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CiaranAnnrach wrote:I like what you've done with your tervigons, especially how you've done the gaunts being popped out. I might have to do something similar with my own tervigon, which is also using the arachnarok as the base. That is, if you don't mind me stealing the idea...

...but I am curious how you attached the carnifex head to the body of the arachnarok. That's one point of my own conversion I'm not quite content with.

Help yourself! I blogged the creation of the magnet fitting for the gaunt pupa and stinger, feel free to work from that.

As for the head: I sawed off the Arachnarok fangs, and then it was pretty simply to glue a Carnifex head on, cut a Carnifex spine bank to fit, and then use Green Stuff to build a load of connective tissue hiding the join and extend the spine bank to fit nicely.

As for the head: I sawed off the Arachnarok fangs, and then it was pretty simply to glue a Carnifex head on, cut a Carnifex spine bank to fit, and then use Green Stuff to build a load of connective tissue hiding the join and extend the spine bank to fit nicely.

That's a really cool way to add the head to the model. While I prefer the conversions where a carnifex torso is added to the body, thus making for a taller beast, your conversion's shapes definitely flows really well together. Hiding a support pin with a gaunt, pure genius.

Maybe I'm hanging out with too many kit-bashers but looking at all the great spider body conversions popping up all over the place, I'm starting to think that when, or if ever, GW releases an "official" tervigon kit it's probably going to be ignored. Are there really any Tyranid players that aren't into making conversions out there?

Yeah, I kind of like how not using a Carnifex body gives it the appearance of a turtle-like retractable head (especially on the six-eyed heads I used for the upgraded ones, to be revealed later). And saves about £150 for the whole project

Now that I think about it, widening the hole left by the Arachnarok fangs with a 2mm drillbit made it possible to make a socket for the pin on a Carnifex's neck (that plugs into the torso). There's your frame of reference for where it all fits together

lindsay40k wrote:And saves about £150 for the whole project

Good God! How many Tervigons are you making if you're saving that much?

Five on 'em! Three basic AG/TS ones to be Troops, two with Claws and Regeneration to be HQ.

I was wondering when someone would get around to doing this, and it looks as great as I thought it would! Viva the Arachno-Tervi!

Very nice conversions all around btw

5?! Nice! That'll be a scary sit on the table. For your sake, I really hope you like assembling gaunts because even with average rolls, such a list could spawn about 50 per turn... Scary!

I'm only running one in my more common list and I've actually run out of gaunts even though I've already built about 44 with fleshborers.

All five will likely only appear in Apocalypse games in a formation I devised that lets Tervigons pool dice and trade them before rolling for unit upgrades on the Gaunts they spawn...

A devilish formation you've thought up there, one that sounds like a good modernisation to the old "endless swarm" rules. I'm still seeing you needing a ton of gaunts per turn though.

Do you play many Apoc games?

Yeah I definitely love that Arachnarok-Tervigon conversion. It really works well with the Carnifex bitz

Did a lot with the 4ed Codex and Datasheets. Not so many these days, on account of only having enough Hive Guard and Mycetic Spores for a <2K game...

I have yet to play an Apoc game even though back in the days of Rogue Trader (yes, a long time ago) it was fairly common to play games that were 4k per side. Kinda miss those days when Eldar really were the top of the pyramid but then again, Nids really weren't fleshed out at all back then.

As for spores, I'm still not quite sure I want to run a list with them but I'll be testing that tomorrow by running 2 spores (proxied) with 20 devilgaunts each in 2.5k game tommorrow. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Spoiler: it turns out awesome. An all reserve planetfall nid list is pure win, a large part of which is spores and devgants.
20 gants, 60 shots. Hit on a 4, wound MEQ on a 4. So 30 hits and then 15 wounds, average.
That's 5 dead marines, just on averages. 2.5 terminators. Against guardsmen, you deny armor.
Spores can rip up rear armor, and if a landraider tank shocks your spore, you can pen with a roll of 9 on 2d6. Spores make marines cry.

I'm looking at doing a Deathleaper that really illustrates the creature's epic trollery of senior prey. I really like the Strom Trooper Chimera Commander, but I've used him on my Pipe Lictor conversion already. Considering this pair:



But the twenty-five quid pricetag on the set is a major investment to add on top of the DL figure. I might go for it, though, for an awesome display piece...

@ Doomthumbs: Turns out you partially right. For this particular game, facing eldar, the first pod merely served as a paltry diversion because the 3 falcons that offered a rear facing to the 20 devilgaunts decided to just star engine far away. Also, because of them had spirit stones and holofields, my glancing were pretty much ignored. The second pod on the other hand not only captured an objective but also turned a squad of Pathfinders into red mist the turn it popped on.

Conclusion: maxed out DevilPod squads excel at contesting objectives in the late game if you're certain you'll only be facing foot infantry. If you have to dislodge fully upgraded troop transport vehicles (Such as Tau, Eldar or Grey Knights), save yourself some points and go for better vehicle poppers in order to really put pressure on the enemy. Pods are great for adding an element of surprise only if you're certain that the pod's contents will actually succeed at diverting the enemy's attention. In my case, my opponent had enough mobility that he was able to effortlessly evade everything and redirect all his army's attention to the point that actually mattered.

Now back to the OP. The Deathleaper conversion sounds pretty cool considering you're actually trying to model the fluff of the model. Correction: sounds more like epic, actually. As for the cost of the conversion, just bite the bullet. This is why our hobby is considered a luxury. The truth of the matter is that GW is a model making that tacks on rules to its models in order to sell more plastic injection goodness. Considering that if you want to get a kick ass Tervigon conversion you practically have to spend the big coin on a Carnifex kit and then follow that up with either a bunch of hours of GS work or 14$ on an arachnorok torso via ebay, good conversions are not cheap. Deathleaper is a great model, both fluff and capabilities wise, so what's an extra 30-40 bucks if you're buying a means to shorten your modeling time while increasing your "idea expression" time.

The way I look at it, assume that you are paid your hourly wage for any hobby task. If you scratch-build whatever you need for a conversion in less time than it would take you to work for it and buy the premade bitz, then just build it from scratch. Otherwise, just bite the bullet and buy the bitz in order to maximise your modeling time. For example, while I could easily sculpt my own Tervigon from scratch, there is no way in hell I could sculpt one in less than 4 hours, or roughly what it takes for me to afford to buy that model kit
It all comes down to time. Is modeling time more important to me than actual output? If I choose to value models produced per hour more than time spent converting for fun per hour then it's clear that spending money on building models from scratch is not something I care about. In your case, I'd venture you're a conversion artist who would prefer spending some money on getting the models you need to express the jist of your work rather than build the whole dio from scratch. Whatever method you end up choosing, I'm sure it'll look great regardless

So, I got Old One Eye finished up. As promised, here's my stage-by-stage painting blog:

First of all, it needs to be said that I rely on overcast daylight for my photography. I photographed each stage in the best light to hand before moving onto the next; there's some yellow shift from artificial light, and blue shift from clear skies daylight.

The unpainted Old One Eye can be found on page 2. The legs, base and head armour were all sculpted by me and can be repeated if anyone wants to give me money or minis, PM me if you're interested.


Chaos Black undercoat, Mechrite Red basecoat on chitinous areas.


Blood Red drybrush.


Undilute Leviathan Purple wash.


Blood Red drybrush.


1:1 Hormagaunt Purple/Skull White basecoat on skin areas.


Undilute Leviathan Purple wash.


Reapply 1:1 Purple/White mix to raised areas; highlight up by increasing the amount of white in the mix for each coat.
Bestial Brown basecoat on bone areas, followed by a 1:1 Bestial Brown/Bleached Bone mix the covers everything except for the recesses between individual plates and any 'cracks' at the end of plates.


1:3 Bestial Brown/Bleached Bone mix painted on top. The edges of armour and hooves and the points of claws, horns and barnacles will be pure Bleached Bone; tapering lines of the previous coat are left protruding from the recesses between plates, cracks at the ends of plates, the bases of hooves, the edges of barnacles and the bases of the claws.


1: 6 Bestial Brown/Bleached Bone mix painted on top. Whereas the previous coat defined the long 'triangles' of the preceding coat emerging from the bone's growth line, this coat consists of long triangles that start after the growth line and widen (but don't generally meet) at the edge. In the case of the claws and horn, the triangles merge at the points; this would apply to long talons, too.


Thin lines of pure Bleached Bone are applied within the previous coat's areas, using several coats of thin paint. The final effect creates the impression of living bone or keratin, where fresh growth has a darker tone than older layers.
A mix of Mechrite Red, Hormagaunt Purple and Skull White was painted very thinly on any areas where skin and carapace smoothly meet.
Dirt: Graveyard Earth basecoat, drybrushed with Bleached Bone mixes. Rocks: Adeptus Battlegrey basecoat, drybrushed with Bleached Bone mixes. A little dilute Badab Black applied around rocks here and there to give better definition.


Humbrol gloss varnish applied over the entire model. I don't have much truck with acrylic-based varnishes - if you can't clean your brush without white spirit, it's probably not good stuff.


Humbrol stain varnish applied over skin areas. Humbrol matt varnish applied over bone areas and ground. Static grass and PVA to decorate base.


Alt view.


I don't usually keep sunlit photos as I'm not keen on the yellow tint they usually acquire, but I like how the shadows accompany the 'jungle'.

You have the best Tyranids I have ever seen, ever.

Your work is truly remarkable.

Currently painting up them Hoplite-looking Tyrant Guard for the Swarmlord. I decided that the Prime accompanying my Swarmlord should have a design that suggests a herald carrying a war banner. I didn't want it to actually have such an unfunctional symbiote, so I decided that one of my bonepikes with a Gargoyle variant perched on top with Lashwhip arms would fit the aesthetic I want plus be reasonably WYSIWYG.

But it's not in my nature to stop there. A few more scribbles later - including a Skyslasher Falconer I'll return to - and I find myself exploring Cataphract designs for 'free radical' Primes that skip from unit to unit and have some sort of 'Caesar in his red cape' aesthetic; a quadrupedal Warrior with Lashwhips, with a symbiotic rider carrying a pike and shield, and some rank and file equivalents with a one-armed Devourer replacing the shield. (Let's face it, with an Exodite World fluff, I needed some 'raptor rider' equivalents.)

Gizza job, GW

Wow ! what a beautiful army. I love the theme and that you are putting so much thought and work into it. Cant wait to see a photo of it all together.

I'm pretty sure that top right sketch is one tyranid wheel-barrowing another. Have you been hanging out with Doomthumbs?

Moltar wrote:I'm pretty sure that top right sketch is one tyranid wheel-barrowing another. Have you been hanging out with Doomthumbs?

Cannot be unseen


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Great, now I'm having to consider if I should go with the centaur or beast/rider symbiotic design... the former would be easier to make non-rude lookin', plus will recall Zoats - which for a Behemoth collection is a plus.

that carapace is one of the most beautiful one i've ever seen. Simply stunning.

Really love your Nids lindsay, my favourite are the Pipe Lictor and the Parasite of SR388. Some really clever conversions and amazing paint jobs to go with them.

Keep up the excellent work

Wow, great work, seamless conversions and fantastic painting.

Keep it up, definitely subbed

Great work on the painting demo Lindsay. Really pleased to finally learn that you, in fact, did not model all the extra detail that seems to be there due to your painting style. It's not the first time I see someone painting ridges and valleys onto carapace but your technique definitely is the best out there. For a non-painter like me, this was gold.

Keep up the great conversions.

Remember my Hoplite-looking Tyrant Guard design? Built, painted and photographed:





The TG figures are discontinued 3Ed Tyrant Guard with GS cheek guards, plasticard crests, and scratch-built bonepikes and shields.

I made moulds of the weapons and can cast duplicates any time, if you're interested drop me a PM. No requests to duplicate models I do not own copyright for please.

Looking great. The spears are definitely a great idea. Any way we could see a close-up shot of the models. It's hard to make out all the detail, which is a shame.

Yeah, I realised the photos needed more work and had to wait an hour or two for the right light

They are amazing , the bipeds are such a cool idea , but the big one is just scaryy like the t rex from jurrasic park

First scratch model of a Prime/Zoat.







I've got a load of 2ed metal Warrior bits that I'm going to build up like this. I'm going to cut the front hooves off and reattach them backwards, to make them work as forelimbs. There'll be a Gargoyle perched on the pike, to suggest a banner. Not sure how to represent Rending Claws, though... maybe put a set on the Gargoyle.