Here I find myself once again, staring into the maw of madness (i.e. unpainted lead) only this time the challenge has some new elements, the most obvious for those of you following along for the last few years is the expansion into the 41st millennium.
Personally, I never got on with 40k as much as I did
fantasy, I enjoyed the game but that was all it really was to me, a game. The
factions all seemed a little boring and the narrative never gripped me as much
as fantasy did. That said I have some great memories of playing against friends
so I would still like to reengage with it as I have done with fantasy via the
challenge. Plus, my partner in crime/painting Sam is back again this year and he
is also taking to the future so I guess he needs an opponent.
Like I think almost every child getting into 40k ‘back in
the day’, I picked Space Marines as my force of choice, however as an adult I quite
fancied taking on some of the other choices, and a friend of mine growing up
had a Tyranid army that I also coveted. As it turns out when he was going through
his childhood crap… erm memories a few years back he found some of his old ‘nids
and donated them to me. They sat in a box in their 20+ year old painted state
until the end of the last challenge, where rumours started being passed around
that next year we may be forging into the future for the challenge. In anticipation
of such a change I started buying up the additional models I would need to
complete the army and stripping them all as they arrived, which brings us to
now, and to this:
What we have here is my ambitious hive fleet for the
challenge, which for those of you unfamiliar with the army breaks down as such:
|
UNIT |
EXTRAS |
# |
TOTAL |
|
INDIVIDUALS |
|||
|
Hive Tyranid
(164) |
Barbed
Strangler (31) Bonesword (6) Lash Whip (9) |
1 |
210 |
|
Lictor (96) |
|
1 |
96 |
|
BROODS |
|||
|
Tyranid
Warrior Brood (55) |
Venom Cannon
(33) |
3 |
206 |
|
Tyranid
Warrior Brood (55) |
Barbed Strangler
(24) |
3 |
195 |
|
Termagant
Brood (6) |
|
12 |
72 |
|
Termagant
Brood (6) |
Spike Rifle
(1) |
12 |
84 |
|
Termagant
Brood (6) |
Strangleweb
(6) |
12 |
144 |
|
Gargoyle
Brood (16) |
|
10 |
160 |
|
SUPPORT |
|||
|
Carnifex
(199) |
|
1 |
199 |
|
TOTAL |
1366 |
||
The keen eyed amongst you will see the corruption of the image to the right, what could that be? A sight rarely seen on the shores of the UK and pretty uncommon even at the time of 2nd edition. This is something I’m hoping to tackle in either my wild-card month, or perhaps during the joker if I need one.
So next my mind turned towards paint schemes, I knew I
wanted to do a jungle-world invasion for no reason at all, definitely not because
the jungles contain many tasty Sly Stallone type morsels to eat. My first idea
was to go with very bright, vibrant rainbow colours so I picked out some
suitable airbrush paints:
And went to work:
Hmm… that didn’t really work, it didn’t give me the feel I was looking for, but I did like some of the transitions/gradients so I tried again but this time focusing on up/down gradient transitions:
Better, although still not right. They kind of looked like vaporwave ‘nids. I tried manually painting some of the armour to see if that did anything:
It did, it made me hate them even more.
At this point I was considering a last minute change to
another army, something easier that I could hit a good scheme on early but in
one last ditch attempt I tried painting the scheme from the 2nd
edition Tyranid book. Normally I don’t like copying the book scheme but I was
running out of ideas:
And you know what, I didn’t hate it. It wasn’t what I had in mind when planning the army but I tried putting the model against some of the basing material I am going to use and I think it looked suitably vibrant, so it looks like I am going to go with this.
Incidentally, this first model of the army is also going to
be my tribute to the overlord, so he will be based along with the first month’s
group and sent into the warp to the grim north in the new year.
So there we have it, as always I hope you enjoy following along with me and the rest of the challengers this year. Best of luck to everyone taking part and Sam, prepare yourself, the unsatiable hunger of the Tyranids are coming for you…
I like some of the more colourful ones, although you nailed that "beige cuirasse". You could probably experiment using blues or pinks but with the beige on top.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the little guy!
Is that a Malefactor I spy with my little eye?
ReplyDeleteThat screamer killer though!
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the paint!
I've been there with Tyranids: wall to wall test models as I try to find a way of making them look like My Very Own. Not sure what it is about them but they seem to defy me every time, the cheeky little scuttlers.
ReplyDeleteWill you be keeping that red/chitin tone across the army or going for the full-on rainbow vomit approach?