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I sort of hate how monotonous the bodies of the Gaunts and Gants are. I have not found anyone who makes 3rd party alternatives that fit with the general Nid theme but have more interesting poses. As it stands it's just left leg down or right leg down. Boring.

Has anyone ever tried swapping the bodies on them for about half your brood?

By that I mean put Termagant heads and arms onto Hormagaunt bodies to make Termagants that are charging forward and vise versa, hormagaunts on the prowl.

They basically look like exactly the same creature in just different poses. Any unforeseen problems I am missing?

I've done this and to be honest I just don't like how the hormagaunt bodies hold them selves. They tend to fall over too often. A quick and easy way to make them a little different is take a little heat to their tails and curve them a bit so they have a little more character. Swapping heads is also good but the tail makes a nice look.

I also hate the way Hormagaunts hold themselves. I glue pennies to the bottom of their base to make them stable. My bigger issue is the real thin and crappy single point of connection on that one foot.

I am sure you have plenty of extra gun arms. If so, you could pick up a unit of Lizarmen skinks and put Nid guns on them:

The would definitely provide some variety. Back when I played Nids, I used these as my Spawned Guant (so they were not fully formed)

 Lance845 wrote:
I also hate the way Hormagaunts hold themselves. I glue pennies to the bottom of their base to make them stable. My bigger issue is the real thin and crappy single point of connection on that one foot.

Oh, I remember all that when I started way back in 3rd ed. Nostalgia for hormies falling over and breaking off all over the place... Far worse with the metal ones, though.

Back then you had the option to put 'hive nodes' in gaunt swarms. The accepted way to do that was to stick a warrior head on one model. Dunno how it goes these days, rules-wise, but it'd break up the monotony of the look, at least.

I also found that with their arthropod-exoskeleton jointed-legs design, they were relatively easy to repose. Relatively. Thigh, shin and foot could be cut into different units and pinned back together, and the gap-filling didn't need to blend them back together too smoothly. Could be an option to stabilise a few hormies as well as mixing up the poses. Here's one of my attempts, from ye days of olde. (Ten years! Bleedin' nora.)



http://album.warpshadow.com/v/HiveFleetVenom/album66/Stranglegaunts+WIP.jpg.html

Saw this on Tyranid Hive from Evan Quinn. He pinned his guys to be more upright

http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh612/evanquinn/IMG_7341.jpg

 Lance845 wrote:
By that I mean put Termagant heads and arms onto Hormagaunt bodies to make Termagants that are charging forward and vise versa, hormagaunts on the prowl.

They basically look like exactly the same creature in just different poses. Any unforeseen problems I am missing?

Yep. I did exactly this for about 20-30 of my gants. Easy to do and mixes it up a little. Though still quite painstaking to paint.

It's been a while since I last built any Hormos or Termies, but if you mix up the body halves aren't you left with big gaps where the two halves don't quite line up?

Personally I just built them as is, once you've got 50 to a 100 of the buggers on the table they look fine.