Having finally broken open my Überfallkommando box set that was bought back in the Autumn, the assembly of the Chimera and Evil Ram Pupnik (henceforth known as the Evil Goat Git) was involved enough to deserve a blog post in addition to the review!

First, Evil Goat Git.

The big issue here is the right elbow joint which takes the weight of the model, this got a big solid paperclip pin, plus the usual magnets in the base - even more important in this case as the Chimer & Pupniks have Climbing Plus and can do Spiderman-style walking on the ceiling or walls.

The rest of the construction was reasonably straightforward apart from the horns, there's not a lot of space to get them in place with the head attached so I decided to get the head fitting well, glue the horns to the head and then attach the head to the body.

I'm still not sure if it was the best route but it worked:

The right elbow was the only joint to be pinned.

Now the Chimera. Here are the parts plus a normal-sized paperclip and a plastic Space Marine for scale. She's thin. Very thin.

As mentioned in the review, her arms would fit inside a Bolt Pistol barrel if it weren't for the bangles:

This poses a number of problems for assembly - the contact points for gluing are tiny but the arms are too thin to use regular pinning techniques - the wrist simply isn't thick enough to drill a 0.8mm hole in safely.

Time for EXTREME PINNING with your host, Ian Wood!

This is the upper left arm held in a small vice between a couple of scrap bits of foamboard to stop the arm getting scratched or deformed. On the left is the 0.8mm paperclip material that I usually use for pinning. In the drill is a 0.3mm drill bit in a 'sensitive drill', in effect it's a small model-maker's drill press. Although you can use a pin vice to hold bits this small, the bits are so fragile that it's very easy to break them with the slightest sideways pressure.

Three joints were pinned like this - the left shoulder, left wrist and right wrist. Here's the two pins in the main model part:

Now with the left arm attached and a 'normal' pin in the base of the tail:

And the tab cut down to pins before gluing all the fragile bits on!

Finally, everything glued together:

There's still a bit of filling to do on the Punik's horns and neck and he needs more rubbish on the base, but apart from that they're assembled! The other two Pupniks should be a doddle in comparison.

UPDATE

This evening I got the Mad Fox Pupnik assembled, with the head tilted up a bit further than it's designed for:

The raised head makes the model look more alert but does leave a gap under the chin, but given the position this probably won't even need filling.

Also assembled this evening was a Ground Zero Games flying drone with a couple of rotary cannon.

Ignoring the cannon, this is going to be used as a surveillance drone in one of the Spring Challenge tournament missions. To help with transport the top of the flying column base has been magnetised and a 3x5mm magnet inserted into the mounting hole in the underside of the drone.

Due to the tendency of the clear plastic to melt, this hole had to be finished by hand. Some small holes were added to the rotary cannon barrels.

Ian