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The Primes are ace, Insectum7! I like their swords and eyes. Nice little shot with them all in action, too! Keep up the good work

timd, your Warriors are very cool, too! Nice and vibrant colour scheme, gives me that 2nd-3rd ed. retro feeling.

The army is shaping up very nicely dude. Your paint scheme is really cool and looks good on nids new and old alike. The Tyranid primes are just downright inspiring, I love that conversion. Seeing them all painted up gave me a huge urge to go out and start a nid army for myself.

Your conversions look better than official models. Amazing!

 Insectum7 wrote:

These really do show the utility of the old plastics for kitbashing conversion in a way I've never seen before,

Preview of awesome!

I really hope you get a good chance to put some serious work into those guys before the buzz wares off. I know how hard it is to keep at it when they're all very similar and it starts to really drag especially on the larger minis like warriors.

But you're really making something special here and I'm excited to see it all come together. Those primes are incredible!

good bugs!

 Cosmic wrote:


timd, your Warriors are very cool, too! Nice and vibrant colour scheme, gives me that 2nd-3rd ed. retro feeling.

That was the plan, colors are a riff on the original Genestealer colors. Looking at these pics, I'm thinking I need to add more blue to the scheme.

T

 Insectum7 wrote:
Thanks all! The encouragement is encouraging

Cleaning and building the last of the Warriors is taking a while as I'm super strapped for time atm, but I painted up the Primes in the meantime.



Also had my first Tyranid game since 4th edition. Slammed together an army with what I had built and hit the table right after grabbing my pre-ordered codex from the counter. It looks gross, but the preview of all the Warriors together on the table was inspiring.



Only finished three turns in the time we had, and I made a bunch of errors while learning strategems on the fly, but good times were had. Opponent called it after I killed Guilliman with a super lucky Zoanthrope round, but honestly he wasn't in a bad spot. I think it was closer than he was giving credit for.

 Jackal wrote:

Spoiler:

Our armies both need to face off once done :p
Love the older nid stuff and spent a while building up a small collection.


Look forward to seeing this blog progress

Haha. I love those old Fexes too. I sold mine off in 4th and a kinda regret it. I got some Spore Mines though!! I think I have a metal Termagant or two, and a Biovore somewhere.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Both the new and old Tyranid Warriors are pretty expensive :( Like I said I went a bit nuts with them.

A Carnifex army would look awesome, those models are soo frigging cool. My Warriors don't have much in the way of multi-wound weapons so that might be a challenge. I do have a lot though!

The new ones were cheap here because Warriors sucked for three editions. But the older ones are also expensive because no one bought them before they went OOP. Kinda the same issue with the fex with me (i.e: trying to find Grinfexes here for a not-stupid price is hard as hell since few of them sold. Crapton of OOEs though).

Yeah, two of my primes are sporting OOE legs because they were easier to find. I got one top half of a Grin-fex now though. I don't really know what to do with it, gotta be good for something, and the expression is priceless.

Those primes are really really good. Black and brown are neutral and makes the broody. What really makes them very good is that the green is eye catching on the places you nee to contrast. And it makes the orange edges so good with the contrast.

Your paintjob is absolutely wonderful. I love the colors you went with but I'm just not a fan of the old sculpts. The conversions are pretty awesome though.

Those Primes are absolutely sick.

Holidays are eating up my time! I've been squeezing in work here and there to keep things rolling, and now I have some real progress to show.

Step 1:
Strip, clean and reassemble all the painted warrior parts I received from ebay. Hours of scrubbing, and then more hours of carefully matching parts and re-pinning them together, while cleaning mould lines. This took many days sort of scattered across the past few weeks. A whole big mess, here's what that looked like in progress.


Once everything was finally pinned back together and rebased, then came the very important step of setting up the collection in one big display. Um, for inspirational purposes.


Then came the relatively easy part. Priming all the unpainted stuff and hitting any missed parts with Abaddon Black.

 theCrowe wrote:

I really hope you get a good chance to put some serious work into those guys before the buzz wares off. I know how hard it is to keep at it when they're all very similar and it starts to really drag especially on the larger minis like warriors.

Totally. I knew that if I did this a squad at a time, it was in a greater amount of danger of not getting done. That's why I'm going to DO THEM ALL AT ONCE! Which is going to suck, but it'll work better.

I'll try to get a picture of every phase as I do them. I think that'll be kind of interesting.

 bunnygurl wrote:
Your paintjob is absolutely wonderful. I love the colors you went with but I'm just not a fan of the old sculpts. The conversions are pretty awesome though.

Thanks! I know not everyone is a fan of the old models, and it's totally understandable. But for historical purpose I thought it might be cool to put them in context with some of the other old plastics:

What a glorious sight ! Devouring the galaxy old school style !

I am SUPER jealous of those Warriors. SO MANY.

I am really enjoying following this blog! All of those Warriors ranked up is simply awesome! Yes, please keep us updated with how you’re getting on. I know that it’s really helping with my own Nids.

You’re absolutely right about painting them all at once. I know that if I’d also painted my Gaunts in smaller chunks I’d never have wanted to finish the rest!

Good to hear that you’ve got a bit of a winter break to do some hobby stuff. I’ve just finished assembling six of the new plastic Warriors today. They’re cool, but I think that your guys are certainly cooler! Keep up the good work

 Insectum7 wrote:


Once everything was finally pinned back together and rebased, then came the very important step of setting up the collection in one big display. Um, for inspirational purposes.

I am so jealous of this build up of models. Love it!

OMG oldschool

As we go. Over the weekend I was able to get some good blocks of time, and also spent game night painting instead of playing. These are basically drybrushed coats of varying intensity.

Doombull brown:


Gorthor Brown:


Dawnstone:


Baneblade Brown


It would have been nice if I had done these all with the same lighting conditions, but I paint when and where I can paint or else it ain't getting done.

Love them! Amazing how effective drybrushing is. Really cool to see them all ranked up on the production line, keep up the good work!

To have so many old school models in one army is incredible. And that paintscheme looks very effective. Keep up the good work, you're making excellent progress.

This is wonderful!

Those test models look wonderful!

O_o

You have helped me form a semblance of appreciation for these old globs of bubblegum. Thanks.

This thread's title really deserves it's own 80's cartoon theme song
It's nice to see the classic models in a modern scheme and, as others have said, those three "synapse" warrior conversions look awesome.

Love these models, and your paint skills are really making them look menacing. It is nice to see a more 'realistic' looking tyranid scheme, and you seem to be quite the machine when batch-painting. An inspiration to those of us with gigantic piles of grey plasitc

Thanks all!

Been a while since the last update, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been any progress. The step after my last update was to do a light dusting of Screaming Skull to pick out any natural hilights on the models. After that, I did all the black sections on the models to make way for the carapace and details. This took a looong time to do, as every model has many sections selected for the treatment, and it had to be fairly precise. Also, since I was going over the models more closely, I found myself scraping and cleaning mould lines that had been missed during prior painting and assembly, meaning I also had to repair the paint job post-cleaning. So far it's been the most tedious part of this project. Thankfully, once it was done the models looked waay more complete by just having that single cleaner coat added.


After the black was done the next few steps went pretty quickly. A splotching of Incubi Darkness was added to the carapace details to give a bit of beetle-color. The Deathspitters were treated to a thin, blended coat of screaming skull to pick them out a bit more, and the boneswords were given a base coat of Emerald Green (yes, the actual Emerald Green from the 90's, I still have some functioning 20 year old GW paint).


While doing this I rebased my metal Zoanthropes/Neurothropes from 40 to 50mm to help keep them from tipping over, and I brought them up to about the same level as the Warriors so I can finish them all at once.

 Turaxa wrote:
This thread's title really deserves it's own 80's cartoon theme song
It's nice to see the classic models in a modern scheme and, as others have said, those three "synapse" warrior conversions look awesome.

I can definitely imagine them featured in an 80's cartoon, especially as their poses are basically all the same

 IGtR= wrote:
Love these models, and your paint skills are really making them look menacing. It is nice to see a more 'realistic' looking tyranid scheme, and you seem to be quite the machine when batch-painting. An inspiration to those of us with gigantic piles of grey plasitc

Not as fast as I used to be! Work, wife, baby etc. I'm feeling like I can field a fully painted army by the end of February, but we'll see.

Special thanks to the Hardcore History podcast for keeping me company while I paint. I'm almost through the WWI episodes and they've been pretty epic and educational.

Awesome stuff, Insectum, a real joy to behold! I really like the colour scheme, and you've absolutely sold me on the versatility of drybrushing. Those Zoanthropes really showcase your paint job.

How do you think you'll base these guys - with good oil' sand, perhaps?

Ah! 20 year old citadel colours. They're like old friends that just keep giving. Well some of them are. I've got a dark angels green and shining gold that I still use regularly. And an even older Wyrm purple. They don't make 'em like they used to.

If I walked into a gaming club and saw your army arrayed for battle I'd likely be grinning like a freakin' fan boy. I reckon you'll see that a lot.

 Cosmic wrote:
Awesome stuff, Insectum, a real joy to behold! I really like the colour scheme, and you've absolutely sold me on the versatility of drybrushing. Those Zoanthropes really showcase your paint job.

How do you think you'll base these guys - with good oil' sand, perhaps?

Thanks! Drybrushing is reeaaallly effective for certain models/armies. But about 90% of it is picking the scheme and layering well. Having the right sort of brush is also incredibly key, imo.

I do all my bases with sand (drybrushed again) and patches of static grass. It's simple but it works.

 theCrowe wrote:
Ah! 20 year old citadel colours. They're like old friends that just keep giving. Well some of them are. I've got a dark angels green and shining gold that I still use regularly. And an even older Wyrm purple. They don't make 'em like they used to.

If I walked into a gaming club and saw your army arrayed for battle I'd likely be grinning like a freakin' fan boy. I reckon you'll see that a lot.

Yeah I have a bunch of those old paints and they're still good. It's miraculous how well they've held up! Stuff like Ultramarine Blue, Lightning Bolt Blue, Scorpion and Putrid Green. I even have most of their first ink set. All those paints I bought in 3rd edition dried up by halfway through 4th.

I've pulled the Warriors out at the club a few times now and some of the older crowd are like "whhaaaaaa. . . ?!" Turns out it's also a pretty scary army too!

Latest update: Did edge highlighting on the dark carapaces, claws, hoofs etc. using Baneblade Brown again. Blended the swords from green to bone with Screaming Skull. Did the faces green (ye olde Emerald Green and Putrid Green), and the Deathspitters got the same colors on the barrel-ridge. They're getting close to the wash phase and I'm excited.

Looking good, man! so close to the end!