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*EDIT* New pictures / progress further down the page

Hey folks!

A friend of mine plays Tyranids. I've been urging him to put away his carnifexes and genestealers and get something more competitive (Tervigons, Trygons). He decided that he wanted a Tyrannofex - I have a little converting skill to his none, so I took one of his carnifexes, a bunch of spare parts and went to work!

A few themes that I wanted to follow:

-Tyrannofex is very heavily armored, so I added armored carapaces.
-I liked the spider front leg look in the book, so I broke the carnifex tail off, added a second one, shaved down the tips, and made him have big spiked legs.
-The underbelly is where the ripper swarms emerge - I thought the carapace down there was fitting.
-The rupture cannon (Assault 2) is a pair of cut down Ork Zzap guns attached to cut off crushing claws to make symbiotes.

It still needs some modeling work - I need to greenstuff in the sides of the legs where the real carnifex legs go, and probably add some greenstuff to the sides where the arm attachments used to be. I have the Carnifexes' old venom cannon and was thinking about cutting it down to make an acid sprayer, but my wife didn't like the look of it. Also, I would have preferred more spidery legs to go on the back (and even on the sides - I would have loved to have six of them), but I was working with the bits I was provided. I can green stuff in holes, but I have zero sculpting abilities with green stuff.












My buddy plays Tyranids, and he'll see this thread (because I'll link it to him), so if you have any suggestions for alterations, drop them here so he can see them - maybe there's a spare bit that would look well-placed on there. I have a couple of spare crushing claws, but didn't put them on there, and two more hind legs - but I didn't want those on here either, they didn't fit.

That looks like a living artillery cannon, which is the feel a tyrannofex should have imo.

Using the tails as front legs looks spot-on!
Same with the dome!
The gun mountings are great, but the size is a bit under proportioned for 40k. Which is to say that they are appropriate for other paradigms.

The back legs look... backwards, especially with the smooth curve of the forelegs.
You may want to make a short hip structure and flip them around or rebuild the legs so the rear thighs are between 20 and 40 degrees.
As it looks now the beast would only be able to take baby steps.

I agree with Belphegor, the back legs don't look like they'd support or move effectively. Other than that it's a nice conversion. Adding another pair of spidery legs from the sides similar to the large front legs would balance the look a bit more. I like it!

The legs are the carnifex legs turned backwards to give him a "stance." IE, braced for firing.

I *do* wish that I had a bigger gun to put on there. I've left room underneath so that if my friend finds a gigantic gun or something, we can sling it under there.

I also agree on the spidery legs to the side. I'll ask my friend if he has any more "tails" that I can cut (that's already two carnifexes worth of pieces in there). Alternatively, lets go check out thewarstore.com....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Having checked e-bay and seen not much for tails (and not affordable for kitbashing)

I wonder if scything talons would make good legs? They're ALSO spikey.

To the contrary, I think that those particular legs would look a lot sillier the other way around. I think that the joints are in the right places, but could be stockier considering the frame they're moving.

He needs a tail, thinking in a balancing himself while fireing a big gun kinda way. Other than that it looks great! Keep up the good work!

When I saw the pictures, the first thing I thought was "WTF" so you did a good job!

Dashofpepper wrote:-The underbelly is where the ripper swarms emerge - I thought the carapace down there was fitting.

do tyrannofexes spawn ripper swarms? only one nid player around me and he doesn't use them and i'm only familiar with about a half dozen nid units (the ones i use with my aliennids, the clix aliens from AVP).


either way, looks good. personally, i think you should loot it for your orks! those deathskullz can loot anything!

Those front limbs are great!

Those guns though still look very constructed and not organic, also as an ork player, if I were across the table from that, those guns would be driving me up the wall, aesthetically speaking.

Swap guns and change rear limbs and you're cooking with gas.

not sure about the under carapace but looks good otherwise

MeanGreenStompa wrote:Those front limbs are great!

Those guns though still look very constructed and not organic, also as an ork player, if I were across the table from that, those guns would be driving me up the wall, aesthetically speaking.

Swap guns and change rear limbs and you're cooking with gas.

I couldn't think of anything bigger to use. I added some spiked things to try making them look more organic - any suggestions?

Mebbe greenstuff them or venom cannons?

I recently decided to make a tyrannofex myself. Since I don't have converting skill, or painting skill, I wanted to keep it rather simple.

What I did was use the carnifex body, and attached the gun portion of the venom cannon underneath its belly. I used green stuff to create a pouch/sling to hold it there, so it just looks like an extension of its body. Then I used greenstuff to build up the gun to look bigger, and more like an organic cannon. It comes out right under the head, as it looks like in the codex.

Since I really liked the "spider" leg thing going on in the codex, and since its description states three pairs of legs, I decided to try and use the giant scything talons as front legs, with the smaller ones in the middle. It actually came out really nice, with the back legs looking like the power legs, and the front and middle sets look like they can stabalize the beast when it shoots, and also scuttle forward.

It still looks a tiny bit weird because the back legs arent as high as the talon legs, but overall im very pleased at how simple of a conversion it is. And hopefully when it's painted it will be easily distinguished from a carnifex by the gun.

I have pics, but lack the tool to put them on my computer from my camera... Hope this gives you an idea or something.

I like the overall look, but the back legs look terribly out of place, in my opinion.

Alright, after acquiring some Scything Talons, here's the latest efforts.

Those back legs are going to come off and be replaced by Scything Talons too. Green stuff is going around the gun mounts to make them look more organic and around the legs to get them fit in well.

Weee you used my scything talons idea

Holy sweet mother of god!!!! That is a beastly model you got there! I can't wait to the finished product.
Maybe you are a mad doktor

Looks much better now, I still don't think the weedy little legs at the back look right though.

Nicely done, I might try my hand at a t-fex using this as a template. (yoink)