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Edit due to page rollover: Yes, I agree the Goliath Wyrms fit the army aesthetic much better! Will take a pic once I have them to the washed stage where the Tyrant and Tervigon are currently

Here are the Mawlocs washed:



So, the next step is to drybrush the skin back up, then do the drybrush / highlight on the bone, orange and purple, and finally seal them.

I've got a practice game which will take up my evening today, but then I'll be pushing to finish the 4 big bugs by Saturday, then have Sunday - Tuesday to base everything! Oh, and to paint those 2 little robot scouts, too

I think they're coming along beautifully RiTides. Enjoy your game!

Got 2 test games in yesterday, and I have a question below! First, a pic of one of them (my Tyrant and Tervigon are still WIP):



You can see him lining up a shot with his Wraithknight... it actually didn't do much, but his war walker grounded my Flyrant with it's first shots, and the Wave Serpent then obliterated it . My first game was against nids with a lot of gaunts, a Flyrant and 2 Crones... I threw away my Flyrant killing his Venomthrope, then kind of got picked apart.

Both games I pushed my Carnifexes forward after I got behind- I think this is a bad idea as they just died really fast. In the team games, I plan to hang back and let my teammate be the aggressor... but I'm so short-ranged that on my own my opponent can just wait for me to come to him. I may have to look into building some Crones myself, as I already have a model for them... I've been waiting to reveal that later, but I think it's going to look sweet

But anyway, my question is:

How should I differentiate my gaunt squads? One easy way that was suggested was to have different head types be different units... but that's kind of a bummer as then they'll all look so uniform, like in this pic where they are all of one single head type, rather than mixed:

Spoiler:

I may not do anything before AdeptiCon, and just struggle through while I'm there, but I do need to figure out a solution to this. My opponent apparently paints the rims of his bases differently, but that's going to detract from the models, I think. Small lines on the back of the bases, basically hash marks designating what squad they're in? But then I have to keep track and not put them all mixed together in a box... I could really use some help / ideas about that!

What about doing the whole base rim in different colours to differentiate between squads, you could use fairly neutral colours, green, brown, grey/black, however this might blend into he scenery too much... or use the 4 army colours, purple, orange, green and flesh/white...


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Or maybe something else, like a skull on the base for squad 1, a rock or ruble for squad 2, some scrap metal for squad 3, a little puddle/ water effects for squad 4 and so on... Not something big which is time consuming to paint or detracts from the model, but noticeable enough for you to think, thats the skull munchers on the right, theres the dirt wrigglers on the left and down the centre go the rust bunnies!!

Interesting, for some reason I hadn't thought of using the army colors on the base rims to differentiate them (I had just thought of random colors on the base rims, which is unappealing).

What do you guys think about that? That would give me 4, or really 5 different base rim colors: Purple, Bone, Orange, Green, and just plain Black.

The rest of the army would have black base rims, of course. Thoughts greatly appreciated, as this is the kind of thing I would actually do this weekend if folks thought it would look good enough / not detract from the army. If it would detract, though, I just might do nothing to differentiate them for this event...

Actually, what about just a vertical stripe on the back rim of each base? Less noticeable than painting the whole base, but would let me quickly differentiate squads depending on the color of the stripe? I like that idea best, I think rather than doing the entire rim.

I like the stripe idea. That would both be easy, but subtle.


Also: man - that looks GREAT on the table.

Yeah, I'm liking the stripe idea, as it'd also be a lot faster to paint than the whole base rims, and less obtrusive. Thanks for suggesting the color idea, dantay_xv, as that will be an easy and quick way to tell which is which, even with just a stripe

Or at least I hope so . Will give it a shot this weekend!

No worries, the stripe idea sounds good too. It might be better than the whole rim, as painting the whole rim might make them looka bit cartoon-y

It's almost the new week, where's that photo update .

I think he went worm crazy.

I am finished! Here are the pics:

















I think the Tervigon is my favorite model of the bunch! The little bugs on his base are magnetized, so I can run him as a Tyrannofex without them, as I realized a Tyrannofex does not have to have a rupture cannon! For one with just 2 x scything talons and a thorax weapon, I think the model is perfect

I actually went back and touched the orange with a highlight on everything, because the satin coat just dulled it down too much. Very happy having it back bright again . I have 2 optional things left to paint, which I'll probably do tomorrow, as I'm taking my wife out to a movie tonight to thank her for helping me base the army . Those are, to paint the stripe on the back of the different units' bases to tell them apart, and to paint the 2 bots for the objective markers. I also need to make army lists with pictures, which I'll likely do tonight or in the morning

After the event, I have plans to build and paint another medium-sized wave of models: Flyrant, Exocrine, Crone, Carnifex, 6 Warriors, 3 Biovores, Venomthrope, 18 Spore Mines, 20 Gargoyles. So that's 4 big models, 10 medium, and 38 small... but I will take my time on it compared to how I pushed through these

I'll be taking pics at AdeptiCon, and also handing out small samples of the Trollcast material, so if you will be there come by, see the army, and get a free gift

Impressive, most impressive. Truly a gribbly horde to be proud of. Should totally freak out your opponents too.

Fantastic! Congratulations RiTides, they look great!

Absolutely worth the wait .

But your going to give people worms at the convention? I thought you were one of the few "clean" gamers out there. I know hygiene is sorrowfully lacking in the gaming community, but contagious worms.....oh my!

How many million points IS that??

Great grubby gallons of gribbly goodness!

That is a truly impressive sight...Well done indeed sir

Thanks guys

Gits- It's actually just 2000 points . I painted exactly what my teammate and I needed for our two 1000 point armies for the event... there are 32 extra gaunts in case my Tervigon is incredible spawning them, but I've realized now that that's usually more than I'll need.

This is why I want to build one more wave of models after the event, to give myself options, since as it is I'll be pretty locked down to a gaunt-heavy 1850 point list with what I've done so far, and I'd like to do a monstrous-creature-heavy list using either the Living Artillery Node formation (Exocrine, 3 Biovores, 3 Warriors) or the Bioblast Node formation (Tyrannofex, 3 Carnifexes, 3 Warriors).

Here's the list I'm thinking for each of those

Living Artillery Node (formation models shown in red)


BioBlast Node (formation models shown in green)


And both formations crammed into one list

What a great looking army RiTides. Great color choices, and an impressive feat of finishing it all so fast.

Are they displayed on some sort of a gaming mat? It looks great, mind if I ask where it is from?

The army looks fantastic now it's finished, and although I like the bigger models my favorite is still the swarm of small wyrm's at the front,
For the only thing scarier than one big alien, is hundred's of smaller ones .

The display mat is a cut down Alpine mat from Frontline Gaming's "MegaMat" Kickstarter. I believe they'll have them up for normal sale in May

hk1x1, I think many people would agree with you!

Also, I made a collage image, would love to get some votes on this one



Last night I brushed on a little bit of extra Future Floor Polish to the snow to make it look a bit wetter. I think it might have made the snow just a tad looser on the bases, but it is still adhered pretty well. If I ever needed to make it stronger, could I just brush PVA on top, or would that change the look of the snow?

Tonight I'll be doing the 2 bots and stripes on the back of the bases to distinguish units. Then packing tomorrow!

Good luck in the tournament

Vote placed.

Collage looks great! Love the way the bases turned out. The grey is much less jarring than the straight black was.

I'm pretty blown away at what you've accomplished in such a short time. Well done!

Looking forward to hearing about A-con exploits!

Thanks again guys, the comments here really motivated me to finish!

I ended up putting little purple dot stickers on the back of bases to determine units. It may not be obvious enough, but it should work for the event and best of all it is temporary and I can remove them if I want . They are quite unobtrusive, I think... maybe too much so, but painting a line on the back looked jarring to me.

I also have only halfway painted the robots, hopefully I can finish them tonight before packing! They're not totally required, but they would be very nice to include.

I'll take lots of pictures at AdeptiCon

Looking forward to plenty of pics of screaming humies running away from gribbly hordes.......

Loving the vibe that army has. Tyranids meets Cthulhu

Looking brilliant there RiTides

good luck in your tournament (bring on the Wyrms)

I think I'm finally mostly recovered from AdeptiCon! We did well I thought, placing 57th overall, just barely in the upper half of the field (Dakka Detachment 3 in the pic below)



We got a 38 for appearance despite having almost no display (just the Frontline Gaming alpine mat). I hope to attend again next year and bring a much better display made from the Dwarven Forge modular caverns pieces!

Here is a pic of our army setup and team. Thanks to Alpharius for snagging the picture of our armies in the brief period that we had them set up!





Quick summary of the rounds:

Round 1- We faced a beautiful Eldar army which was selected for the army showcase that evening. It also had tons of Wave Serpents. Despite only killing one Wave Serpent and a handful of Dire Avengers, we won the secondary objective thanks to a Mawloc coming back up on turn 5 and contesting, netting us around 10 points. Here are the Mawlocs the first time they came up, when one was obliterated, with the rest of our army hiding off-camera



Round 2- Ketara and I had the privelege of playing against Carl Tuttle and another member of the Independent Characters podcast! We got a major win as my bugs filled our backfield to keep out the deep-striking Grey Knights, and Ketara's IG outshot them at range. Their dice were the worst I've ever seen, though, and Ketara's were on fire!



Round 3- We played against the 40k Wrecking Crew. This game was just okay, and was the only game I put "good" for instead of "fantastic". They were very skilled players and we only managed to draw on the primary objective, getting around 10 points again. I also apparently forgot to take a picture this game, but they had some beautiful yellow hazard stripe tanks.

Round 4- Another game with Ketara, this time against the winner of Best Xenos appearance / theme. We really did get to play against some amazing armies! It was the Relic, so I moved forward my waves of bugs to touch it every turn with a good cover save from shrouded and terrain while Ketara blasted the Tau. But to no avail, they blew me away and we drew on the primary Relic objective while they got the secondary kill points objective, so this was another game where we got around 10 points. But everyone looked good while doing it and they gave out Mr. Goodbars before the game, to boot!



Round 5- Ketara and I again! And again, with no picture . This time we went against IG and chaos marines, and got another major win- apparently marines were a very good matchup for us. Both sides held their back objectives but we got the center one, giving us over 20 points. Very nice guys and I gave all my extra Trollforged samples to them at the end

This convention was my favorite experience at a Con ever, between a fantastic game of space hulk on 3d terrain, to the amazing team tournament, to hanging out with Dakka mods and other awesome folks. Hulksmash' friend Phil, who filled in for AgeOfEgos in the final month, was literally the nicest guy I've ever played 40k with! And krootman, our other teammate, was a very skilled player who I learned a ton from.

I hope to attend again next year . For shorter term goals, I plan to build and paint the following over the next 2 - 3 months:

Flyrant
Carnifex
Crone
Exocrine

3 Warriors
3 Biovores
12 Spore Mines
20 Gargoyles

Looks like you held up your end of the donkey quite well there RiTides! Good battles with good opponents are always a sign of a successful day. Nice shot of your team and armies. Too bad I didn't get to see them all set up.