Wednesday 3 January 2018

Tyranid Artillery


My Gun Beasts are finally painted up.  I've had these models for years in various states of completion and wasn't affected by sudden drought of models that Nid players are experiencing.  There seem to be a lot of new players as well after the release of the last codex.  Apparently there is a huge shortage of stock in Tyranid models, not necessarily in the stores but online.  That's what I want to believe anyway, because then I will feel smugly vindicated.  All my guilty and surreptitious accumulation of biomass over the past decade is finally paying dividends.


The vaguely suicidal notion of fielding 3 Biovores in my army several years ago is now a shrewd decision.  The half dozen Hive Guard I purchased in 5th are great again. Except that in 8th edition I don't feel begrudging resentment at using them because they aren't the only Tyranid artillery piece worth a damn now.  There are a plethora of other options for gun beasts.  The only reason I haven't tried Tyrannofexes yet is because I haven't figured out how to pull the birthing sac off my Tervigon and convert one.  There's a pristine Carnifex, still in the box tucked away on a shelf, waiting to decide whether it will be a Screamer Killer, gunline Thornback or Old One Eye. A kitbashed venom cannon will be repainted as a Miasma cannon and make an excellent addition to one of my Flyrant models.  The latest codex has provided many reasons to buy new models but I'm having more fun playing with the forgotten backlog of Nids that I never got round to using.


The Exocrines are fully repaired and painted up.  I might do a bit more work to the converted one which I never really liked but I built it before the official model came out and I managed a fair approximation.


The new Exocrine is fully magnetized and I'm feverishly working on the Haruspex variant of the model.  I added about 7 more tentacles.  I couldn't help myself, it was like a freakish compulsion.  Needs. More. Tentacles.  I eventually managed to stop but then had to break it down into sub assemblies again and repaint the extra appendages.


I spent quite a lot of time on the base as well.  I'm quite pleased with that broken fence which, when the heads are swapped out, will extend outwards from the Haruspex maw and provide Septimus (my hapless Scion) with something to cling to desperately as he is unceremoniously devoured by the beast.


My Hive Guard are also repainted from their 5th Ed colours.  They are the old Finecast versions and I worry that I'll want to take the newer Shock Cannon weapon symbiote eventually.  However, the range of this gun is below par really at 24", especially in a unit which doesn't want to move in order to take advantage of the Kronos adaptation.  So I'm quite happy with the Impaler Cannons for now.


I briefly considered painting the Kronos detachment a different colour in order to differentiate between the various Hive Fleets.  But attempting to repaint my Nid army a 3rd time is a sure step down the path of insanity.  I'll just use tape on the bases to suggest a separate detachment in a competitive environment.  Or just not bother.  I'm not entirely happy with splitting my Hive Fleet up and it doesn't feel very fluffy.  From a tournament standpoint however, I don't feel its massively more cheesy than fielding Space Marines with Imperial Guard.  Or putting Guilliman in charge of my Red Scorpions and calling them Smurfs.  I'm already well down that road to damnation.


10 comments:

  1. This post merely mentioned tentacles but failed to show some! Nevertheless: amazing painjob as ever! I'm also painting Tyranids from my box of 40k thingies right now, but I'm dreading the mass of Gants... Bigger beasties are more fun to paint!

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    1. Not to worry! My next post will contain more tentacles than Nurgle's underpants. I found the trick with little gribblies is to just get them tabletop, 3 colour ready. That way you can enjoy playing with them relatively quickly and slowly add more detail later (if you can be bothered). Thanks for the comment!

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    2. Yeah! I'll be looking forward to those tentacles! That might be the way forward with the little ones - sometimes less is more.

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  2. Nice work! I got to try out my Exocrine for the first time a couple of weeks back, and it's awesome. Necrons were just evaporating all over the place.

    The NiB Fex I had sitting on my shelf became Old One-Eye, and I have several Screamer-Killers already, but I am kind of feeling the need for some Thornbacks when I next add on. I got three Pyrovores a while ago because I really like the Model, just got them together to use as Biovores.

    Impaler Cannon are awesome. Now that they've got a 36" range, the fact that they're Heavy doesn't even really matter most of the time.

    I'm trying to figure out how I want to differentiate "Hive Fleets" for myself. Fluff-wise, they're all Hive Fleet Naeglaeria, but I use Jormungandr rules for my foundation, which leaves all my flying Nids out in the cold, so I was thinking of using Behemoth or Kraken Rules or something for them. I don't even see it as mixing Hive Fleets, just different elements being adapted differently to suit their role better, but I do need some way to make it easier for my Opponents to tell apart.

    Man, it feels so great to be excited about Nids again :D

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    1. Thanks Westrider. Yeah I love the Pyrovore model too but will probably do the opposite (i.e. use my converted Biovores to represent them). They aren't particularly cheap.

      I've found that Hive Guard work best hidden completely out of LoS and annoying the shit out of your opponent so I agree that 36" static gunline is the way to go.

      I don't think GW expects us all to repaint our stuff (their answer would probably be 'buy more models!') but it is important to identify different Hive Fleets in a competitive game. Its too easy to 'forget' that my Kronos synapse doesn't cover my Kraken units for example. I don't want to inadvertently cheat or even be suspected of it.

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    2. Yeah, the Pyrovore Models are stupidly expensive. I picked them up on a whim one time when I had a bunch of extra money from a birthday or something, and couldn't think of anything else I wanted at the moment.

      Exactly so, on both the other points.

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  3. Monkey, use some counters to denote each Hive Fleet? There are some great Alien-esque bases out there that could be used? Great scheme, love the striated claws.

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    1. Thanks Siph, I'm terrible with counters! I have special 'wound' dice but still manage to lose track of them or use them accidentally for dice rolls. I lost all my psyker effect counters somewhere along the way. I'll worry about it when I go to a tournament though. No one really minds in friendly games.

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  4. Very nice work! The Nids can be a downright terrifying shooting army in 8th editon.
    My Biker squads break into tears whenever they see an Exocrine on the field, as it simply demolishes them.

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    1. Thanks Michael. Yeah, Nids are light years away from where they were in 7th. I'd say that GW is finally balancing the game but I think we just 'lucked out' this time. They did a great job internally balancing the units though (imho) and Nids are much more fun to play now.

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