Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I started playing nids back in 2004 after purchasing an army from Ebay. Since then, I am usually working on some bug project.



Above is a picture of what started it all, a so called pro-painted ebay purchase in 2004 , whose paint standards I wasn't very satisfied with (The pics were low quality and some kinda blurry so the army looked better on the web than in real life). Nevertheless, it was a great paint scheme that I have copied and improved upon over the years. Note that I ended up repainting the HT scything talons, the bony protrusions, and the tail, as well as modeling a third eye. Also note that only 15 of the 30 hormaguants are pictured. The remainder of the army that was purchased was either repainted or is in the process of being repainted. Hopefully some of the regulars at Atlantic Comics will remember this army as it was there that I first show cased it and cut my proverbial teeth.




This was one of the first units I repainted upon aquiring my new nids army. At the time of purchase it was only 15 man strong, was actually equiped as termaguants, and lacked the hive node mutant. Being that spine guants were so cheap, I thought that a 32 man squad would make a great tar pit unit for my 3rd edition gun line nids.






When I originally bought this model, it was painted white and then shaded with some black ink. Didn't match the rest of the army but I kind of liked the idea of having an albino model. So I completely repainted it, working from a base of Cold Grey and working my way up to Wolf Grey then Ghost Grey and finally White using a dry brush technique. Shadow grey was then used for the spotting. Sound familiar...years later, I used the same color scheme for my Grey Knights armour.



After having painted my albino carnifex, I decided that further mutants (this was back in 3rd Edition) would also be albino. This helps break the color scheme while still including the chetah pattern that helps tie them in with the rest of the army.




Soon afterwards, having realized the necessity of having 2 guns on my TMC, I decided to do a little converting using the MC BS and the lowly hormoguants. For this I simply dremeled off the hind legs and replaced them with inverted spine fists; then I added the guns...thus was born the gun totes for my HT and albino carnifex. Also, this was my first real attempt at blending, having painted them in late 2008.












The Tyrant Guards and Carnifex above were actually repainted twice! Once in 2004 and again in 2008. Also, the back of the Carnifex was painted using a wet blend technique. I think the result turned out quite well .

And now for the main event ...........................






My labor of love and by far the best model I have ever painted . Completed in 2007, I had over 200 hrs into this project and I hope it shows . Unfortunately, my less than professional photo taking has left some of the more subtler colors muted...but something is better than nothing right? The plants were made out of green stuff and the scorpion is actually an adrenal gland combined with a toxic sac to represent them as well as implant attack being equiped on the model.

Well I hope you guys enjoyed. I plan on providing updates to this thread as I work on adding additional units to my expanding nids army. Unfortunately, I am a slow painter so my goal is one update every quarter ...Seriously though, it will be a while . So much to paint and so little time to do so!

Oh, by the way...as it is a desert theme, does anyone have any cool ideas for naming my hive fleet. Looking for some kind of mythological desert monster? Hive Fleet Scorpio?

wow i must say that is fantastic
i especially love the albinos

DAYUM!

thats awesome

I like this realistic color approach , alot better than the typical rainbow nids.

i like the color scheme, it looks good and gives the army a nice feel to my mind.

Great army!! Do you have any photos of the entire army together?

I love your tyranids! The scheme works well and when you look close you can tell there's some fine work.

The albino cernifex though.... holy moly that model is sweet. Great job on that guy!

the coolest thing in Wyoming!
great job all the way around!

Lovely bugs you have there

Hey man, just a quick question for you. I've started painting my 'nids using the dip technique which i'm loving how the bone look turns out. The question is, what colours do you use for the "fleshy" bits to give it that sort of look?

Love the Gunner Gaunts, great job all over!

Wow some of those models are ancient, I like.

MuffinButt358 wrote:Hey man, just a quick question for you. I've started painting my 'nids using the dip technique which i'm loving how the bone look turns out. The question is, what colours do you use for the "fleshy" bits to give it that sort of look?

MuffinButt,

...I just can't say that with a straight face ! Anyways, I am assuming that you are asking about the chest, head, and tail areas. If so, the base is Char Brown (Valejo) followed by a Babad Black Wash. I then apply a mix of Dark Flesh and Charred Brown and then build up to Dark Flesh and finally to a mix of Dark Flesh and Terroccota. The area is then washed with GW's Gryphon Sypia.

goffnob deffsmakka wrote:Wow some of those models are ancient, I like.

Yeah, again, the army was started in 3rd. I do have some of the new genestealers (some...like in over 40), tyrant guards, carnifexes, and ravenors...just not painted. While I am a big fan of the majority of new models, I think GW really dropped the ball on the 4rth ed. Hive Tyrant. To me, it looks too much like the hulking brute/bear of the new carnifex. When I think of the Hive Tyrant, I think of an agile, sleek hunter like a tiger or a vilociraptor, which is more in line with the 3rd edition hive tyrant. I was really hoping that when they remade the HT in 4rth that it would be exactly like the Forge World Hive Tyrants (Sleeker and more Detailed). Instead, I was really disappointed . As such, I have recently bought 3 new Hive Tyrant, all of them being 3rd edition...bonus, they are much cheaper too!

@ Everyone else, thanks for the comments !

looks great!
i would say paint it all in the albino colour scheme though
dont know what it is about it, but it really looks good.

love the older bio's.
the new ones look like gak, same with the new tyrant guards.

impressive work though, cant wait to see more of it

JD21290 wrote:looks great!
i would say paint it all in the albino colour scheme though
dont know what it is about it, but it really looks good.

love the older bio's.
the new ones look like gak, same with the new tyrant guards.

impressive work though, cant wait to see more of it

Oh there will be more albinos for sure! Though such models will be sparse so as to pop out from the army rather than dominate it. I am planning on painting my red terror and the brood lord in that color scheme as well as one of my future Hive tyrants. If I ever purchase a death leaper, it will likely be painted albino as well.

There is just something kind of funny about an albino trying to sneak up on its prey .

yea, i think a white lictor creeping through the grass doesent blend too well
i may have to steal that colour scheme for the albino's

thinking about starting a new swarm once i finish up my orks.

InquisitorMack wrote:Great army!! Do you have any photos of the entire army together?

Nope but it is on my too do list... along with painting: *100 Genestealers*4 Carnifexes*Trygon*3 Hive Tyrants*Brood Lord*10 Ripper Swarms*96 Guants*4 Tyrant Guard*3 Zoanthropes*21 Warriors*Red Terror*20 spore mines...and not to even mention my other 3 armies !

Still I will try to get one in a month or so.

wyomingfox wrote:

MuffinButt358 wrote:Hey man, just a quick question for you. I've started painting my 'nids using the dip technique which i'm loving how the bone look turns out. The question is, what colours do you use for the "fleshy" bits to give it that sort of look?

MuffinButt,

...I just can't say that with a straight face ! Anyways, I am assuming that you are asking about the chest, head, and tail areas. If so, the base is Char Brown (Valejo) followed by a Babad Black Wash. I then apply a mix of Dark Flesh and Charred Brown and then build up to Dark Flesh and finally to a mix of Dark Flesh and Terroccota. The area is then washed with GW's Gryphon Sypia.

The irony with the nickname is the fact that i'm military personel that's 250lbs and plays rugby. Meh, I figure that the nickname fits for a reason.

Anyway, thanks a ton for the tip. Basically, light brown faded up with a wash and ink on top. i'll do the brown and then do my varathane dip instead of an ink wash.

I need to stop reading this forum ! Now I want to go and play a 'nid army !!

That is a truly beautiful army, Id love to see some photo's of it deployed in the field as it were.

I think that albino scheme would be great for a snow themed 'nid army. It reminds me of snow leopards fur patterning.

These Nids are amazing!

I love the more naturalistic scheme on the old figs, not really a fan of the old tyrant guard models but youve made them look great.

The gaunts are great too, i like the off-color of the head and tail, really different approach that works really well with your scheme. The Carnies and FW tyrant are sweet, cant wait to see more of your fleet, Keep it up!

Also, a question: why the spinefist arms on the hormagaunt body? It looks great, but is there any specific reason for this beyond 'it looks cool?' the conversion just piqued my curiosity.

again, inspiring work.

Corndoggy wrote:Also, a question: why the spinefist arms on the hormagaunt body? It looks great, but is there any specific reason for this beyond 'it looks cool?' the conversion just piqued my curiosity.

I had a few hormies to spare...and it looked cool and broke up the look of the squad, making them look more mobile and in motion. Bonus in 5th, my leaping spine guants can now ensure that the entire squad always gets shot, even though my opponent might only see 3 heads .

Well with the new wound modification for Tyranid Warriors, I decided to add some lash whips to my Death Spitter Warriors. Currently, the warriors are all armed with 2 sets of Death spitters, so to make this a little simple, I simply took one arm of each nid and replaced it with 1 scything talon which I then proceeded to convert into a Lash Whip. (This way I can either play them as TL DS or as DS and LW).

So anyways, I started off with a Tyranid Warriors Scything Talon (the medium sized ones).


I then whittled the talon with a exacto knife to about 1/2 its thickness.


At this point, I simply bent the sything talon into an S shape


I then twisted a thick rope of GS around the talon and drew the green stuff down the length of the talon and beyond. Oil and sculpting tools were used to further refine the shape and smooth the newly formed lash whip. I then laft the model over night.




The next day, I took a dremmel tool with a cylinder shaped sander and sanded the the lash whips down to remove and bulges and imperfections. Dremmel sanders are actually quite effective at sanding down GS.


Lastly, I added a webb of veins to the base of the talon with Green Stuff.


Well pretty simple conversion

Good lord, do I love your color scheme.
Concerning the lash ... I think you couldve gone with a bit more ... curvature. Now, it kinda looks like the scythes melted and got slightly repositioned. Thats just me though.

You can never have to many albinos

Looking good so far.


What do you use to differentiate units?


take care

Flachzange wrote:Good lord, do I love your color scheme.
Concerning the lash ... I think you couldve gone with a bit more ... curvature. Now, it kinda looks like the scythes melted and got slightly repositioned. Thats just me though.

Really...hmmm....well now that you pointed it out I kinda agree . Actually, that is kinda the limmiting factor of working with the talons as even thinned down, they have limmited motion. I think I will try simply using a thick wire for the base next time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

albinoork wrote:What do you use to differentiate units?

Either biomorphs (in the case of my 2 painted hormie squads) or different base colors (various browns)

So...been a year or more BUT...a recent campaign league has given me the opus to start working on revamping my nids for 5th edition. Unfortunately, 5th edition and the recent codex pretty much raped my previous army which revolved around wariors, gun fexes, and sniper rants. So I have had to go back to the drawing board in building a competitive force of up to 2000 points.

So to start off, I began by building my first Tervigon....OK, its just a carnifex on a large oval base...but it will work till we get the real Tervigon model in a few months. Of course, I wasn't about to let my $60 Carnifex model become outdated in less than a year when the next edition comes out...so I decided to magnitize all the options from the head to the tail.



Most of the magnets used are Neodymium Magnets from K&J Magnetics with the following dimensions

Head: 1/8" diameter x 1/32" thick

Body (Arm attachments): Radio Shack Rare Earth Magnets which are roughly 1/4"x1/16"

Body (Head attachment): 1/8" x 1/16"

Body (Top Carapace attachment): 1/8" x 1/16"

Body (Tail attachments [2]): 1/16" x 1/16" and 1/16"x1/32"

Top Carapace (Body attachment): 1/8" x 1/16"

Top Carapace (Adrenal attachment): 1/16" x 1/32"

Adrenal Gland: 1/16" x 1/8"

Tail [2]: 1/16" x 1/16"

Arms (Body attachment): 1/8" x 1/8"

Arms (Toxic attachments): 1/16" x 1/8"

Toxic Sac: 1/16" x 1/32"

Well as you can see I pretty much butchered my bits in order to fit the magnets in more dynamic poses. So next the greenstuff, which once cured was followed with a throrough sanding with artist sand paper. If not sanded, the boundaries of the green stuff tends to show up after priming.



After the end product was assembled, I was quite happy with the result...not only was it magnitized, but the pose was very dynamic and fluid:



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And a bit of a pic of my work station...actually just showing off the Basing Stick, which is just 2 sales signs (the wooden stakes) duck taped together and then taped in a reverse manner sticky side up. Allows me to spray paint 10+ models at a time. It is a good idea to leave about 4-5" space between the models or else if they are too bunched up then the models will block off the paint flow from one another.

So just here is my assembled and based FW Trygon: Only the adrenal sac (not shown) has been magnitized.

wyomingfox wrote:

A bit late on saying this, but the back of it reminds me of those shark thing from Fallout 3. Looks amazing!

Very well done, love the color scheme!

I love the idea of mutants being albino to stand out. Very nice paint scheme.