Massive Tyranid Revamp!

[easternheretic]

I can't believe you chopped up a SH brood lord! I wanted to do the same but my various friends convinced me not to. I admire your commitment to your vision.

Beyond that, those I some finely painted models you have there!

Cheers!

[dancingmonkey]

Channeling Shedinja is awesome. Haven't been back to this log for a while, but I'm soooo glad I did. That made my night.

Cheers.

[Angelwing]

Long time since my last look here, but well worth the wait. Some great stuff. Keep up the good work!

[Goat of Yuggoth]

I can see that you've gained a lot of motivation during the two months I have neglegted warseer and miniature life itself.. Logs like this make me tick (in a bug way), and I'm glad to see fellow-minded people do stuff I like.

Thank YOU!!

[Pekel]

Thanks everyone! Here's some more.

Harpy.



Spore bombing belly and heavy venom cannons.



Doom of Malan'tai.



Now I've just got to do the Venomthrope and Trygon/Mayloc/Prime magnetic monster and my 'Nids are pretty much caught up for now.

[easternheretic]

Nicely painted harpy and doom.

I like the battle damage you've incorporated in the harpy. Exactly how big is your harpy? Perhaps a comparison shot with the plastic fex kit?

Nice work.

Cheers.

[Pekel]

The Harpy has a Carnifex scythe tail, Hive Tyrant head, Genestealer back carapace, and is on a 60mm base with a Spore Mine. Should be easy to determine the scale from that - I think it's a perfect size for a fragile flying MC.

Awaiting final approval on the commission monsters. Gonna paint over some of the greenstuff/clay parts in white to make sure they look smooth under a coat of a paint, but I'm confident everything should look fine. What do you all think?



The glue around the Gaunt is drying, it'll contract. I've also taken care of the mold lines and things.



Swarmlord!



Standard Tyrant next to a Trygon so you can see how large it is.



Lash whip.



Venom Cannon and Devourers.

[Pekel]

All the parts laid out.

[Hicks]

My god your tyranid convertions are insane. I applaud what you have accomplished with those kits.

[sheep]

Very nice mate, the new tervigon is awesome, going to steal that termigant for my next one, and the tyrant is al kinds of win.

Cheers

Sheep

[Rivethead]

These are some great conversions and nicely painted as well!

[Pekel]

Thanks! Here's some shots from a recent battle.

1000 pts, Annihilation.

My army:



His army:



Deployment. I was scared of running across open ground towards Space Marines in cover, so I tried to keep the Gaunts in the shadow of the plant terrain while Zoans provided synapse and a Venomthrope kept the cover going. All my big guys stayed in the cover of the rock walls, hoping that if anyone deepstruck back there I'd have enough power to smash 'em.



Sure enough, Terminators came in. The Librarian ****ed up and took a wound from scattering into difficult terrain, so we just assumed he was clomping about with a brick from the ruined chapel teleported into one foot.



Reserves lurk ominously between pint glasses of my cousin's old holiday homebrew. Eventually they popped out and ate a Tactical Squad hugging the far board edge (cowards).



Gargoyles swoop in and rain 12 Fleshborer shots into the Terminators, hoping to maybe scratch one. No luck, but perhaps next turn they can assault and tie them up before the Terminators hit the Tyrant or Tervigon? No such luck; a single Whirlwind shot kills all 12.

[Pekel]

This shows the firepower which killed most of the Terminators: a Tervigon, three Warriors, a Tyrant, a Hive Guard and a Harpy. The Tervigon spawned nothing since it was a kill points game, but I really liked the Catalyst power. The Harpy spent the last two turns hiding in cover being catalyzed by the Tervigon, but eventually focused fire killed it.



Intermission shot: Mom found an amusingly creepy Christmas card, and with a bit of work it became a Khornate Khristmas Khard to go with the Epic Chaos minis I got my brother.



The Librarian trudged through the hail of spines, sprouting seeds, acidic screaming fetuses, living spikes, ravenous beetles and toxic crystals to assault the Hive Tyrant which promptly stepped on and killed him.



Broodlord consolidates from combat with the Tactical squad to the base, repeatedly hypnotizing the Sergeant and slashing Marines up.



The Tyrant flies over to help, stopping only to kick a Predator tank to shreds. The Space Marine Scouts joined the fray and helped kill the Broodlord, but eventually the Tyrant took both squads out.



Was a lot of fun. I was getting smashed at first, but the tides turned and I won 8:7. I really like the new Hive Tyrant powers, I actually got some use out of Life Leech. And even without making babies the Tervigon proved worth it. Considering this was mostly a "test run" list to try out new things, I was really happy. I'm looking forward to taking more lists for a spin.

[Pekel]

Here's my Parasite and Tyranid Prime works in progress.

I wanted the Parasite to have a bloated, grotesquely pregnant look so it's cradling its distended gut. The maggotlike old Rippers are the ones it gives birth to. Note that the tendril-face was sculpted by someone else while I added more of a Genestealer look to the rest of the head.

The Tyranid Prime is pretty much just an old Warrior with a Venomthrope arm and a standard scything talon > bonesword conversion.



My second Tyranid Prime will be a bit more interesting. It uses Trygon Prime mandibles as arms and cut down MC scything talons + greenstuff as boneswords.

[Nocturn]

Hey Pekel :-),

nice progress here, all the conversions look great, not so keen on the doom of mala but the magnetized swarmlord and the harpy makes it for me :-)
The battle report seemed very nice haha :-) Poor librarian ;-)

I like your parasite but the sword on the prime could be larger :-) I think the model would benefit from it.

Keep it up,

Noc

[Pekel]

Thanks Nocturn, the Doom was a little bit of a joke model (even though I think the Doom should be a pretty small model, about Zoan size). My next Prime will indeed have larger swords, I agree with you this one is a bit small!

I've done a lot of painting progress but I want to wait until everything is 100% done to post pics (I have a bunch of things about 95% done). But I sort of have hobby ADD so here's something else entirely!

You know when you're sipping your pint of beer in the middle of a 40k game and your turn comes to roll some dice, but you have nowhere to set the glass down? Don't want to leave wet circles on the table or risk it getting knocked over or just straight-up looking out of place. So this is a Tyranid digestion tower which neatly holds a pintglass. Looks like a foamy liquid tower of biomass, windows cut into the side let light enter the beer and glow out the gaps. Should be pretty neat once it's finished!

Sorry it's not cropped or anything, I'm on a terrible Mac since my PC laptop bit the dust after 4 years.



I'm struggling with a lack of decent materials, but I really hope to have it done before I leave my minis for the next year to work across the country.

[The Laughing God]

That's an awesome idea. Looking forward to seeing how that comes out.

[Boss_Salvage]

Hey man, finally stumbled back onto your stuff last night and (as usual) was massively inspired by the quality of conversion and paint going down. So inspired that I actually started painting the 4th revision of my nurgle-skaven army, which is a small modification but has been lingering in my painting queue ...

So thanks for the boost, keep up the good work yourself, and I hope all is well.
Now I gotta go paint some more stuff green

- Salvage

[Pekel]

Thanks guys! My brother and I spent a lot of time getting our terrain to look cohesive and we made some new pieces. A lot of them still need details and neatening up (the tan parts really need some more coats of paint, for example), but we wanted to have them done for a game before I flew to California for work. Only just getting the pictures up now.

Before paint:



After paint:



The big industrial plant and the Tyranid tower are both designed to hold pint glasses of beer during battles - you can see the rims of the glasses poking out in that photo. Here's some pictures from our first battle using the terrain.

Here's my army. I think 1850? Maybe not. The two terrain pieces count as Mycetic Spores.



Venomthrope lends an invulnerable save to the Tervigon, Hormagaunts and Zoanthropes while the Tervigon Catalyzes the Hormagaunts. 5+ Cover Sv Hormagaunts with FNP are pretty hard to kill, and my brother rolled very poorly, so they managed to scuttle up and tie up the Terminators that emerged when the Zoanthropes lance-exploded their Landraider. I love the Venomthrope and Tervigon and Zoans and everything in the new Codex.



Space Marines taking shelter in some crumbling jungle ruins (which need a few more coats of paint) while a Predator goes hull down behind some strange Tyranid growth.

[Pekel]

Doom arrives via spore. The pod is placed to block line of sight to the Doom from most threats while allowing the Doom a shot at the Terminators. The Doom fires, inflicts no wounds, and takes 3. It is now a S1 floating KP and it is killed shortly after.



Parasite and Gargoyle escort hit combat and do alright. No Rippers are birthed and more SM later join the fight and kill off the Tyranids.



Lone surviving flamer Marine tries to sneak around the beery Tyranid tower. Forget what's in there but it looks like one of the Railbender ales. The glass pushes down further but I don't have the drinking patience to keep pushing it all the way down then taking it out.



Scouts outflank to attack the Warriors but Something's Wrong With The Sarge! One Scout explodes into Ripper babies which join the fray.



Two broods of Genestealers with Broodlords outflank on the same side and utterly shred the Whirlwind until it explodes. Hate those things!!