Hive Fleet Hekatonkheires

[Nezalhualixtlan]

I always meant to post some pics of my Hive Fleet, but never have (and until just tonight never actually took a picture of everything I have. Anyway, I bring you...

Hive Fleet Hekatonkheires

[Nezalhualixtlan]

And, next up in the spawning chamber...


Not pictured, 6x more Raveners, 3x biovores, and 60x Hormagaunts still in their blisters or sprues awaiting bio-genesis. I've still got a lot of building to do, and a massive amount of painting, but I get there little by little. You can see some in the picture above are in various states of construction or painting, with only a few models fully done - and even those I need to go back and do some touch up work on as my color scheme has changed a little since I started (removing the metallic orange for a fleshier pinkish purple.

My color scheme was inspired by nature, with the metallic purple exoskeleton derived from a dragonfly/damselfly I saw once when I was hiking, and the yellow/gold and black carapace from hornets and wasps.

I can't wait till I have it all done, but it's a long way off, so much real life keeps putting me further and further behind. I'll get there one day, but I think I need to buy myself an air brush.

More pics to come as I get things completed and updated. Might be slow going, but I hope to make steady progress a little bit at a time.

[Goat of Yuggoth]

It's massive!

Seriously, have you got ANY other army than this? And how long have you collected these bugs? I started some three years from now and I've got half that much..

Could you summarize what you have (built)? Interested in seeing more.

[ASSASSINAWOKEN]

The terminators are playing horde mode wave 50 way to go!

I have all of ripper swarm bases will 5 rippers models for each base. Seeing your bases makes me want to break them off somehow and only place three models per base. Less models per base equals more ripper swarms, and three models on a base is easier to paint than five models on a base.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

No other army, I've been collecting and playing Tyranids for just over about 2 years now.

I was actually about to start in on IG, and SM to get an Imperium Apoc sized force that I could set against this one which would go with some of the terrain I have from planetstrike and the Terminators I got out of Space Hulk, plus the pending Fortress of Redemption I have ordered (and I've been trying to persuade my wife to try out playing, she does like strategy games, but she kind of thinks all the little toys for this one are silly, but I'm working on it!) but then the new Tyranid codex got announced, and there's going to be new plastics, and new metal models, and well, I'm likely to go back to expanding the Hive Fleet, Tyranids are really my favorite out of 40k. I'm looking forward to getting some Gargoyles finally, and keeping my hopes up for the plastic Trygon.

I'll get to the other two armies eventually it's just a slow process. I work full time and do school at night, and all that is keeping me so busy I rarely have time for leisure right now.

I haven't built all of this, though I have built most of it. There are a number of older Genestealer models I picked up from friends when they were trying to get me started, and then a box that had a bunch of them I bought from my local hobby shop when someone sold them an older collection they didn't want (you can see the original blue/purple space hulk colored ones in the top right corner of the first pic). I also picked up models from a second Battleforce when one of my good friends decided they weren't interested in Tyranids and wanted to go Chaos, so my Hive Fleet ate his splinter (though you can still see some of his green/red hormagaunts in a few pictures).

I got started out with a Batteforce, and was able to get in just in time to pick up the awesome deals on the Apocalypse forces. So I got myself a Hive Mind Brood (1x Tyrant, 4x Zoanthropes, 4x Tyrant Guard ), the Endless Swarm (60x Gaunts, 60x Hormagaunts), and the Mycetic Assault (5x Carnifex) and well I'm still working on the Hormagaunts, heh. Picked up a Broodlord, and then started assimilating some of those older models. Then I won a tournament at our store last year and got another box of Warriors from it. The new Space Hulk is a recent addition, and I bought extra bases to start putting those together, assimilated the second battleforce, and wound up getting the Hierophant for my birthday combined with some gift cards I had left over from xmas last year.

All told for Hive Fleet Hekatonkheires, I have put together :
2x Hive Tyrants
3x Tyrant Guard
2x Broolords (though I'm looking forward to getting the Space Hulk one painted I like that one much better...)
9x Warriors
3x Lictors
3x Zoanthropes
3x Raveners
21x ripper bases
20x Hormagaunts (with 60x left to build, hoping to have that done before the new codex is out in Jan so I can field a massive real swarm)
~80x Gaunts (varying types, roughly 1/3 of each Devil/Terma/Spine)
~100x Genestealers
7x Carnifex (2x Screamer Killers, 2x Devilfex, 1x Sniperfex, 1x Godfex, 1x dual Crushing Claw for the Apoc Crusher brood)

Still have 6x Raveners (metal, though I hope they release a plastic kit for them soon), those 60x Hormagaunts, and 3x Biovores to build, along with my Hierophant.

[Goat of Yuggoth]

Great swarm there pal, get it painted. I envy your resolve on collecting just one army, I have about five for both systems, and new ideas pop out every day.

And I found out that 3/base thing useful, too. Not only does it allow you to get paint all around easily, it also makes basing a lot more fun Skeletons, rubble, piles of debris, you name it.

Keep it going!

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Yeah, the basing thing was one part of the reason I did 3 to a base, I figured it'd leave more space open for display, as well as being representative of the 3 wounds, and getting me more mileage in ripper bases than doing 5. I've also got a couple with 2 and 1 where I can replace wounded bases, and intend to have some dead and obliterated rippers modeled on them when all is said and done. When they're all bunched up they still look like a carpet of rippers, so I'm happy with the effect.

As soon as I'm done building, I'll get back to painting. I'm a little intimidated by how much of it I have to do, but I just need to take it a little at a time. I'll provide updates when I can.

[Goat of Yuggoth]

That idea of dead ones is quite good. Make them fat (like just eaten fat) and you'll have an objective marker as well.

And a tip for that phenomenal painting session: don't let yourself see them all at once. If you dig out all your models that aren't painted you'll think you have too much to paint, putting out some 500pts to paint allows you to concentrate on a small number of models at a time, and you can say after painting a Carnifex "well, I'm half done for the batch"

[Nezalhualixtlan]

I was involved in campaign earlier this year (still ongoing, not sure if we're going to manage to figure out schedules to finish it) but as a part of that we were supposed to create army markers to represent some of the special benefits you could get for winning. I have quite a few of the little hive node markers, and a couple of those tyranid markers that look like the starts of a digestion pool with a growing capilary tower, but I have so many spare bitz for Tyranids its not funny. So I thought.. why not make my own marker / piece of terrain? Here's what I've come up with so far:






It's a decent sized piece. I figure when it's all done, I can use it to represent a mission objective, terrain, or size its about the right size the remains of a Mycetic spore pod. As you can see, it's made mostly of spare Carnifex & Trygon pieces, with a few Gaunt devourers added in. It's Tyranidy... as it's Tyranid bitz, and identifiably so, but I didn't go with the standard morphology, obviously it's radial rather than bilateral symetry, and does not comform to standard 6 limb configuration. I did this purposefully to give it more of a terrain feature rather than specific creature look to it.

I'm also not finished. I opted for non-symetric mawloc-tongue tentacles coming out of it (3 not 4), but it's still looking a bit too even to me. I'm going to be adding in green stuff a) to strengthen it once it hardens and fill in some of the gaps since the pieces were not really made to fit together, and b) to add in some bulbous tentacles and growth to make it look a bit less perfectly symetric. I think it'll help make it look more interesting.

Anyway, enjoy.

[Goat of Yuggoth]

Looks splendid and very alien to me! Why not do a slightly smaller version next and use i as a Mawlocs' tunnel marker or something. The Mycetic Spore idea works as well, after all who says all of them drop out of the sky?

Cheers
Goat

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Thanks!

I am planning on doing a few smaller pieces. I want to go through some of what bitz I have left and start figuring out what I can put together with them. I have quite a bit, so it should be kind of fun. I also have quite a bit of other materials to go with it. A little while back I realized that nut shells could be used to make some rather alien looking terrain features. You get the organic look combined with material that is very durable and doesn't easily rot or decay. I saved a good deal of pistachio shells which I think will look interesting as possible cracked open egg clusters or something, some almond shells whcih I think could be used to make interesting looking alien barricades (they even had what look to be bullet holes riddling them, as well as some other crushed up walnut and other shells. I'd also picked up some interesting shells on the beach and cleaned them, though unfortunately I think some of them when they dried out became too brittle and may not be usuable any longer. All of it will take some greenstuff work to make it looki complete. But there's the possibility of using some of the other tyranid bits in with them. And I was thinking of doing a few more smaller markers, just to have them.

In terms of this being the remains of a spore pod, i was thinking it would be the left over husk/shell like material after it deflated when the fleshy bits of it got burst and splattered away while absorbing the impact for whatever was inside to come out. Even if it was dropping a Carnifex, I can't imagine most of the pod would still be viable once it smashed to the ground and disgorged its payload. Once the viscous mucous and jelly or whatever was that was suspending the payload and protecting it from the impact was sprayed and oozed out, it probably would collapse to a smaller remaining bit of biomass. I think actually even the description of one of the Apocalypse Carnifex formations had something similar to that in it.

[bluenova]

Quite a swarm you have there

I like the terrain piece/spore pod, it's very Nid-ish and fits perfectly. I can second your idea of using nut shells, I've used them myself (pistachios) as Ripper eggs to decorate the bases of larger creatures and they work really well (especially when painted and with added Ooze!).

Look forward to seeing your smaller markers

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Thanks, that's pretty much what I was thinking, ooze, maybe green or orange, seeping out of them with water effects or a glaze of the gloss varnish to make it look wet.

[bluenova]

Green would look good - contrast to the purple and orange/gold of the main colour scheme. A really bright green would stand out well against the darker purple and make for a great Ooze