AdamH's Tyranids - In the jungle, welcome to the jungle! [Wrap-up post]

Well, that’s it, another challenge is in the bag. I think like a lot of challengers I find that the work I get done during these six months are by far the most productive I am throughout the year, and in fact since joining the OWAC three years ago I have painted more models than the previous 25 years in the hobby.

Anyway, here is my ugly face and my even uglier kitchen (we have recently moved, it is getting re-modelled soon), both of which I have tried to offset by the inclusion of my fluffy painting companion:

So the thing I like most about this army is the cohesive nature of it all, I feel it really does look like a swarm and despite the various bright colours they all seem to work together:

I am also shocked with how many I managed to get done, out pacing my original goals and the overlord’s minimum requirements:

I still have plenty more Nids in the box awaiting painting, I may do them for a future OWAC as it would be nice to have a fuller force and be able to field all of the available units:

So what about next year I don’t hear you ask; well I haven’t 100% decided but I am leaning heavily towards a sexy group of demon ladies. However, I do have several other forces in dire need of painting: Chaos Dwarfs, 2^nd Ed Necrons, more Skaven, more Brets, and of course more Nids. I think I will mull it over until the end of the year however will continue prepping all of the forces just in case one of them takes my fancy.

But until then my dear readers, I hope you have enjoyed this year’s challenge as much as I know all of us have. And Sam, I’m coming for you buddy! your puny Arnie rejects are going to be biomass soon enough!

AdamH's Tyranids - If you got the money, honey, we got your disease (575 Points)

If you have ever followed one of my OWAC entries in the past you will know I always try and go out on a bang, well this entry is no different. I’m going to waffle a lot this month and show pictures of unpainted things so if you are not interested in any of that feel free to scroll down to the bright pictures at the bottom of this post.

You may have seen a small clue I left to this month’s entry back in my introduction post, and if you did, well done. This month is my biggest…

WILDCARD!

WAFFLE COMMENCE:

Back when I started planning this challenge it was always in my mind that I wanted to paint one of the original Armorcast Tyranid bio-tanks, so I went a searching around facebook groups to see if I could track one down and as you will see, ended up with more than I expected.

I managed to track down one of the original Malefactors, however the previous owner had converted it to a different pose. While I didn’t necessarily dislike the pose I wanted it to be as close to original as possible. So I started by stripping off the paint to unveil the previous work:

You can see that what they did was cut the arm and flip one of the pieces upside down to give it a different angle. They also cut both arms at the base again to change the angles:

So next I cut along the lines that were originally cut and removed as much of the glue as possible, this revealed that a bit of detail had been stripped away during the conversion:

I pinned the pieces back into their original poses and set about sculpting back the missing detail:

And when undercoated I think I managed to return it to the original pose fairly well don’t you think? Oh yea, also he came with a completely standard brother:

And two friends:

Spot the Termagant included for scale...

So yea, the purchase I made actually included one of each of the bio-tanks, and two of the Malefactors. A little more than I was planning to take on in the OWAC but I don’t like to turn down a challenge!

First up the two you have already seen, two Malefactors:

For those of you that are not in the know, these are the Tyranid troop transports, essentially bio-rhinos so having two of them is actually pretty useful in a list. They are also pretty cheap points-wise. They are not that much faster than the units they transport until they get to “fast” speed but they are nicely armoured so should help to deposit your gribblies into combat relatively unscathed.

Painting for these was done much in the same way as the rest of the army, with the same scheme only not quite as detailed. This is partially due to time restrictions (i.e. I would have never got them all done in time), and the relatively low level of detail on the actual sculpts. Never-the-less I think they look pretty striking and certainly fit in with the rest of the force.

The final missing piece when putting these together was the base. I knew I wanted to tie them into the rest of the army with more than just the colour scheme but no one made a base big enough. So 21^st century technology to the rescue, and one trip to thingiverse later I had the 3d plans for regular sized oval bases and some quick edits and they were scaled to the right dimensions. Even so however they were so big they wouldn’t fit on my printing bed in one go so I had to split them in half, print two and then stick them together. I also made use of the extra space on the base to include some bigger foliage, again the 3d printer to the rescue and I printed some palm tree looking trunks. Again I think they look pretty decent and bring some nice verticality to an otherwise quite squat looking army.

Next up we have the Exocrine, basically a Rhino with a gun for a horn:

As expected, this is similar to a Basilisk only a little stronger. Same range and strength but an extra D6 damage and armour penetration and double the save modifier. Basically, it is a tank killer.

Same scheme and basing style as before, I guess the only new element would be the green to bone transition on the gun. Not sure if it fully works but could be worse I guess.

Something you may have noticed is the slime trail behind each of these models. I built up the base with hot glue to give the look of furrows being driven into the ground and then filled them with red ink and gloss varnish.

Finally, we have the Haruspex:

This chap is a bit of everything, a couple of different medium range weapons, one for troops another for tanks and a close combat weapon for chomping anything silly enough to get close.

I guess the main stand out point of this model is that I tried to carry over the NMM effect onto the claws that I have in other parts of the army. Not sure it works as well on such a big model but it certainly is striking so I don’t hate it.

So wrapping up, my points for this month are as follows:

 

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
Malefactor (80)		2	160
Exocrine (165)		1	165
Haruspex (250)		1	250
TOTAL			575

And that is it, challenge over (for me at least). When I started I wasn’t sure I would be able to get everything done, and as it turned out I actually managed to add a few additions. Everything looks really cohesive, which I am very proud about and I can’t wait to show you all the full shots next month. But until then I hope you have enjoyed seeing me paint this very red force this year and have enjoyed everyone else’s entries just as much as I have.

AdamH's Tyranids - We are the people that can find whatever you may need (267 Points)

Well, this is it, here we are at the final hurdle. This month represents the final required month of painting to complete the challenge and is the last of the models from my opening post.

Rank and File Month#4

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything too exciting, we have more of what we have seen before only slightly differently armed.

I will start with the vanilla Termagants with no upgrades:

Next we have three more Warriors, two of which are armed with the standard swords, the other with a Barbed Strangler:

And here they are as a group:

This month’s Rank and File submission is as follows:

 

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
Tyranid Warrior Brood (55)	Barbed Strangler (24)	3	195
Termagant Brood (6)		12	72
TOTAL			267

I am starting to work on something that I hope will be a little special for next month. Any of you that have followed my previous challenge entries know that I like to go out with a bang and this year is no different!

Until then however, hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the challenge so far, I know I am 😊

AdamH's Tyranids - We've got fun and games (230 Points)

We are back again with more bright red, second edition alien gribblies!

Rank and File #2

So, this month was more of the same really, more termagants painted in the same style as last month's entry, however armed with different weapons, Spike Rifles:

Emboldened by my previous month's success I decided to add a few extra models on top of my original plans. I find that the most difficult thing I encounter when painting is settling on a scheme, once I have that down I can break the steps down into blocks and batch paint my way through units fairly easily. Therefore, adding models that follow my established scheme is pretty easy, thus I present to you the first of my surprise additions this month; a Biovore and three Spore Mines:

Finally, I have the first of what I consider "the advanced organisms" within the hive fleet. For certain models I plan to introduce blue as gradients over the parts of the model that I consider to be defining features. The first of these I painted this month:

As you can see the top half of the model here has that blue gradient, implying that the back claws/blades and the head (i.e., intelligence) are mutations or improvements that the lictor has over the rest of the swarm. Not sure if it really conveys that message as a model on its own but hopefully when you see some of the other models I use this technique it will make sense. I guess at worst case the blue breaks up the tide of red and makes for a slightly more interesting force to look at on the tabletop.

This month’s Rank and File submission is as follows:

UNIT	EXTRAS	#	TOTAL
Termagant Brood (6)	Spike Rifle (1)	12	84
Biovore (20)		1	20
Spore Mines		3	30
Lictor		1	96
TOTAL			230

Next month will be comprised entirely of new models (so no more Termagants for a while) including another new one not listed in my original target force.

There are some great forces coming together so far in the challenge with a crazy high standard of painting this year. Special shout out to Tom's Bad Moon Orks, he put out some amazing models this month so great job!