Tyranids second wave

Sweet Jeebus the new Tervigon/Tyrannofex kit looks good! And the winged Hive Tyrant! I would almost say it's worth the wait, the the wait was oh so long.

I've been spending the week filling up my shopping cart at various online stores, trying out various combinations of SPENDING ALL MY MONEY.

At the moment it looks like this (at the minimum):

1 x Winged Hive Tyrant
1 x Swarmlord
1 x Tyrannofex
3 x Tervigons

Plus a bunch of extra Termagant boxes (the sets-of-5 are the best value), since I only have 34.

Ouch! Oh self control, why hast thou forsaken me?

Christmasfexen

No, they're not wearing Santa hats, but I did paint them up over Christmas...

I had to put the Heavy Venom Cannons in the front arm sockets - I just could not get the Scything Talons to fit when I put the HVCs in the back sockets. I can only suppose that the "official" GW pics of Fexes with HVCs show models that have been modified. Still, I don't mind which way round they go, they still look good.

Group shot

Here they all are together, 870 points of mayhem.

Heavy Venom Cannon, Frag Spines, Bioplasma

I wanted to have a Brood of 3 Carnifex, I like to be able to max out my units. Whether I'll play them like this, I don't know, but 3 HVCs are not to be sniffed at.

Crushing Claws, Frag Spines, Regeneration

 I wanted to have a scary close combat Carnifex, so I gave this one the BIG Scything Talons. It's going to be an expensive fire magnet, but both stats-wise and visually, it will be a can-opener for my Mech opponents.

Heavy Venom Cannon, Frag Spines

 Initially I was going to leave the "freckles" at the far ends of the ammo tube (from the left arm to the gun) as they were, because I didn't know how to paint them. But I tried a droplet of Thraka Green wash in there, and it turned out brilliantly. Really easy to do.

Interchangeable heads!

 I do like the way the heads are constructed, so they can slot into the neck socket without glue, and without magnets. It is a very easy way of making construction kit fexes. Now I can run my Brood without Bioplasma if I want to save points, or I can have a single HVC Fex with Regen.

This one escaped and went on a rampage...

People don't make enough photos mixing models with the real world. :)


Happy New Year!

Yes, the world does want another unprimed picture

Well, I had the picture just sitting there, so I thought I may as well upload it.

This is my Mawloc before I start adding Mechrite Red to it.

Mawloc sub-assembly

I've found with really big kits that it really pays off to build the model in sections, paint them, and then assemble them when complete. Not only is it easier to get at the tricky bits, it's also a lot faster.

So with my Mawloc, I have split it into 3 main sections, along with keeping the arms separate.

Section 1: Base and tail

Section 2: Thorax

Section 3: Head

Section 4: And 6 arms, of course.

Before priming, I put Blu-Tack on the joints where I want to glue them later - this keeps the plastic clean so that the plastic glue will work properly.

A side bonus of sub-assembly is that it's easier to compartmentalise the work into 30-minute blocks, helping with motivation.

I'll post pictures of the Mawloc once it gets a bit more interesting. I don't think the world needs another picture of an unprimed model.

Spinerippers

Since I don't have that many Spinerippers, I added the Sphincter-thing from the Genestealer sprue to give it some, ahem, teeth.

The tentacles are painted Elf Flesh and washed with Devlan Mud. I wanted them to look gross.

Trygon

Here's the Trygon I painted last year. It was my first really big model, and I had to make sub-assemblies and did the final assembly once everything was painted. This made things a lot easier.

The detailing on the head carapace, teeth and especially the eyes makes this model stand out as the centrepiece of my collection. It also gave me a lot of confidence to try to push my standards higher, at least on one-off models, as opposed to the standard swarm.

I also have a Trygon Prime and a Mawloc to build. The problem will be making them stand out as different from the Trygon, since the poses are so similar. I can't stray too far from the Kraken scheme, though. I have some ideas for the Mawloc (which I am working on now), but the Trygon Prime will have to wait until I can think of some interesting way to differentiate it. I'll probably make the base more elaborate, since this Trygon has quite a minimalist base.

Army colour themes

I'm collecting a few armies simultaneously, some deliberately as viable forces (like Tyranids, Imperial Guard, Space Marines and Necrons) and some just because I like the models (Tau and Orks), and I think it would be great if each army had its own "colour", so that they would look distinct both on the shelf and on the battlefield.

The first few are easy:

Tyranids = Kraken Red
Necrons = Silver/Black
Imperial Guard = Cadian Green

I'm not quite decided on the others yet. If I model my Space Marines as Ultramarines, then blue is the obvious choice, but I am leaning towards making my own Chapter, and am very tempted to go purple (not Hawk Lords, but something similar). Orks, I think I can get away with a mix of salvaged bits, rust and dirt. That should go well with their green skin. Tau, on the other hand, should look clean and striking - heavy weathering and battle damage just doesn't suit them. A maroon or burgundy, perhaps. There's a beautiful burgundy in the Tau Codex, but I can't find a guide on how to paint it. Then again, if I'm not doing Ultramarines, blue becomes free all of a sudden.

Of course, as a Lazy Painter, I would prefer to just use an unmixed GW paint, but I think that if I'm using enough paint, it's working cooking up a unique batch.

So for the rest of my armies:

Space Marines - Purple?
Orks - Rusty Dirty Brown?
Tau - Burgundy? Or Blue?

This will be a work in progress - I plan to finish my Tyranids first, then hopefully there will be a new Necron Codex, and I can work on them for a while. In the meantime, someone may come up with a good scheme that can inspire me, or maybe I'll have a brainspasm of original thought, you never know.

Spinegaunts

A blog is boring without pictures, so here's a few shots of the 30 Spinegaunts I recently finished...

As you can probably tell, I like to batch paint...

And I like to use washes...

The swarm so far...

My dream is to have a true Tyranid swarm. You know, Starship Troopers style. So here is a list of what I've got painted so far. Most of them are completely finished, but I reserve the right to tweak a few when I see an opportunity to improve them.

2 x Tyranid Primes DS
2 x Tyrant Guard

3 x Lictors
1 x Death Leaper
3 x Zoanthropes
10 x Ymgarl Genestealers

3 x Warriors DS
1 x Warrior VC
48 x Hormagaunts TS
25 x Termagants
20 x Devilgaunts
30 x Spinegaunts
4 x SpineRippers (tunnelling)
17 x Rippers (tunnelling)
44 x Genestealers ST/TS
1 x Broodlord ST/TS

30 x Gargoyles
6 x Raveners (Rend/DS)
8 x Spore mines

1 x Trygon (AG/TS)
1 x Old One Eye

Total: 4257 points

I'll be posting pictures of them all in due course. I'd like to do a group shot, but I don't think I have a table big enough.

The truly scary thing is, this is only 59% of the total Tyranid models I have. This blog is called Fight The Grey Tide for a reason.

Credit where credit is due

My first ever 40K model was a Cadian Shock Trooper, that I bought back when you got 20 to a box, and the cost per model was less than a pound. I figured that I would ruin the first few models with my terrible painting, so I didn't want to waste that much money. In the end, by following the Citadel Painting Guide and the back of the box, I managed a passable result. But it was very slow, and I realised that to get a big army would take ages unless I learned to paint faster.

So I decided to switch to Tyranids, because they were organic and therefore messy, which meant I didn't have to be quite so exact. I also liked the idea of swarms. I had the Battle For Macragge set, which contained Genestealers, Spore Mines and Termagants, so I had a go at those. It also helped that you can get Termagants in a box set of 5, to make it easy to try stuff out.

But what scheme to use? If you follow the Games Workshop recommendations for painting their main Hive Fleets, you're making 'Eavy Metal quality and you'll still be painting when the sun finally goes out. I needed a quick and easy scheme.

Then I found Mike Kan Paint - and I was sold instantly. Kraken it was. But his techniques were still a bit too complex for me. For a start, he was using non-standard (i.e. non-GW) paints, and he was mixing them together for a better result. Now, having mixed paints for my first Cadian, I didn't want to do that again, not unless I absolutely had to. So I made my own version of his scheme.

In future posts, I will show step-by-step how I have corrupted his methods to fit my work ethic (lazy) and lifestyle (hardly ever at home).

But the credit has to go to Mike, I would never have got to where I am today without his hard work and willingness to share. So thanks, Mike.