Modelling for Advantage. The Swarmlord.

I stopped dicking around and declared The Swarmlord finished.  Its the only model I have finished painting in my proposed list for Call To Arms.  This is slightly worrying since the tournament is in 6 days.  To be fair, all of the army list is at least 80% done.  The trouble is that the remaining 20% is mostly boring shit like edge highlighting and basing which I really don't want to do.  Swarmy started out life as a Flyrant conversion:

I was going through a particularly bad phase of acid flashbacks when I painted this.

 (Pro Tip:  Never, ever buy a Finecast Hive Tyrant.  Unless you actually enjoy filling in gaps with Liquid Greenstuff or want to model him in a sort of death pose, riddled with Las Cannon holes.  The newer plastic kit however is sublime.)  I still have those wings from the above incarnation of the model which I made out of plasticard and those wierd, overlarge Warrior arms.  In fact I can still model Swarmy as a Flyrant since I magnetised all the arm and head options:

Box-o-Tyrants(TM).  Hurrah for Magnets!

Anyhoo, this is how he has ended up and I'm fairly chuffed:

Banzai!!!!!!

I haven't even started painting Fido.  Fido is The Swarmlord's faithful sidekick Tyrant Guard, all round bullet soaker and waste of 60 points.  He exists solely to die.  You might as well use a coin or a marker to indicate that Swarmy has an extra 2 ablative wounds.  Ok, strictly speaking Fido has some close combat attacks and rending or something like that but the truth is that he will be dead by Turn 2, waaay before he gets into melee.  It is something of a concern that Swarmy has no ranged attacks either.  The only psychic powers I'm going to be rolling on him are Iron Arm and Endurance.  And in the brave new world of 6th edition this might not be enough to survive the blitzkrieg that is Tau or Eldar shooting.  Or Dark Eldar filthiness.  Grey Knights have a plethora of 'I-Win' buttons.  He was promptly handed his arse in a game last week when two Stormravens dropped 4 mindstrike missiles on him in one turn.  No saves of any kind for Perils of the Warp.  The fact that he stands almost as tall as a Flying Hive Tyrant doesn't do him any favours either.  I should have converted the model curled up into a ball behind a pillar.  He might as well hang a sign round his neck saying, "Real men don't take cover saves" or "D-cannon head-shot plz"

But, by golly, you should see him in close combat.  He is an absolute bastard.  I've seen him kill an Ork Warboss and his entire retinue of Meganobz in one phase of combat. He rips open Land Raiders like tin foil and feasts on the sweet meats inside. Paladins run screaming like girls. (Ok, those nemesis force weapons add a bit of spice to proceedings but we'll gloss over that).

My sole aim in life at the moment is to one-shot a Riptide.  I don't care if he dies horribly in the process, I just want to kill something with 5-6 wounds in one turn.  Its not like other codices don't get the chance.  I wept salt tears the first time I faced Jaws of the World Wolf with my 3 Tervigon list.

The base is symbolic of 'Shadows in the Warp'.   Or Mint Choc-Chip ice cream.  You decide.