Stickman Exocrine

Well, the Hormagaunts are languishing in hobby torpor.  I have been compulsively viewing Bell of Lost Souls and The Tyranid Hive forums for scraps of rumours about the Nid release in January.  There aren't even that many, just rehashes of models already leaked and endless speculation.  Its embarrasing really, but I kind of wish Christmas would just go away so that "Niduary" (as the forums call it) can arrive.  It doesn't help that I'm working all over the festive season and on out-of-hours support.

Exocrine next to a Tyrannofex.  Thanks to The Tyranid Hive for this

More leaks from White Dwarf started appearing, including very grainy reproductions of the unit stat lines.  There was a 2 page debate on the forum over whether Rippers were toughness 5 or toughness 3 according to an extremely poor quality picture of a picture of the codex.  I got bored wishing my life away and started calculating how much it would cost to buy all the models I wanted.  This made me feel a little nauseous so I decided to do something constructive.  I figured that there was no way I was ever going to build an Exocrine given the "rapesplosion" awesomeness of the Haruspex, which is the alternative build.  At the end of the day the Exocrine is basically the fat bastard big brother of a Biovore.  Except that his gun somehow manages to look like both a penis and a vagina.  Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that this was possible.  Props to the modeller.

If you follow this blog then you'll know that I don't like Biovores very much.  I still have 'Ugly Nid Joe' from one failed conversion attempt and I reckoned it wouldn't take much tweaking to turn him into an Exocrine.  So this should keep me busy over the Xmas period:

Tubbs on the right for size comparison.  Its a bit small but it will do.

I have to build the middle pair of limbs from scratch since there is nothing currently similar to those big stompy legs that the new models have.  Hence the stick man effect.  I have a boat load of Grey Stuff lying around though and I'm going to try my hand at sculpting. Scary stuff, but I wasted 0 dollars if it turns out to be 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' rather than 'Starship Troopers'.

I did get around to painting 10 Hormagaunts but I made the mistake of believing the rumours that they will not become Beasts in the new edition.  They might get Fleet and some crappy +3" run move and they look to be a point cheaper.  I suppose I should be happy but its not as good as the Beasts rule.  I have a horrible sense of foreboding about Genestealers too which look to be exactly the same (sigh...).  There's no pleasing some people I guess.

Look fast, don't they?  Fail.