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catbarf,

Beautiful 1000 points you have there.

Nice work on the jungle, I did something similar...with the exception of not having the trees on separate removable bases. The result for battles was a lot of figures falling over as trees were bumped. :(

Cheers,

CB

Thanks! I've still been working at terrain; today's addition is a pair of buildings from Laser Craft Workshop's Sector 38 terrain.



This was my first experience using chipping fluid, and it went better than expected. My biggest problem was actually sealing the MDF; it seems the spray I started with was inadequate, and the paint kept soaking in. I'm going to try my normal Stynylrez on the next set of buildings to see how it performs.

I'm still working on terrain, but here's a tutorial on another scheme, walking through the method I use for devising and painting a scheme:

Great video. I always liked the older Tyranid schemes and the sample schemes seen in the older codexes.

Big fan of the building too, blends nicely into the jungle terrain you've used around it.

Last video on Tyranid color schemes. On to other subjects.

ohh, fancy.
What other projects?

Not Online!!! wrote:
ohh, fancy.
What other projects?

I'm finishing up the table's worth of terrain. I've got one more building to go, which I intend to record and put together a fairly short video on. Then it's back to Tyranids.

Sorry for the poor photo, but I've finished my terrain-building project.



I ended up making significantly more than needed for a 6x4 table- in fact, it should be enough for dense coverage on two 4x4 tables, which should be perfect for when my buddies from college come to visit for New Year's.

A tutorial on how I painted the buildings will be going up on Youtube tomorrow.

Now it's back to Tyranids.

Here's that tutorial video:




Next on the plate are six Ripper Swarms, a Warrior, a Lictor, and some Broodlord arms for my Hive Tyrant.

Thanks for all the tutorial vids! I'm hoping that I can steal some of those ideas for my Nids that I've been putting off painting for ages .


(Also totally just noticed you're in Annandale, which is just a stone's throw away from me in Arlington)

 Jin wrote:
(Also totally just noticed you're in Annandale, which is just a stone's throw away from me in Arlington)

Oh, so your location tag is accurate after all

In recent news I severely underestimated just how time-consuming it would be to paint the ~150 Rippers that compose six Forge World Ripper Swarms, but I'm making progress.

Good job on that building tutorial. Thanks for taking the time.

The ripper spawns look great with your colour scheme, lots of dots and teeth.

Your work on the coconut crab Tyranids continues to be as astounding as ever! The jungle terrain looks awesome, suitably lush and dense. And finally, big thanks for all the tutorials, sooner or later I'll dig out my few Tyranid models and try to replicate some of your paint schemes

I got that last batch done this weekend. The Rippers were definitely a lot more tedious than I had anticipated, but luckily I have no plans to get any more than these six.

I'm also quite happy with how the Broodlord arms work on the Hive Tyrant. It's even more overtly an Alien Queen ripoff.

That mountain of rippers looks fantastic with all those little teeth!

Thanks; I'm honestly just glad to be done with them.

Here's another tutorial video, this time on magnetizing Warriors.

How fortuitous. I was just in the midst of figuring out how to magnetize all the ball-socket joints for my Nids myself.

Your video thankfully confirms my ideas for how to go about doing everything without hating life too much.

Totally forgot to post the follow-up to that video- how to actually paint the magnetized parts:




Anyways, this past weekend my friends from out of town came over. I got stomped by Orks (Deffskulls are mean against Tyranids), but the game against Death Guard went much better.

Case in point, here's the state of the board at the end of the first battle round, with me about to take my turn:



Long story short: The lead Carnifex used a combination of cover, spore cysts, Dermic Symbiosis for 5+ invuln, and Catalyst for 5+ FNP to soak up all the fire that came at it, then proceeded to charge straight into the Plague Marines and Daemon Prince, wiping out an entire squad.

Meanwhile Old One Eye behind it zipped around the left, charged into Typhus, killed him instantly, and consolidated into the Plagueburst Crawler, tying it up.

The pair of Carnifexes were joined by the Hive Tyrant and Warriors on the next turn, but they did some serious work on their own- between the nigh-indestructibility of the normal 'Fex (thanks to Catalyst and Dermic Symbiosis) and the sheer lethality + regeneration of Old One Eye, they were able to survive all the return strikes, and then OOE killed the Daemon Prince in one go (despite its 4+ invuln and 4+ FNP) while the Scything Talon fex made short work of the Plague Marines.

This was good because in both of my previous games, Old One Eye and the Carnifex both got deleted from existence by the same Super Shokk Attack Gun.

Anyways, I learned a lot and plan to change up my list, but for now I've got a Tyrannofex on the table so that's what's coming as far as painting.

It was a joy to browse all the updates I have missed in one sitting.

I have only one word for you: absolutely darn amazing! That's three, but hey ho.

The board you completed was top notch! It almost looked like a screenshot from a video game or something.
Liking the terrain projects you have been working on. I might steal a few ideas

I love the warriors.. Very jealous of your force my dude! Very jelous…

Your stuff looks crispy primed. I assume you airbrush prime?

Nice shot of the jungle board in action catbarf.

Cheers,

CB

Fantastic battle photo. The table and army look great. But what’s the object in the center that looks to have a bar code on it?

Thanks folks. Really excited to have this Tyrannofex done as part of a list reshuffle.

Ezki wrote:It was a joy to browse all the updates I have missed in one sitting.

I have only one word for you: absolutely darn amazing! That's three, but hey ho.

The board you completed was top notch! It almost looked like a screenshot from a video game or something.
Liking the terrain projects you have been working on. I might steal a few ideas

I think I'm all set for terrain for the moment. What I built so far proved sufficient for two whole 4x4 tables, so while friends were over for the holidays we were able to run two games concurrently. I suppose I might add some really tall stuff to help out fliers and skimmers with LOS blocking, but I've been having a hard time thinking of stuff to match the general jungle theme of the rest of the terrain.

We found that having a lot of hills, and with the forests/jungles ruled as totally LOS-blocking and conferring a -2 to charge rolls, made for much more interesting games than what we were used to. Even the gunlines benefited from being able to lock down traversible paths, hide in cover, and spoil charges with that -2.

I am now totally convinced that lots of terrain- at least 25% coverage, preferably a full third- is critical to an enjoyable 8th experience.

Argive wrote:I love the warriors.. Very jealous of your force my dude! Very jelous…

Your stuff looks crispy primed. I assume you airbrush prime?

I do. I use two light dustings of Badger Stynylrez for tooth, then as many thin coats of VMA White as I need to build up solid color coverage. I've always had problems with white spray cans not getting solid color or gumming up details, but the airbrush stuff works great.

I'm thinking I might try Daler-Rowney white ink when I'm out of VMA White, just since I've heard so many good things about it.

The Riddle of Steel wrote:Fantastic battle photo. The table and army look great. But what’s the object in the center that looks to have a bar code on it?

That would be a bottle of Underberg, a concoction so bitter and unappealing to the typical American's tastes that it is legally sold as non-potable bitters rather than alcohol. I've got a few dozen of the things left and they made for amusing objective markers, although it also served as a reminder that I should make some proper objective markers (and maybe wound markers, status markers, etc) to complete the '100% immersive' board experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh yeah, and while I'm here I figured I'd talk about my upcoming Storm Trooper project- I gathered the infantry models together for a 1000pt Scions list I've been running on Tabletop Simulator lately.



The general comp is:
-2 Tempestor Primes
-10-man squad w/ 4 meltaguns
-10-man squad w/ 4 plasma guns
-10-man squad
-10-man squad
-2 Valkyries
-Vulture w/ twin Punisher cannons

Because having every special weapon trooper look identical bugs me more than it should, I have cast every unique head of each Storm Trooper sculpt, and produced a first set of copies, which I fitted to the set of primed STs on cork handles. The plan will be to ensure that each gunner looks distinct, and add a bit more variety to the line troopers.

Gameplay-wise, the idea was to put the melta and plasma squads in the Valks along with one Tempestor (with the Grav-Chute Commando trait from Vigilus), the intent being that they drop turn 1 and do as much damage as possible before the other two squads and Tempestor drop in, while the Vulture sits back and does its thing.

Now with the 2pt drop per Scion in Chapter Approved, I've got a lot more points to work with, and I'm not sure what to do with them. Volley Guns seem the obvious choice, but doubling the cost per-man for a weapon that is much less able to be mobile is a less appealing tradeoff than it was before, and a 70pt squad of bare Scions throws out a surprising amount of fire at short range under FRFSRF. I've got more Storm Trooper models so I could add some 5-man squads for objective-grabbing- maybe the HSVGs would be useful there, since they're not good candidates for orders, and the range would help.

Anyways, I still need the actual vehicles, and I'm doing more Tyranids before I get back to these, but they'll be coming down the pipeline sooner or later.

I cant wait to see what you do with these Storm Troopers. Those first few looked excellent. These old models really hold up well and have such a great feel to them, especially when painted up as nicely as yours.

Just been through your whole blog catbarf (great name btw!), some really amazing work knocked out in bulk at an insane pace! The Crabanids and their scenic board are inspired, the beach looks like it would’ve been a real paradise, before the devourer arrived of course! I think your renegades are my favourites though, there’s something about their grim darkness and the bright orange that’s just spot on! I’ll be watching more closely to see how the Crabanids and Storm Troopers come along. Will there be a tutorial on the head swaps and castings we’re done on the storm troopers?

 gobert wrote:
Just been through your whole blog catbarf (great name btw!), some really amazing work knocked out in bulk at an insane pace! The Crabanids and their scenic board are inspired, the beach looks like it would’ve been a real paradise, before the devourer arrived of course! I think your renegades are my favourites though, there’s something about their grim darkness and the bright orange that’s just spot on! I’ll be watching more closely to see how the Crabanids and Storm Troopers come along. Will there be a tutorial on the head swaps and castings we’re done on the storm troopers?

Thanks! I'll admit the Renegades are on hold at 1K points while waiting to see if GW ever gets around to a proper Renegades & Heretics / Lost & The Damned codex, as I'm not super keen on the very static kind of gameplay the Astra Militarum codex excels at on the tabletop, but I've got some more conversion bits to expand as soon as I have a vision for the army.

For the Stormtroopers, I've got one more head to cast (didn't have a flamer trooper when I made the molds, so I'll be sure to document that process now that I know how it works. As for the headswap itself, it's an ugly, ugly process of snipping through the solid pewter necks, gluing on the suitably trimmed resin heads, and then resculpting the transition in Green Stuff.

Loving the metal stormtrooper project, impressive collection of that era Doubly impressive on the headswapping!

Cheers for the Nid game shots as well!

I love this kind of tyranid paint scheme, with the speckled armor.

catbarf,

Good luck on the Storm Trooper project.

Cheers,

CB