Chimera! (not the troop carrier)

I continue my 2017 monster mash (2 down, 3 to go) with the mish-mashiest of them all - the Chimera!

"What do you mean?! - You snore! - Oh I don't- anyway, you have bad breath! -
Because you never brush my teeth! - Oh, stop quickly, let's have a cup of tea!"

Which it not, as I once thought, pronounced 'Shim-era'. It is actually 'Ky-mere-ah', and so would more helpfully start with a 'K'. Actually, being a classical Greek monster, it doesn't even start with a 'C', but with the letter 'Chi', which is really the letter 'X'.

Classic Greek is confusing. No wonder Gerald Butler seemed so angry.

The first stage of assembling the Games Workshop Chimera is to come to terms with the fact that you're not assembling the Mierce Chimaera (it's a thing of beauty, but it's five times the cost and you'd probably drop it anyway. Make your peace with it).

Do you think the head at the tail feels lonely or empowered to be in sole command of its neck?

Back to the beastie at hand: colour schemes are an interesting challenge when the creature has eight eyes, six limbs and belongs to at least four taxonomic classes. You can either paint it all the same theme, to blend together the disparate elements, or go with a manic splash of colour.

My usual instinct would be for a naturalistic blend, but Chaos has been nominated as my crazy colour army, so I threw a rainbow at it.

The draconic head seems to have prominent glands on its neck, so I stole Kraken's dragon flame technique to show a build-up of fire.

• Body: Zandri Dust base, Agrax Earthshade wash, Zamesi Desert drydrush
• Leonine head: Mornfang Brown base, Agrax Earthshade wash, Tallern Sand drydrush, Fuegan Orange for horns/tusks
• Avian head: Calgar Blue base, Drakenhof Nightshade wash, Ahriman Blue drybrush, Charcoal Grey for beak
• Draconic head: Mephiston red base, Carroburg Crimson wash, Wazdakka Red drybrush, Troll Slayer Orange drybrush, Nuln Oil glaze (on crest)
• Wings: Genestealer Purple fingers, Naggaroth Night wings, Drucii Violet wash, Genestealer Purple drybrush, Pink Horror drybrush
• Tail: Warboss Green  base, Athonian Camoshade wash, Averland Sunset drybrush

I tried some blending and drybrushing to transition one colour from another, but once you've decided to use ridiculously clashing colour scheme, you really have to lean into it.

Am I wrong, or were these wings once used for every damn flying creature in WFB?

Aesthetically, I still prefer the Cockatrice. I'm not a huge fan of the leaping pose for big monsters, and of the three heads, I think only the avian head works well (the serpent-tail head is pretty good too). the Draconic head looks a bit in no-man's land (it must suck being the middle head) and the Leonine one has too much muzzle and is complicated with tusks and a slithy tongue.

The Cockatrice also benefits from a consistent colour scheme, but that's my own damn fault.

The wings were too tricky to magnetise, so I magnetised the feet instead.
You have to magnetise something.

I don't mean to be so hard on the Chimera - I'm glad to have it as part of my growing menagerie, but ironically, I think the model is less than the sum of its parts.

In game terms, it's a different story. The poor Cockatrice is rubbish, whereas the Chimera is first among behemoths (although nowhere his 8th Edition ubiquity).

I like the look of his warscroll, and during an early Age of Sigmar game against Sylvaneth, a Chimera made short work of a Treeman. I suspect he'll get overtaken by some of the bigger beasties in the WoffBoot, but it's nice to have a reasonably heavy hitter on my team.