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I thought I would post this little tactic up for any budding nid players out there:

How to assault units partially in cover in order to deny them the benefit of cover:



Where yellow Triangles are the opponent's models with the green pentagon showing the boundaries of the area terrain. Red Crosses are the genestealers with a single lead genestealer being 4-6" away from the closest enemy model not in terrain. The remaining genestealers are grouped together roughly 2" behind the leader to ensure that they will not be able to get in B2B with models wholly in area terrain.

And just for clarification, it is not whether a unit is in cover or not, but whether the assaulting unit has to enter into cover that is the determining factor. If one of the greyknights was even a fraction outside of the bounds of the area terrain, this method would still work.

Depraved wrote:I really like the light grayish paint jobs on page one.

Those are my albinos. They were painted up in third edition to represent tyranid mutants such as "Hivenodes" that you were allowed to take at the time. It allowed you to give a certain number of models in a unit such mutations as lashwhips, rending claws, leadership 10, or increase their strength and thoughness for an added cost. The next generation of albinos will represent special units like Tyranid Primes and one-off characters. After I get my SW bike done (pretty soon), I will start work on my ymargls, which will be painted in the albino color scheme.

@Gits: Thanks, I was thinking of posting up other diagrams of nid tips as I come across them.

Welcome Jihad_Ragsta

I loved your 'Gaunt gunners' on page 1, they remind me of a macro version of the Tyranid Warrior that sprouted out of the Epic Dominatrix spine!

Well, now that you mention it, yeah they kinda do

Where are you getting those green plastic plants for your bases from?

They are actually hobby scenery from Pegusus Hobbies. You can see thier line of products here.

I would like to see more battle reports - I wanna see all this Tyranid dakka in action if possible

Oh, it's in the works. I have a couple friends who I've recently met who live in the area. One is dakka's own Gitsplitta. I wouldn't expect much in October, however, as I am taking some time off to travel on the weekends and enjoy the lovely Fall scenery.

OK, so I thought I would give a few very small but very divergent updates:

First up a view of my gaming table complete with lots of Pre-painted terrain! I just love it when someone does the work for me. Terrain comes from ESLO, Warmill, and some other companies. This represents about 60% of my in house terrain. I have two boards, a 5.5'x8' (pictured) and a 4' x 6' board that each fold up for storage.



Next up my Tau army as prepared for the GBU Tournement. This is an army that I had commissioned a painter to build, magnitize, green stuff, and paint for 250 dollars. The color scheme followed my design and direction. Overall, the paint job is a rough table top and the greenstuffing and oversized magnetics was pretty bad. Still, it was definately worth what I paid for it. Not expecting to do well, but my Tau is the only army which I had largely painted up.



The two crisis suit teams were repainted by yours truely 6 years ago...otherwise they looked like the broadsides being almost all ivory with some black. I didn't bother to correct the greenstuff, rough priming, or rough gs job...just simply repainted over the models. Also it is a base color + 1 highlight + 1 lined in shading. Not my best work, but I got it done in a couple weekends.





Currently, I am working on my comander which I built and magnitized on my own 3 or so years ago. Just the base colors. Personally, not happy with how the central band of electic blue is clashing with the darker blue. Think I might repaint it ivory.

Oh... I meant I was going to repaint the electric blue area (in the center) to ivory. The darker blue helps to visually offset the comander from the rest of the crisis suits.

Of course, I was just getting the base colors blocked out. I will work him up to the same quality as my most recent space wolves.

Gitsplitta wrote:Take a trick from the marines and differentiate your commanders by removing their helmets!

Ummm...



No!

Hi Ogryn!

Actually the most commmon was watered down Chestnut ink which was applied more as a glaze. Most of my nids were painted prior to GW amazing series of washes. So I was forced to work up from a a much darker base. For my nids, Chestnut was my primary go to and was usually applied towards the end to help tie the various layers together. The brown ink around talons, conversly, was simply painted on direct from the pot. Blank ink, however, which was used on the albinos, was applied more like a traditional wash to the darker fleshy carapace prior to highlighting. Then you have the wet blending on the carnifex; where I had to quickly add a layer and blend it into the bottom layers while the paints were still wet.

OK so, after going 1-1-1 at the GBU, I decided to ditch the stealth suits for a third team of crisis suits as well as see if I could add some outflanking kroot to the picture.

So here is the progress on that goal so far. Three fully magnitized crisi suits posed to llok as if they are just touching down while veering to avoid some enemy fire. Also 18 Kroot led by a ghostly shaper . Metal and flash don't mix well.



Also a pic of my smaller 4x6 gaming table with some different premade terrain (featuring a tau outpost I bought several years ago off ebay).

Thanks slicendice glad I could provide some inspiration

So after playing some 15 games with the new nids, I have been a bit perplexed by the poor results from my Dakkafex+Warrior Prime combo. Specifically focusing in on Mr. Fex. I've played them against SW, Vanilla SM of all flavors, DE, more SW, Tau, Sisters, Chaos, more SW, Deamons, Orcs, Nids, and GK. While I do quite well, the carnie doesn't seam to be throwing his weight around. Each time, the shooting nets me little in rewards...and in assaults...Mr. Carnie kills 2 on a good day thanks to WS 3. Nor is his unit a enemy fire magnet as the focus is usually on the horde stealers, tervies, or the Hive Tyrant.

Several people sing gospel by them, including Hulksmash. I'm just not seeing it.

I ran some numbers and they don't seem to promising either.

(Termies = Terminators)


So based on theory hammer and my personal results on the table. I think I will be giving this bad boy a rest. Maybe exchanging him for some ravenors or a Trygon.

Yeah, I figured you would be in strong agreement; you weren't really keen on the Dakkafex in the beginning. I was highly thinking about adding another Tervie and some guants. Probably be the best bang for the buck. The only issue is that their is already a crap load of models (with 28 stealers, 2 tervies + 60-90 guant horde) on the field as is and I am already slow playing the hell out of matches.

Well, I never went the two Dakkfex route. I always kept it to 1 dakkafex with attached Alpha Warrior. The alpha warrior which can jump in and out of squads seems to hold his own, so I could keep him and attach him to either the Hive Tyrant squad or HG unit and from there he can jump into guant spam squads if nessessary.

Otherwise, if I ditch both, that leaves me with 300 points.

I am going to change up my elites which are currently 2-2 man hive guard squads and 7 man Ygmarls. The Dakkafex represented a much needed shooty unit (its just that it sucks at the job IMHO). Therefore, I will be replacing the Ygmarls with a third 2 man HG unit. That nets me 68 points to spend elsewhere. I love ygmarls, but I need some more anti-mech dakka...that ignores cover.

So I've replaced one shooty unit with a better, cheaper shooty unit. But I am out a fast CC unit as Ymargls pop up usually on turns 2 thanks to Hive Commander...and in the back field (and a synapse if I don't keep the Alpha Warrior). So I have 268 points (or over 368 points if I shunt the Alpha), no open elite slots, 3 open heavies, and 3 open fast attacks. I need a fast CC unit to prop up the stealer swarm in the first wave...(and a synapse if I dump the Alpha Warrior).

Oh, have any of you guys assembled the new Tervie? If so, do you think you can magnitize all the parts to convert between the T-Fex and Tervie? Going to have to buy two of those to replace my carnifex stand-ins, and I like to magnitize models so as to help save time on painting.

@Alabama: Welcome to the mini blogg . Well, my next project will be building 2 Tervies and another Trygon.

As to advice: I think knowing your list inside and out is about as important as creating a good list. Our codex has alot of rules and synergies which makes it a bit harder to play than the simple point and shoot armies of IG and SW. Also being able to correctly guess 12" and 6" distances is critical as most of your best synergistic abilities are at this range (Catalyst, SITW, Paradox, and Synapse are all 12", where as the tervies guant buffs and the HT prefered enemy bubble are 6".

For list building some of the more desirable units in the codex are: Tyrant w/a Guard (Paradox, Preferred Enemy Bubble, and/or Bonuses to Reserves are great synergies), Hive Guard (your only reliable anti-tank ranged weapon), Ygmarls (combined with Tyrant's Hive Commander, makes a good backfield hitter early on), Genestealers (strong cc unit), Trygon (strong cc unit), Tervigons (Catalyst, scoring, creates scoring units, and guant buff are great synergies), Parasite (hinders opponents outflankers and is a great leader for a swarm of gargoyles), Gargoyles w/ adrenals and toxic sacs(economical cc unit), guants (to make your Tervie a troop choice). In building a list, these units should form the majority of the points used.

I tend to stay very minimalistic when it comes to upgrades as I prefer a larger number of bodies. This is because tyranids are very much a "in your opponent's face" type of army and therefore sustain horrendous casualties crossing the board. So I avoid giving my Tervies anything beyond Catalyst, Adrenals, and Sacs. Genestealers and guants run naked (guants get buffs from the tervies instead). Gargoyles would be the only exception as thier TS and Adrenal upgrades are cheap and they can't get these benefits from an outside source.

@Dark Gear: I ended up cuting some point here and there and ended up taking 2 Trygons. At this point, I am going to see how the army plays with three synapse (the Tyrant Brood and the two Tervies).

Yeah, the tunnel is about as effective as the lictor's support abilities (scatter mitigation and reserve bonus)...as in not effective .

Not sure how they thought a reserve bonus that only occurs after the unit arrives from reserve was a good thing.

LostSoulCasey'sLaw wrote:Cool blog dude!

The paint scheme for your 'Nids is sweet, very natural looking. I might just have to absorb some of your biomass utilise your ideas for my 'Nids!

Welcome to the mini-blogg. Glad you like.

OK so...started painting again after 2 months of playing SWTOR and decided to return to painting some albino nids. The work so far: the skin is complete but for some shadow grey cammo spots near the base of his limbs. Otherwise, all that is left is to work on the upper carapace (spacewolf grey fade to white), the feeder tenticles (purple) and the claws/talons (ivory).

I assume you are talking about the gills on the legs and arms. No. If you look at my other nids you will notice they are simply shaded and the ridges highlighted so that all in all the areas become darker. Toxic sacs, adrenal glands, tenticles and various other sacs get a fleshy purple color.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also noticed that some areas of the skin have a yellow cast. That is the spot lights from my new photo light box. Pic was also taken with my new camera. The skin is various shades of nuetral grey.

Hi Alabama.

Good to be back and thanks for the compliments. It really all comes down to practice and learning to thin your paints to a milk like consistancy (2%).

I've been painting since I was 16 (now nearing 32) and these were some of my earliest models:



So cheer up, things only get better with time...except back issues

Heah Squigs,

Bio-Plasma would be nice if it wasn't a 20 point upgrade on a model that is horribly overcosted as is. For now, I have simply shelved my carnies. If 6th edition makes them worth thier weight in points, then adding a bio-plasma head would be easy sinch the current ones are magnitized .

Hmmm Stygian. What does that name refer to?

LOL guys, I actually kind of like the sound of it "Hive Fleet Stygian"

Go right ahead Squigs

No problem, just remember to post the results on DakkaDakka and post a note pointing me to them

So a shot of what I have been up to this past week. Basically assembling and magnitizing a Tervigon I purchased over 6 weeks ago.



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

Body (Arm attachments): 1/8" x 1/8"

Adrenal Gland: 1/8" x 1/16" and I left 1/32" or 1/2 of the magnet exposed

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

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

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

Legs (Adrenal attachments): 1/16" x 1/8"

The adrenal glands fit quite well on the top carapace of the back legs' thighs; the adrenal gland fitbest with the "tail" pointing down along the length of the thigh. The 3-sac toxic sac fits best on the lower inside of the scything talon arm's forearm.

As of tonight, I have just finished greenstuffing the model to cover up the damage I did in magnitizing the model. I ended up rotating the head slightly and cocking it to the side. As a result, I had to greenstuff some tendons to cover up the large gap that was created.

Otherwise, the Tervigon was an amazingly well designed and executed model, with little in the way of flash or moldlines and all-in-all the parts fit together very well (especially when compared to the carifex, which always had an issue with lining up the vents). There was only a few minor gaps that needed to be green stuffed over where the parts didn't fit perfectly together.

Thanks guys . So Squigs, what happened? What made it a failure?

Ah, any pictures?

So what ever happened to that picture squigs

Well, a small update that I am ashamed to say took all of 2 hours to procure.



It is the start of the buildup on the carapace. Basically it is the base coat (wolf grey) + shade (nuln oil) + reapplication of the basecoat. However, I ended up redoing this stage 3 times as I just didn't like the effect. I kept getting these jaring transitions in the recesses as well a tendency to have the base color (which was heavily deluted) flow into the shaded areas. Finally just painted over the entire back with wolf grey, applied a wash of nuln oil, built up the ridges with wolf grey, and then applied a few thin layers of wolf grey over the entire model. Tidied up a few transitions and called it a night.

From here I will build up the ridges from wolf grey to ghost grey and finally to white, hopefully in significantly less time.

Gitsplitta wrote:The nuln oil (whatever the heck that is) doesn't do much for shading does it? I think you'd be better off with a dark grey base coat and building it up from there without the wash.

Nuln Oil is the new Shade equivalent of GW's old Babad Black Wash. It pretty much performs the same. It actually does shade. It is just that I couldn't make the transition work as the base paint used to highlight the ridges kept flowing into the deep crevaces. So after building up the ridges of the carapace, I went back over the entire model with very thinned out wolf grey. So the shading is barely there but the transition is smooth.

Prior to that I tried starting with a dark base coat twice and transitioning to wolf grey and was repeatedly let down with the results. The thinned paints tend to flow into the deep resesses making a complete wreck of the shading. Pissed the hell out of me.

No...you do that when you are re-applying the base coat to a shaded area?

For me, the paint was running into the resesses when I was applying it?