Wednesday 26 November 2014

The care and feeding of Tyrannocytes

Tyrannocytes are an amazing new Tyranid genus and make great pets.  Following these simple steps will lead to a long and happy life for both you and your transport spore.


Exercise
Your Tyrannocyte should be exercised regularly.  Remember that he is not an immobile pod and should be walked every day.  He is happiest when left to wander around the battlefield after disgorging his breakfast of Brain-Leeching-Devourer-Death upon your foes.


Feeding
What do they eat?  Well the good news is that your new friend will eat pretty much anything with a pulse. He is particularly fond of squishy cultists and crunchy space marines.  Your opponent may want him to eat Heavy Bolters which is fairly disagreeable and anything with a 'Nurgly' tinge might give him indigestion.  Under no circumstances should you let him play with Tachyon Arrows, solid shot Railguns, Demolisher Cannons, or indeed any strength 10 weaponry for that matter.


Bedding
Remember that these are monstrous creatures and significantly larger ones than other Tyranids in your menagerie.  You should give careful thought to his bedding and packing him in foam works best.  Although his posterior tentacles look spindly, they will adequately support him for regular activities and are robust enough to survive transportation and accidental dropping, as long as you have used plastic glue to 'weld' them in place.  If your Tyrannocyte is too big to fit in your transport case, you might want to think about keeping his top half unglued and separate from his bottom half.  This has the added benefit of being able to spontaneously mutate him into a 'Sporocyst'.


Playtime
Your new pod pal plays well with others and you should always keep him company with a Dakkafex or a brood of Devilgaunts or, well, anything really except maybe gargantuan creatures or another pod.  Remember that your buddy is a transport pod and not just a dedicated transport either so you can change your mind about what to run him with at the start of a game if you want to or even run him solo.  He really is a most agreeable creature!


Toilet Training
The Tyrannocyte, sadly, does not have a very good aim and is somewhat incontinent in the shooting phase.  If you dont want him to make a terrible mess on the board, you should stick to Deathspitters.  It would be very unfortunate if his blast template scattered onto your own troops and accidentally vaporized them.


10 comments:

  1. Very amusing and informative too as I was going to ask about the durability on the tentacles. I have to say though the transition between the green and fleshy underbelly is fantastic with fiant traces of the green still evident but very subtle as to be almost transparent. The gaping maw too is most disgusting. I'll have to get one of these at some point but I just can't justify the expense given having scratchbuilt equivalents that'll fulfill the same role.

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    1. Yeah, I'll use scratch built/chapterhouse for now but intend to slowly replace them. Having 3 of these buggers, fully painted on the board will look creepy and atmospheric in a game. Thanks man.

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  2. awesome man!
    I specialy like the part of the underbelly (what Dave said) beautiful transition!

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    1. I did those bits with a large drybrush and red/green/fleshshade washes strangely enough. Pretty pleased with the results and glad you like it.

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  3. This is an excellent conversion! Working on my own 3 as well and man they have so many parts! How did you shade the sacs? Washes? Mine look funky...and like it's not properly done up...

    Did you go back with the base colour after washing the skin? Tutorial please!

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    1. Thankyou :) Yes, I touched it up with base colour and highlight colour after the washes. It was a bit experimental (for me) but its just lazy blending with a large drybrush really and leaves gaps showing the colour underneath. I'll do a step by step when I paint another one. No doubt I'll be trying too hard though and ruin it!

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    2. Looking forward to it. I went for the safer colour scheme of leviathan. I'll post mine up soon. Just finished the first today

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  4. Gorgeous work, man! Love the color scheme, and the build is brilliant!

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    1. Thanks, I can only hope to be as prolific as you one day :)

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  5. transition on the bottom looks great. would have sworn it was airbrush.

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