most restrictive, but in doing so can also give the 'cleanest' joints - so long as you are happy with the model fitting together in only 1 way with no alternatives (i.e. no arm swaps even).

The second alternative is to use round ball & socket joint (which is what they have done for the heads). This allows a wide range of placement, including 360 degrees around the axis of the joint, as well as some forward/back movement.  This can give the most flexibility, but often leaves more gaps and less clean joints.

The third, and my preferred alternative, is to make a flat joint instead.  This allows for a full 360 degrees of rotation (which is almost never needed) but generally fits better than ball/socket joints.  

However I can't go back and redesign the sprue, so I have to work with what I have.  This is were the plastic cement actually helps.  Since it 'melts' the pieces, it makes them softer, so a little bit of pressure on the softened pieces and make these arms fit with no gaps (most of the time), even if not that the correct position that they were intended for.  

So with that out of the way, I made a regiment with each model using the same weapons in each hand instead of the chaotic mashup (I did the same thing with the succubi).  

One thing to be careful with is when you are putting these into a multibase - as between the tails and arms they don't want to all fit nicely together.  It can be an even bigger issue if you are making hordes of them, because then you don't just have to worry about the fitting side-to-side but also front-to-back.

Of course I have just used blu-tac to a base (magnetic for transport) until they get painted (my plan is to have them ready for Origins in June - so I have plenty of time :-) ).

Because it is all fun and games . . .