Assembly: Tarantula Hyperios Air Defense Platform

Picture courtesy of Forge World

Today I am "unpackaging" my first Tarantula Hyperios Air Defense Platform and assembling it. I'll show you how it went.

 Here's the contents. Well, except for the characters you see. :) It may be hard to see in the picture but a few of the pieces - notably the two missile pods and the targeting unit - have really thick "sprues" that attach to a large portion of their respective piece. They had to be sawed off to remove them which meant careful clean up using a hobby knife and mold line scraper tool. Other than that, asembly was pretty easy and straight forward. The sheet you see is the "instructions". No assembly diagram, however you don't end up needing it once you figure out where the hinges go. The little pieces you see sitting in front of the feet.

The main chassis holes came covered by resin. At first I thought I was going to have to bust out a drill, but fortunately the resin covering proved to be thin and a quick swipe of the hobby knife around the edge carved it right out.

First step was to attach the hinges to the platform base. Fairly self explanatory. The hinges have a flat base that you can see that butts up against the platform base. They then have one side with a bit of overhang and that side faces down.

Next was to attach the feet. The platform is meant to stay up off the ground a little bit. The way I found to achieve that and keep the feet evenly flat was simple.

The feet have a small "ledge" on the inside of the cutout for the hinge. So I put super glue on side of the hinge and flat part of the platform where the back of the foot would connect. I then put two opposing feet on making sure that the ledge was under the hinge. I then pressed down on both feet so they were flat on the surface and it raised the platform up to the correct height. I then hit it with a spritz of accelerator and held it until it supported itself. Repeat with the second set of feet.

 Next was missile pod assembly. Each one is in two pieces so it's pretty easy and straight forward. The facing is D shaped so you can't mess up the way you put it on. In the pic you can see the thick "sprue" connection to the pod that required the GW saw to cut off. Fortunately that gets covered up by the facing so you have some leeway to mess up. As you can see, these pods are solid resin. Once the whole thing is together, it's got some heft to it.

In the instructions, it has this warning blurb. What they're talking about is:

This. You can see how the insert and the pod connectors are keyed. And again you can see the monumentally huge sprue connection that required a saw.

Put super glue into the holes of the insert, put the insert into the chassis so it lines up with the holes, and put the pods in. Voila! I have it resting on its side still as I write this because the glue is being very stubborn in curing. Once it's all cured, when you move one pod, the other pod and the insert move with it. Then I can attach it to the base. You could leave it unglued to allow it to swivel on the platform, but I want to be able to place in my Table War case and I don't need a relatively hefty chunk of resin playing pinball inside the case. :) I want to put it on a base as well. A 40mm base is basically the size of the platform minus the legs. So I'll have to go with some thing bigger like a 60mm or possibly larger. I'll have to see what fits.

So that's it. Only thing left will be to base it and maybe put some Minotaurs heraldry on it, then paint.