Death from below (occasionally)

Mawloc conversion complete. A bit of an under performer, but I love the model.  Once you explain to your opponents that this subterranean killer can deliberately deep strike underneath the enemy for strength 6 damage, you might see a flicker of anxiety cross their face.  

However 66% of the time he will pop up in the middle of nowhere with his arse hanging out in the breeze and no shooting attacks. The one time in three that he actually bursts up from underground where you intended, he'll kill three or four red shirts.  Watch your opponent's frown turn into a smirk.  Oh, I think he slam dunked a rhino once.  Whoop-de-doo.  He also mishaps off the board quite regularly. I'm not a very good player.  I guess whats good about him is the surprise bogeyman element. My opponents nearly always focus fire him when he appears in their midst (which makes him a good distraction unit I suppose).  They don't realise that he only has 3 attacks and crappy weapon skill.  Sure, you can hit and run and then burrow for another 'death from below' but you just wasted a turn with a 170pt model.  Shame really.

The Mawloc was my first conversion.  Sadly, I also think he's my best which means I'm not really getting better at this.  When I was building him I was annoyed that he was looking downward.  I thought that the mouth was his best feature and awesome modelling from GW.  But you couldn't see all it's gory detail on the tabletop.  Plus the tail, whilst nice, wasn't very dynamic.  I wanted him bursting, nay thrusting, up through the ground like in the codex picture and rules.  If you look at Trygon/Mawloc conversions in general on the internet you can see that lots of people had the same idea.  So I started farting around with blu-tac (which is the best kit-bashing tool in the known universe) and re-posing him.

I bought a whole Basilica Administratum just to create the floor tiles (I stole the paper clips from work.  Pro-Tip: Paper clips make awesome steel rebars for modelling. Painting them silver is optional)  This was when I had more money than sense (and a better camera).  Many weeks later, after chopping and sawing more of my fingers than the actual model I came up with this.

 Feeling very pleased with myself I took him to the local wargaming club for an awesome "Terror From The Deep" narrative experience.  He promptly did sweet F.A. for the entire game. My Eldar adversary blew him into steaming chunks of dog food from range, laughing gaily all the time.  Ha ha-ha!  All Eldar/Elves laugh gaily.  Thats why I refuse to play them.  That was 2 years ago and Mr. Mawloc was banished to the naughty shelf, never to be used in competitive play again.  But now he's back, with a shiny new paint scheme (Hive Fleet Nidrot) and he's ready for the new and improved, 6th edition deep strike mishap table:

Watch it baldy

Mawlocs have no sense of direction

Wait until you can see the whites of their eyes!