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So welcome to my latest in a long line of project logs on this august forum. As the title says, I'm starting a new nid army, my 4th in my gaming life, this is so I can take part in yet another tournament at the end of the month, and true to form I was suckered into another bet to complete a new army for it. I will also be using these guys to take part in the "Battle for Cerberus" campaign being run by Doghouse on the The ammobunker

Unfortunately I lost a lot of time to injury
being laid up in hospital, and then in a bed without access to my models for over a fortnight. I've been losing a lot of time to a new girlfriend too, but that's a bit more fun

Anyway, enough waffle, here's the pics of my progress. Sorry for the quality.

The list if you're interested.


Firstly my Doom of Malantai, it's a conversion of the stock finecast zoanthrope, I cut the tail off, built an armature of wire, and puttied it with a plumbing expoy called knead-it, that sets hard, then skinned it in gs, before a final couple of coats of thinned liquid GS to smooth it out. The spines are from the mawloc kit.



Next is the tyrannofex, I wasn't thrilled with the design they went for, I much prefer the codex illustration, showing the gun integrated into the lower jaw of the model. So I converted it by cutting the lower jaws off, gluing the gun to the tervigon egg sac (to represent copious amounts of ammo) and then GS'd the lower jaws to the sides of the gun, and blended the arms, jaws and egg sac together with GS.



Thirdly I have my two mawlocs. Both of these have been converted to look as though they are bursting from the ground, not sitting on top of it (basing will further add to this) and to have a second set of jaws. I used the trygons normal jaws, then trimmed and glued the mawloc mandibles to the back of the jaw bone, build and armature of brass wire between the two sets, and GS'd webbing ontop of that.





Finally I have a pic of HALF the termagants I require for this list. The only "conversion" I've done to them is to bend their tails to give the models a little bit more movement and character.



And here's the test mini I painted today. Sorry the photo is gak, I'll take another tmrw in the day light.



Things I think I need to improve:

- The transition of colour on the jaws/weapon.
- The bio bits on the weapons, flesh tone seemed a good idea, but it might need a further highlight.
- Carapace, needs another highlight.
- Masking, there is a touch of over spray in the left forearm.

Any other comments/criticisms/witticisms feel free to let me know.

Cheers

Sheep

Looking good! I like the Tyrannofex conversion.

I like your Tyrannofex conversion... good interpretation of the Codex Art!

rpricew wrote:I like your Tyrannofex conversion... good interpretation of the Codex Art!

Looking forward to seeing it painted...

Ouch! That ankle/foot looks painful!

Good work on the nids!

Thanks gents, yeah the ankle was hell paintul!

Well Ive been busy painting these guys over the last couple of days. And managed to finish all the gants and take a chunk out of the first big beasty.

Here's the mawlocs pre yellow glaze.


Tyranofex PIP.


Doom PIP


I've taken to calling these my table gants, because they start the game deployed, the rest of the spawn gants can wait til after everything else is finished for some paint.

Termagants finished


Thanks for looking.

Not much love for the yellow it would seem

Well another day down, and I'm moving closer to the goal of having the army done. the only problem is now all I have left is big guys, and they seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time to finish!

Towards that end I put a big efforet in today and managed to finish the first big guy, Tyrannofex!

Scale and side shot.


Other side.


Booty shot.


The money shot. Unfortunately this shows that I wasn't to exact with my positioning, and the head and gun are canted in opposite directions. Fortunately its only noticeable from straight on like this.


Thanks for looking, and I hope to have more very soon.

So, I've been uncommonly productive of late, and I'll need to maintain it to finish the 7 montrous creatures (one of them is a pod, but its pretty big so I'm counting it too) in 6 days I have left *sigh*

Anyway, finished the paint on the Doom. Now I just have to sort out how I'm going to do the jungle bases, I have some plastic aquarium plants, I have to figure out how to paint them and then them mount them.







I'm really inordinately happy with the SM scheme on the bases too

Thanks for looking.

Awesome Tyranids man! Great painting + cool conversions, love the T-rex Fex!

Keep it up

Quite simply freaking awesome, LOVE the yellow

Thanks guys Glad you're liking the work, hopefully ill have finished 2 mawlocs later today.

Love it, although I would consider one final highlight along the edges of the armoured chitin plates.

The yelllow and pink-purple just pops so much, that the plates look a little bland in comparison...

The tyrannofex.... OMG I am so amazed!

Thanks guys

Elmir, yeah I'm considering adding a touch of white to the final highlight colour just to make it pop more.

Another couple of days have passed, 4 days til my deadline! To prove I'm not slacking heres a couple of pics of my latest work.

The 2 mawlocs will be used in the list to hit back field units like longfangs and whirlwinds, pop cans to get the juicy meat out and otherwise just cause a nuisance, like daemonic whack a moles, and take the heat off my spawners as they waddle up the field. Thats the plan anyway.





Not the greatest of angles on the second one, but its an awkward pose to photograph, I'll try again later.

Nice color scheme, I'm doing nids atm and your conversions are a bit inspiring, keep going!

Thanks mate, glad you like the conversions Best of luck with your nids.

If anyone ever tells you that batch painting 4 tervigons will be fun, punch them in the head, its a massive ballache.

Wow, I really love the pink-purple antennae, especially the transition between them. How'd you do it?

Thanks mate, I did the purple to pink transition with an airbrush using a series of airbrush paints (mr hobby) in thress layers, purple, mauve, and pink.

Finished! Pic taken during the beauty pagent at the tournament this weekend, where I'm happy to report I won best painted And played a great game against Dakkas own Insainiak's steel wolves.

I'll take some pics of the tervigons individually soon, but thought a "proof of life" picture would be nice

Thanks to everyone for the comments and support, I think I'll give myself more then 2 weeks to paint my next army.

Gotten some more time and added some more models to the army.



Latest additions to the army are a couple of hive guard. Construction and painting tut on my blog

The latest thing I have finished for my bugs, a tyranid prime, or alpha warrior depending on how you want to call it.









The model has been widened by 1mm each direction through the torso, and raised by about 2 mm.

The next "big" thing goes on this base.



Thanks for looking.

These look fantastic!

One of the coolest schemes for 'nids I have seen in a while.

They pop.

these are awesome!

Thanks alot for the comments guys Glad you all like them.

I like the bent/wagging tails on the gants, it makes the models seem more varied.

Did you use a heat gun or some other method?

Curious...

That alpha looks great and the oval base is beautiful.

Cheers gents.

CTgamer: the tails were just bent by hand, heating them up would help make it easier I suppose, but I didn't find it necessary.

The mystery model is a harpy





He's been made by recycling my flying hive tyrant from 4th/5th ed, rotated the base by 90 degrees, and added some talons where the legs used to be.

He will be armed with twin venom cannons, I started making and painting this guy before talking to my gaming guru buddy, and he told me that just because he's a flyer doesn't mean he has the interceptor rule :( I still think it looks cool, and I always try to have a new model in the army for each tournament I attend. After this is finished I think I have to have a break for a couple of weeks to concentrate on uni, and exams, then it will be a summer free for all

Awesome job!

Thanks mate, I've done alittle more to the harpy, but nothing worth photographing yet.

Thanks guys, well I managed to finish the harpy before I moved house, and I've just gotten around to posting the terrible photos I took of it.

I took these pics before dullcote, hence the shiney wings.









Sorry for the terrible background, but the pics were rushed and its a really awkward model to photograph.