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Thanks for the kind words guys.

Rhino: Glad you're enjoying the personalisation that's going on. I have to admit that I've been looking at Hive Fleet Moloch for the last year. While I may be sorely locking in the basing department, there is something to be said about converting every single model so that they all have a bit of personality instead of looking like gene spliced clones.

Aduro: Even though other submissions are really well done, you really need to get bonus points for the originality of your design. As I pointed out in your P&M Blog, by my reckoning you're the first one to come up with the four-hoof-legged Carnifex. Therefore, it should now be referred to an Aduro Pattern(tm)

Much like Aduro, I'm not just posting this project here. Resinaddict.com, which is a very small community of hard-core modders, is where I spend most of my time. Most of the members on Resinaddict are people who decided to leave more "army specific" sites (such as advancedtautactica.com) in order to just push their conversion and painting skills to the max, regardless of game system and typical painting conventions. Think of it the gamer's equivalent to historical modelling.

Anyways, in an effort to not put as many pics in posts, here's an excerpt from my most recent update from that site's last batch of comments.

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The workspace: I just had to laugh. If the desk looks clean it's only because it's a mixed project area and my bitz box is off to the side (since it's too big to fit on the desk). School papers and reading material have to share the space with the Hive Mind Spawning Pools so I tend to stick to one project at a time. You'll also notice that I have more than one cutting mat. When it's homework time I vacuum up all the plastic shavings and shove the big green mat under the desk. My wife still hates that room because there's no space for her in the "office" and there's 40k boxes everywhere. After nearly 2 years of wedded life I've learned that the best way to keep the peace is to clean up as often as possible. 8-)

Lash Whip: Wolf, awesome bit of fluff there, you totally captured the feel I'm going for. If every symbiote weapon really does have a mind of its own why is that so many of them just does don't have any presence whatsoever? The answer is simple... To give conversion junkies a good kick of inspiration :twisted: Having looked at the design that came with the older hive guard (which I tested originally in a previous pic), the "girth" of the tentacle just seemed too slender to fit the stated purpose of tying up opponents. The slender tendrils just seem like a nuisance rather than a threat. I still feel it needs a few more blood vessels connecting it to the arm due to the bulk of the tentacle but at the same time, judging from your collective reactions, every other part of the design needs to be locked down.

Bone Sword: Now that I have a finalise Tentacle of Strangulation done, I have to agree that what looked fine before now looks a little slender. At first I felt that the careful was enough to make it mesh smoothly with the ripper's mouth but now I really need to add some GS to ease the transition and bulk out the mouth. What I'll be going for will be based on the idea that the sword should like an octopus beak on steroids, as described in this article:

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/octopus4.htm



Further to that I totally agree with you that the shield forearm needs some extra work. Compared to the detail of the sword, the armour cowl and the lash whip, there's a drop in sculpt quality. It was a 'first draft' attempt at the shield arm and it needs a revision. Working on it with sketches. Updates coming when its satisfactory.

If you read the first page of this lesson on Octupii you will learn a really cool detail regarding their blood that could also explain why Tau blood (and therefore skin) is blue. Their oxygen binding cells are copper based, not iron based like ours. Incidentally, copper-based blood is less oxygen efficient than iron-based blood so octopus have 3 hearts to cycle their blood. Bringing this back to Tau, maybe they are horrible at CC because their copper based blood means they have a much lower anaerobic threshold than iron-based lifeforms, such as humans.

Carapace: As clean at it looks, following a fit test with the improved cranium, I'm finding that the neck is far too exposed (pic forthcoming). In other words, the cowl needs to wrap around the whole of the carapace, not just be a peak on the top plate. Worked on bulked up cranial plates while on the bus earlier, will post the sketch as soon as I can capture it.

Future Monstrous Creature designs: First up will be a Tyrannofex so don't hold your breath for a rockin' Tervigon just yet. All I can say about them is that there is some great inspiration on Bell of Lost Souls thanks to their current conversion competition. Info can be found here:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/02/voting-bols-tyranid-challenge-finalists.html

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Thanks for tuning in, that's it for now.

Cheers,

Dark_Gear

Don't worry about posting too many pictures, that's just me giving you crap because your stuff is cool. We were just discussing today at the FLGS that I'm an arse and deserve all the abuse I get.

Ha! We'v man! As long as your modding skills can keep up with your mouth it's fine. Just keep the great work coming so we can keep swapping ideas ok? Lol

Dark_Gear

Hey Aduro, where do you keep getting those awesome avatars?

Thats a lot of Gaunts! The ripper's look good on those weird things.....

Not enough yet so I bought an extra box along with one extra Hive Guard and 2 Zooeys.

In preparation for a 2500pt game coming up on the 17th I took an inventory of the gribblies. Once everything gets assembled, points totals for the models without any upgrades beyond WYSIWYG the total works out to 3400pts. That amount deosn't take into account the 3 unbuilt Carnies which will be converted to become 1 T-Fex and 2 Tervies.

Good thing my gaming buddy doesn't care if the models are painted or not because there's no way in hell I can paint even half of that by then.

Later,

Dark_Gear

this is looking like it'll be seriously lovely stuff.

Finally some progress. Since the last update I've finished another 8-strong warrior squad, 1 genestealer and another 12 gaunts (3 with devourers and 9 with fleshborer to fill out the Tervigon baby squad). No pics of those since they are pretty standard.

Thankfully I also got some sketching time to explore a revision for the shield arm on the Tyranid Prime. The first version just seemed a



The piece I'm happiest about though is the completed shield based on the Mk3 sketch.



Hopefully I'll get enough time to finish the rest of the Prime and get to work on the T-fex by week's end.

Cheers,

Dark_Gear

Bravo Bravo! That's looking damn fine! Not a fan of the lips, on the sketch though. For some reason I'm thinking that head should be on a leviathin.

While the GS is curing on the Prime I got some long overdue GS work done on the Tyrannofex.
Nothing says bad-ass more effectively than an up-armoured Carnifex/ Tyrannofex

I checked the distance first and added some styrene tubing as pins.


After much filling of gaps and sculpting, the finished chest plate.



Later,

Dark_Gear

P.S.: Munch, what's a leviathan?

WOW I like what you done so far cant wait to see more

Lovely work so far. The bonesword is great.

Not sure I'm a fan of the shoulder-mounted heavy weapons, but it's certainly an interesting look.

@Dark_Gear: A levithan was a giant sea serpent that supposedly traveled the world's ocean. I can imagine that head on the body of a massive twenty foot long eel.

VERY nice job on the conversions, the sculpting, design and integration are ace!

Only crit would be that the boneswords seem angled a little too far back in respect the hand and hilt, but it's really just IMO

Munch: Oh that leviathan! I thought you were talking about a converted Nid with a custom, kinda like some crisis suit configuration are known Fireknife or Deathrain.

Insaniak: Thanks. I hear that a lot about the back-mounted weapon but I couldn't help but do it. The weapon is so large that when it's hand-held the whole model's design just seems flawed, in my view. The back mount still needs a bit of work to make it seem beefier, I'll give you that much.

MajorTom: Thanks as well. Maybe it's just the angle of the shot but when you look at the sword directly from the side you can see that the "lean" is in a fact a "curve", much like a saber, a katana or antlers. The first variant I did was straight like the Hive Tyrant's sword and it just seemed too much like a cleaver for my liking.

Cheers,

Dark_Gear

With the back-mounted weapon, I agree with you, even if it may look strange to me. But when it is handheld, the Warrior would look like he was limboing around the battlefield.

Wow! Your conversion skills are out of this world; cant wait to see this army completed! Keep up the good work

Wow, lots a great new stuff since I last checked

Hi all,

Due to work and RL the hobby had to be placed on the back burner for a good long while but thanks to a trip to the Seattle battle bunker, where they just happened to have a set of Forge World Shrike wings, the bugs have pulled me back.

There's still a lot of GS and conversion to do on these models but they are getting there.

All of them have magnetised lower arm sockets so that I can swap in swords and/or whips once they are done. For the time being these Shrikes are a flying shooting squad that gives some extra range support for advancing Gargoyles, which are in turn only there to screen the eventual Harpy by flying in front of it or by tarpitting marine heavy weapon squads. In my last game, 14 gargoyles tied up a 10 man tactical for 3 turns, allowing the rest of the force to get closer without being shot to bits.

The whole Nid army is being based to fit within an urban setting so I've been playing with materials to give the squad the appearance of quickly landing on, leaping from and jinking through rubble.

Most have had brass rod inserted in their joints to solidify the surgery on their limbs. Rods were also added to serve as mounting hardware to give the models a look of floating above the bases as though they are just taking off or landing.

Thanks to a stuffed bitz bin I found I had enough rending claws left over to replace the usual hooves with a foot that seemed more appropriate for a beast that could probably snatch a full-grown human from the ground.













Once all the bases and GS for the current models is done then I'll start work on the Sword and whips for the whole bunch based on the design that was used on the Tyranid Prime that I was working on back in January. Let's just hope I can actually finish them before work gears up to 60 hours a week again.

C&C welcome as always,

Cheers,

Marc

I am completely speechless. I cant even begin to describe how incredible and inspiring all of your work is. Not only in talent, but the fact that you keep with it time and time again, many would of given up in the pile of work, but you...well do I need to say more?

Thanks for the kind words. As hard as it is to stick to the hobby when work kicks in, having a massive stockpile of minis already done really helps to not abandon it completely.

To give you an idea, the current tally of assembled models adds up to about 3500 points of nids, without the cost of upgrades. If I ever get the backlog of models fully assembled we're looking at about 4700 of nids in total (again without upgrades) or 6k with a conservative selection of combat-proven upgrades. This backlog includes:

9 ripper swarm bases
1 tyrant
2 tyrannofexes
2 Tervigons
20 genestealers
2 brood lords
10 metal raveners
1 Imperial Bastion

And I still only have paint on just 1 carnie and 32 gaunts... I figure I'll be in this hobby for another 3 years just to catch up lol

Seeing these sorts of threads, with the incredible skill that goes into the conversions and models, always makes me want to start up a small, very small, tyranid army. Haven't played 40K in years and years, and don't really feel like learning the new rules all that much... but man, those conversions make me want some bugs of my own!

First, a lot of changes have come about to this splinter fleet. Work has been very busy since last November so what little time was left for the hobby in my schedule was spent actually "on the hobby" rather than writing "of the hobby". Beginning in December, I found a new FLGS near my house (Your Go Games) that hosts games on Sundays and painting nights on Wednesdays. They've been kind enough to supply a steady flow of biomass every weekend and the fleet has grown by about 1500 points since I last posted.

Second, a quick army progress shot to establish that yes, this army is still progressing. Pardon the quality of the pics, I'm posting iPhone pics while on lunch at work.



The best discovery of the last few months: Devilgaunts are awesome! (As long as they're supported by a Tervigon, shielded by Venomthropes and a front rank of spawned gaunts, and boosted by an Old Adversary Tyrant) The chief downside to that discovery is that end up wanting at least 30 devourer gaunts per game and need at least 44 fleshborer gaunts for the Tervigon, just in case your spawning rolls are out of control.

In the above pic some of you may have noticed a carnifex with a very large gun. That would be on-going Tyrannofex conversion, very near completion.



He still needs some armour plates on the head and the rupture cannon, some connective piping for ammo feeds, and of course some more base detail but at least it's easy to recognise what he is now. There will be a 2nd t-fex in the list at some point but for I won't start that until the current stable of conversions has finished hatching. The list includes: 1 harpy, 1 flyrant, 1 tervigon (as soon as the Arachnorok abdomen shows up in the mail).



Assembling Carnifexes without any converting makes them look like tiny babies compared to the other creatures in my army thus far. They'll probably be chopped up as their size and their current set of stubby arms just isn't doing it for me. I assembled them this way as I didn't want to field-test them as proxies.

Some of may have noticed a large amount of winged creatures lurking in the backgrounds of these shots thus far and that would due to the second best discovery of the past few months: 30 gargoyles can really tear an army apart, especially when supported by six whip/sword shrikes, a harpy and a flying Old Adversary Tyrant. (Never mind that this costs 1050 points...)



Following the purchase of those 6 shrikes that were posted last fall, I've been exploring ways to deliver them mostly unscathed to the front lines and came to the conclusion that a gargoyle cloud was the best solution. Since the gargoyles are somewhat weak in CC (though for 8points per model, who could fault them) it only makes sense that supporting Tyrant would fit right into the mix. The Harpy is there to either soften up the target or blow up the transporting vehicle and release the squishy contents. Due to the amount of bodies and the speed at which they approach, swarming vehicles and destroying disembarking squads has been a valuable tactic in the last few weeks.

Stay tuned for more and better pics as I switch to my DSLR for the details of the Flyrant and more group pictures.

Man, I just the shoot with all the flying nids, looks so scary! Your stuff is truley inspiring, and I can't belive how awesome your GS work is.

Looking forward to more!

Thanks Limbo. I was a total noob with GS when I started working on my nids but thankfully, they've given a great opportunity to improve over the past 2 years.

You'll be seeing more soon as I did some more GS work on the Harpy's tail last night. Also, I finally received some bitz in the mail today for which I'll do an unboxing. As a teaser, I'll just say that there will be a new Monstrous Creature Project on my bench very soon.

As promised here's some updates and detail shots on the army as it stands.

For starters, let's look at the Harpy in it's current state.









The tail was lengthened by using an armature built with some leftover sprue, as per the following shot. As you tell from the above shots, there's still a lot of filling in to do but the shape is there at least.



As for the head, although I'm not completely certain how I'll finish it yet, I knew that the bio plasma bit would fit perfectly to represent the Sonic Screech.



For the Harpy's hind legs I was looking for something that look somewhat like the Gargoyle's vestigial limbs yet not so weak. First step was chopping up one of the smaller Mawloc claws.



Second step was swapping the left and right ball joint sections with each other, thereby giving the "legs" the desired bend.
Following that came some brass wire pinning to get the right gap for future GS work.



The talons are warrior Scything talons, chopped off right at the knuckles and filed down to mesh with the shape of the forearm. No need for GS here as Tamiya's Super Thin cement worked it's usual magic, making a perfect rounded joint. Conversions with plastic are a breeze with that cement as long as you spend the time filing down your pieces for proper fit. Plus it saves on GS sculpting time. When all is said and done, these limbs will be magnetised and feature some extra plating at the ball joint to make them look more sleek and aerodynamic.

Here's the current state of the Flying Tyrant.









There's still a TON of GS work to do on this bug. The base is mostly done, just need to seal off the bottom, build up some more volume and add some texture. The tail and the talons are done. The biggest time sink at this point will be the wings. Notice the marker lines on the right hand side? That all the material I shaved off the other one to make them a bit smaller and thus fit better size-wise with the tyrant. Once the shaping is done I'll be filling in every wing section with more GS to retexture the wings completely. I just really hate the lack of detail in the Balrog wings but they are a great framework nonetheless. Next set of wings I'll just build myself and get the right amount of detail right from the start.

To anyone else who's thinking of using them for their own conversion projects here's a quick warning about them. They are actually quite thick in the middle, 3mm in fact. Why is this bad? If you decide to try and model some battle damage such as bullet holes in the skin, the thickness of the wings makes the holes look like tunnels. In other words, these wings are too thick to make good looking battle tears in the skin unless you want to take huge chunks of material out prior to filling in said gaps with thin GS work. Do yourself a favour and either keep these wings "unpunctured". If you really want battle-scarred wings and you're not too confident in your GS skills, look elsewhere. The reason I'm retexturing both wings is because I drilled through the wings and realised only too late that their thickness made the holes look like gak.

Keep on checking in, the unboxing will be tomorrow.

So this box finally came in.



3 weeks ago I won some Arachnorok bitz for 14$ (including shipping). As cool as the spider looks there was no way I was spending 75$ for the whole kit when all I'd be using is the torso.



I was expecting the torso and abdomen to be big but they're actually huge. The rear end is bigger than a Kinder Egg, and much larger than a fully built Carnifex.



In spite of the other 3 creatures on the workbench at this time, I just had to put them aside and start working on a mockup of the Tervigon right away. Rather than assemble the Tervigon with a flipped around Carnifex torso to give the model a more "upright" stance, I'll be going for a "leaning forward" look as though it's actually running forward, trying to get the deadly payload to it's destination. To get that look means that I'll be using the hips and spine off the carnifex kit to join the two kits together.



After that first cut I started working out how the legs would be positioned, how long they've have to be and which socket joints to use. One of the first things I realised is that a Carnifex head is way too small to work on this conversion. Thankfully, the Harpy is still very much a WIP and it's head, though magnetised, looked like a much better fit. On to the first blue-tac mock-up.






The back legs are going to get thoroughly beefed up to make them look like they actually support all that weight... Baby got back! The Trigon head will be needing some major work as well, either to help mesh the armour of the skull with the body or to reference the first big Alien Mother we've all seen.

Just a quick update.

Started cutting up the model to bring in some bitz from the carnifex kit and make a more seamless transition between the 2 abdomens.



Then followed that up with a big cut to give the proper shape and dynanic positioning. Otherwise was looking like it was all too well aligned. A bloated belly of that size would definitely sway a lot during movement.



Looking down on the model, you can now see a more pronounced twist to the body.



Did some more work on the rear legs. After deciding I wanted some stronger looking legs, unused talons from the Trigon kit were brought in. The back ones seemed a little too short so I made them longer and beefier by chopping the Scything talon hand off of the larger Carnifex arm, replacing it with a Trigon's second largest Scything Talon that was cut just above the 2nd lowest plate. The longer Carnifex talon was then added back on. GS will be added to smooth out the transition.



From the back now, started converting the pooped out gaunt. Eventually I'll have it magnetised on the base and it will be used as a marker to show whether or not the Tervigon can produce more babies. The rear leg is currently resting on a paint lid as it will be pressed against some terrain on the base.



Close-up shot of the baby gaunt coming out and landing on the ground. The left shin has to be built up with some GS. The neck get some filling in as well to create the tendons that connect the body and the jow more smoothly.



Final image. Comparison shot of the different heights for Gargoyle bases. After struggling with keeping the little blighters from constantly falling over during assault and movement as well as not being able to stack them properly base to base, I decided to make some changes. Notice the washer on the bottom to give the models a good bit of weight so they don't topple like dominoes as well as the tiny magnet to speed up the setup process. When you have to stick in 30 flying bases by hand, you come to think that there just has to be a better way to get your models on the table. The magnets are actually strong enough to pick up the whole base even though the bottom washer is quite heavy. Just pull them all apart when you package them without having to worry about the small tip of the stands snapping off inside the Gargoyle bodies anymore.



Hope you enjoyed the show. Comments and critiques welcome. Stay tuned for more.

Man your Nids look fracking ace. I love the shot of all the flyer's, scary stuff. Can't wait to see some painted.

Thanks Bangbangboom. The Flyers are scary indeed. When playing I usually run about 970 points of fliers in a 2k game. Deploying in table quarters in such cases really blows as the list can easily take up the whole quarter. The major upside is that pretty much everything gets a cover save.

Typical list read this:

Flyrant | Sword + Whip, Brainleech, Adrenals, Old Adversary.

6 Hiveguard
2 Venomthropes

1 Tervigon | Scytal, Catalyst, Cluster spines, Adrenals, Toxin
20 Devilgaunts

6 Shrikes | Sword/Whip, AG, TS
20 Gargoyles | AG, TS
Harpy | HVC

6 Biovores

Turn one I usually cast catalyst on the gargoyles and also run the Venomthrope just in range of them so they can get a 5++ save and FNP, making them much sturdier in the first turn of torrent fire. By the time I get them to assault in turn they're usually only down to 14-15 models. Whatever they hit, supported by Shrikes and Old Adversary Tyrant just melts, including terminators in cover.

The flyers run after the ojectives to contest while the rest of the foot pounders go up to the mid field, pound the enemy from a distance and keep a few stragglers to keep the home objectives safe. By the time I get to midfield the pooped gaunts serve as cover for the devilgaunts, Hive Guard and Biovores and I basically focus fire one unit at time until there is little left. 60 devourer shots, 12 Impaler cannon shots and 6 biovores tend to chew units up quite quickly, even T5 FNP models.

If my opponent is suicidal enough to try and assault them on turn 1 (while they're in range of the Venomthropes) things go even worse for them.

Painting will happen eventually but I'm holding off until I finish the next batch of models. Currently on the table:

1 Tervigon
1 Harpy
1 Flyrant
1 Tyrannofex
2 Dakkafexes,
10 more gaunts (call me insane but I'm working on a list with 48 Devilgaunts. Something about 144 S4 shots just appeals to me...)

In my last bout of painting I think I did a two-tone job on about 120 models. The idea is to just paint the rest of the army in one go and just get it done. We'll see how that goes when I hit the wall of 100 gaunts...