"Witness Me, Mankind, As CyberKing Of All!"

This 160mm resin model is the CyberKing figurine made by “Eaglemoss Collections”. The steampunk-flavoured Cyber creation appeared in the British science fiction television series “Doctor Who” at the conclusion of the Christmas Day Special, “The Next Doctor” in 2008. Whovians will know that it was created by Russell T. Davies in order to have “A great big Cyberman… striding all over Victorian London!”

I was actually rather unimpressed when I first saw this model as it forms part of the publisher's 90mm "Doctor Who" figurine collection which up until its release, had actually managed to keep everything in scale with one another; despite having previously produced the TARDIS, a Slithereen and even the enormous Emperor Dalek from the 2005 story "The Parting Of The Ways". This CyberKing model however is horrifically undersized as its mouth alone should be the height of two Cybermen. As a result I wasn't planning on buying one but then thought it might be more acceptable on a 28mm battlefield.

The model was originally pre-painted an awful metallic blue with loads of brown rust all over it. The figure was also attached to a rather formidable thick resin stand. Indeed, when it came time to remove the CyberKing from its base, it was so firmly attached that the resin model broke into several pieces before it could be properly removed. This meant I had to drill and pin a number of pistons and chains back into place before I could even begin undercoating him. The disaster did however afford me the opportunity to both strengthen the clearly fragile legs of the figure and slightly alter his pose, so instead of standing straight up I was able to slightly manipulate his stance in order to try and portray him stepping slightly forward.

Once firmly attached (with screws) to his large oval 120mm wide base the CyberKing was given two thinned coats of “Citadel” Abaddon Black in order to completely eradicate the previous rather garishly-coloured paint-job. The model was then painted Boltgun Metal and thoroughly washed with the Shade Abaddon Black. I then dry-brushed the entire model with more Boltgun Metal. This was an extremely time-consuming process as a lot of the detail on the sculpt was rather soft, and its former metallic blue paint-job had been rather liberally applied in places. In addition I had to keep stopping and re-doing the previous painting phases in order to deal with pockets of casting sand which the "Eaglemoss" painter had clearly simply plastered over.

Obviously Cybermen in general don’t rust, but as the Cyberking was made of metals scavenged from across Victorian London as opposed to Cyber technology, and he had been hidden beneath the Thames, I figured there would be some metal fatigue in some areas. As a result I dabbed some watered-down “Vallejo” Copper in appropriate areas, such as gears and leg pistons, and then washed these areas with some gloopy “Citadel” Devlan Mud.

Once dry I then dry-brushed back over these areas with Boltgun metal in order to blend them in with the rest of the model. Finally to give the mechanical behemoth a more Cyberman look I dry-brushed the entire model with a light covering of Mithril Silver in order to help bring out the finer detail.

One thing I did not especially like about the model was its glowing eyes, which I thought made it look a bit too ‘Metal Mickey’ for my liking. As a result I drilled out the eyes and left them as dark soulless holes similar to those of the normal Cybermen.