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For a long time I have been thinking about starting Tyranids. With the release of a new codex in the near future, as well as my dad tempting me with the gift of IA4: The Anphelion Project, I have finally decided to give into temptation. I am a huge fan of the Alien franchise (except for the 4th movie, which in my book never happened). So, I am starting a second hive of Alienids to continue the fantastic work done by Necros.

Aliens was the first full-length movie I ever saw as a child, and has remained my favorite ever since. To field a force of "Alienids" would be awesome. I have read the Alien comics, novels, have the action figures, and have seen the movies so many times I can pretty much quote the entirety of the films. It only makes sense I would want to pour something that means to much to me as a person into an army.

But enough of my ramblings, here's the deal. Many of you may have seen my test model a while back, for those of you who didn't, here it is:


Now, I also bought a Carnifex kit and began working on Old One Eye (or in my army's case, Old No Eyes).

Here's the head:





I made the head look like it had been blown out by a krak missile, as, in my army's fluff (coming soon, it's just a matter of cut and paste...and finding somewhere to post it....) that's how he gets the piece of battle damage (rather than the clean plasma sear of the actual OOE.)

For his crushing claws, I thought that, since they're such a big factor of his persona, they had to be larger than the claws in the normal kit, so I ordered some of the FW wrecker claws and plan to cut them to fit a single armsocket, similar to the following pictures I did in paint:



The rear sockets will have a pair of scything talons, just like he is pictured in the codex. I also plan to make him more upright, as to make him stand out just a bit more.


C&C welcomed.

They look great and should lead to a really cool looking army.

Interesting...the painted model looks a bit chalky tho tbh

Imperial Monkey wrote:Interesting...the painted model looks a bit chalky tho tbh

Probably because of the gloss as well as the crappy photos. Looks better in person.

Excellent GS work. The painting is solid too, do you use ´Ardcoat on them, or is it something else?

Great work. If you are going to turn this into an army please keep us posted.

Lookin gooood!

Xanthos wrote:Excellent GS work. The painting is solid too, do you use ´Ardcoat on them, or is it something else?

Nope, just 'Ardcoat.

nice finish on the GS, well done

Stump wrote:Great work. If you are going to turn this into an army please keep us posted.

Lookin gooood!

Oh, it will be a full army. I might just abandon Chaos in favor of it :O.

Why does your eyeless Carnifex have eye socket(s)? xD

Inanimate wrote:Why does your eyeless Carnifex have eye socket(s)? xD

Ask Giger! If you watch the original Alien film, underneath the transluscent dome on the Alien's head, it has a skull with eyesockets. This idea was later dropped in the sequel and subsequent films, but as Giger was the originator of the creature's design, I think he deserves at least one homage in my army.

Boas have hipbones, so it's not too crazy.

Update!

I will be adding a few of these to some of the bases on larger, more important MC's (OOE will probably have one) or GC's when they come around *cough* Harridan *cough*.

I also have one of the old Horrorclix Predator box sets lying around somewhere. They have some nice Predator miniatures in there as well.

My Hive Tyrant will also have a little girl hiding behind a wall (ala Newt from Aliens).

Awsome! As you can probably tell, the Alien series is one of my favourite movie series' of all time. I'll be watching this one closely .

Wasn't it the aliens in Alien who hade those little mouths on their tongues? If yes, we need to see that ;P

Nice im liking this.

Cool, loving Old (One/No) Eye(s). Maybe you shouldn't use drybrushing to highlight your Nids, it just makes them look rough, and out of place when compared to the glossy look of the head.

As a small update I ordered some stuff .

First, from Forge World I got the Wrecker claws for my OOE, as well as some Rippers (I don't like Rippers as a unit, but I've always loved the models.) I saw a picture of a chestburster-esque objective marker in the 4th edition rulebook. It had a guy with a Ripper sitting in his eviscerated torso. I want to do that, and the posability of the FW rippers would probably be best for it. The extras will mostly be decorations on the bases of larger creatures.

Second, I plan to have all my Alienids on Resin bases. Why? Because it's easy, and it looks good. I'll be getting resin bases from lots of different companies to avoid lots of doubling up on the bases. Also, I will play around with any doubles to make sure every base is different one way or another. I decided to go with an Urban rubble theme after seeing Hydra's stuff (of which, I am a fan). I bought the set of Urban Streets bases from Secret Weapons Miniatures as they are OOP, and once these are gone they're gone permanently. He's bringing out wave two though . Here's a pic of all the bases:

I was leaning more towards the base with the broken wall for OOE, but the sandbag one is cool too. Opinions?

I was delighted this morning to find that I won the bidding on a 2nd Edition Hive Tyrant on eBay. I plan to make it my Tyranid Prime .

Last, but certainly not least, I got a tip from someone on Dakka to check out Heresy Miniatures for an awesome Limited Edition miniature. I went there, and found it. It was indeed awesome!

It may have been a bit gluttonous...but I ordered three .

Are you going to be leaving your warriors/zoanthropes/anything with a crest like the Queen alien or are you going to go for smooth domes throughout?

On a side note if you are using Predator proxies on some bases, you should create some pred-aliens. Perhaps instead of Predator Proxies, you could use Kroot? Having the sensory spines/quils protruding from the back of a smooth dome would look nice, and be reminiscent of the movie without being an entire recreation.

Colossal Donkey wrote:Are you going to be leaving your warriors/zoanthropes/anything with a crest like the Queen alien or are you going to go for smooth domes throughout?

On a side note if you are using Predator proxies on some bases, you should create some pred-aliens. Perhaps instead of Predator Proxies, you could use Kroot? Having the sensory spines/quils protruding from the back of a smooth dome would look nice, and be reminiscent of the movie without being an entire recreation.

Well...Warriors maybe (Praetorians had similar crests if you ever played the old AvP games), but for the most part I want to keep the Queen's crest unique to her (I.E. my Hive Tyrant) since the crest was designed to look like a crown (as stated by its designer James Cameron).

As for Predaliens, I was going to do some (or at minimum, one). I was thinking Deathleaper, since he's a relatively large and strong, elite Tyranid. Just like the Predalien.

I'm not wild about the Kroot idea, to be honest. If you look at the fluff behind my army (found in the Dakka Fiction section of this website) you'll find that (in my fluff, I can't stress enough) the Predator, or Yautja, race exists in the 40k universe. I don't want them to be an offshoot of the Kroot, and I think using Kroot models would require alot of modelling work, and even then, it's still going to look too much like a Kroot for my liking. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Ooh boy, I love you man! It's always great to see a 40k player paying homage to a piece of popular fiction! Keep it up and I hope to see more from you!

damn! i wanted to do this someday, but you beat me to it. ah well, it was only a matter of time.

maybe instead of making the queen a hive tyrant, make it a tervigon, that seems to fit a little better.

and rippers could be facehuggers. or something. whatever, it's a great idea, and i'll be watching this with interest.

children of filth wrote:damn! i wanted to do this someday, but you beat me to it. ah well, it was only a matter of time.

maybe instead of making the queen a hive tyrant, make it a tervigon, that seems to fit a little better.

and rippers could be facehuggers. or something. whatever, it's a great idea, and i'll be watching this with interest.

Well, I want it to be the HT because...

= HAWT

Plus I was going to magnetize her . Tervigons...may or may not be modelled with a Queen-like eggsac. However, afte looking at the Trollforge update in the news and rumors section, it looks like they're bringing out a Tervigon model...er..."large alien".

Rippers are going to be chestbursters. I was thinking maybe making Facehuggers more of aesthetic things rather than actual units. Like have facehugged guys lying on bases. Although the Parasite of Mortrex looks like it could make like...I don't know...a giant flying facehugger .

The facehuggers should be those floating spore mines. Or a mine field option, laying them out like booby traps.


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Great work on the bulb heads. I think I like where you are going with the predictors... I'm anxious to see how you use them.

Well, you could have both. A tervigon is an HQ choice and I think it would fit better with your army and you could have a queen on foot and a queen with the egg sack. I would also make the guns on the HT in the chest. Try to model something to show that as it will look better with claws then holding a gun.

Nifty have you seen the new Chapterhouse heads?

Mewiththeface wrote:Well, you could have both. A tervigon is an HQ choice and I think it would fit better with your army and you could have a queen on foot and a queen with the egg sack. I would also make the guns on the HT in the chest. Try to model something to show that as it will look better with claws then holding a gun.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that last part . I don't know why I shouldn't just have the arms like any other Tyranid, except they will be magnetized to allow for different weapon options.

Llamahead wrote:Nifty have you seen the new Chapterhouse heads?

Indeed I have! And I am not in the least bit impressed with them . Navarro's modelling is superb, but these heads only give a passing resemblance to the Xenomorph, and are not some of his better work. The dome on the second one is way off, and the mouth on both of them looks like a leech with an underbite. I may order a set just to check them out in person, but I like my greenstuff domes more in the long run.

Now the Ymgarl Stealer heads he did; those are fantastic, and I will be ordering at least two or three sets when those are released to the public (which I hope is soon).

This is really awsome!

Incidently, the game comes out in, what a week? Man Alien overload!

Definitely one of the better army conversions I've seen. Hope you can get some full army pics up soon.

CrazyThang wrote:This is really awsome!

Incidently, the game comes out in, what a week? Man Alien overload!

Try four days baby! I'm so excited.

On another note, I'm thinking about buying a battleforce on Saturday when I go to my LGS for our club meeting. Probably a Broodlord which I want to convert to look somewhat like the fantastic one Moloch did:



Xenomorph-ied of course .