Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team - Tyranids vs Astartes/Custodes vs Orks/Tau

I recently took part in a Kill Team gathering with six players. After playing a couple of 1 on 1 games, we wanted to try something multiplayer. We ended up deciding to try paying a game with all six players at the same time, which was probably a bad idea. The way we did it was to form the six players into three teams, and then play one of the multiplayer missions as if we had three kill teams playing. So we played the Take Prisoners mission as if we had three kill teams, but each team was actually two teams controller by two different players working together.

We made teams as best we could with the kill teams we had. We ended up with two Tyranid kill teams working together, an Astartes kill team and Custodes kill team together, and a Tau kill team that tricked an Ork kill team into fighting with them against their common enemies. The objective was to take prisoners by taking an opponent's model out of action with one of your models that had no enemy models within two inches, allowing them time to capture the incapacitated enemy. Capturing an enemy leader was worth three victory points, and each other captured enemy was worth one.

Beresinia Campaign Game 3 - Disrupt Supply Lines - Tyranids vs Adeptus Astartes

Count Xuvorov's adventurous spirit has led him to travel throughout the Imperium, and even beyond, over the years. Some of these journeys have taken him to forbidden locations and into illegal and heretical contact with vile xenos species. In fact, after Count Xuvorov's successful uprising to overthrow the imperial governor of Beresinia, imperial authorities might have simply looked the other way (provided tithes still were made on schedule) if not for the rumors of the Count's fascination with xenos and his frequent illegal explorations.

Count Xuvarov often returns from his journeys laden with rare xenos artifacts or ancient human archeotech. On one such unsanctioned journey, he returned to Beresinia with more than he bargained for. A small Tyranid organism stowed away on a landing shuttle and was brought aboard the count's ship back to Beresinia, where it made its escape. Alone and bereft of the guiding presence of the Hive Mind, being beyond the reach of the nearest hive fleet, the creature was left to follow its rudimentary instincts.

The creature set about devouring any biomass it could find, while avoiding contact with Beresinia's inhabitants. Eventually it found a suitable nesting location in a long abandoned ruin, and began to hibernate. Over time it metamorphosized into Tyranid warrior, emerging into the ruins of the city of St. Basilovsk, now an active warzone. At night the warrior would creep through the ruins gathering the biomass of stragglers or small groups of refugees. The local populace came to refer to the mysterious monster that hunted them as the Nightmare Slayer.

Tyranid Army

I recently put all of my painted Warhammer 40,000 Tyranids out on the table, packed in as tightly as possible, and snapped a few pictures of my entire painted army. Just like with my Vampire Counts army, the models in this army were painted over a huge time span. The Genestealers were some of the first models I painted. However, even the most recently painted of my Tyranid models (the Trygon/Mawloc and some of the Termagants) were painted almost four years ago at this point. Have a look at the pictures below and let me know what you think.

Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report: Fortress Antorktica - Part 3

The Setup
This battle was the grand finale of a planned 3-part mini-campaign between my Tyranids of Hive Fleet Maturin, and some Orks who have taken over an entire continent on an Imperial world. You can read the battle reports for the first two games by clicking on the following links: Part 1 Part 2

This final battle in the campaign would represent the assault against the coastal defenses of Fortress Antorktica. We played it as a Planetstrike game, using the mission where there is one objective in the center of the table, and the attacker had to control it at the end of the game. This seemed like a good way to represent an attempt to punch a hole through the Ork coastal defenses.

Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report: Fortress Antorktica - Part 2

The Setup
This battle was the second part of a planned 3-part mini-campaign between my Tyranids of Hive Fleet Maturin, and some Orks who have taken over an entire continent on an Imperial world. You can read the battle report from the first game in the campaign here.

This second battle would represent the Tyranid forces staging a preemptive attack on some Ork mobile reinforcements to prevent them from counter-attacking at the point of the main Tyranid attack. If the Tyranids could delay the Ork counter-attack, their breakthrough of the main Ork defenses would stand a much grater chance of success.

Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report: Fortress Antorktica - Part 1

The Setup
This was a 2000 point Warhammer 40,000 game pitting my Tyranids against two friends playing Orks. We planned a small campaign consisting of three linked battles. The first would represent a surprise attack by the Tyranids on artillery emplacements in the rear of the Ork lines. This would be an attempt to disrupt the artillery from being used in the defense during the main Tyranid attack planned for the same time.

For the game, we used the Reconnaissance In Force mission from the Battle Missions book, with the Tyranids taking the place of the Necrons. The Objectives would represent the artillery pieces of the Orks. As per the mission, the Tyranids had to secretly select a table edge before the Orks deployed their army anywhere on the table 12" from the edge. The Tyranids would then move on from their table edge on the first turn. The game would use Random Game Length, and the player capturing the most objective would be the winner. Also, during the first game turn, units would need to pass a leadership test to shoot or assault, to represent the surprise of the attack and not knowing the positions of the defenders.

Painted Termagants with Fleshborers and Stranglewebs

I recently finished painting another small batch of Tyranid Termagants. This batch includes the three Termagants I converted to have Stranglewebs. Let me know what you think about how they turned out.

Tyranid Trygon/Mawloc size comparison

Someone left a comment a while ago asking about the size of the Trygon/Mawloc model, and I've finally gotten around to taking some comparison shots. So here is my Trygon next to a Termagant, a Tyranid Warrior, and a Hive Tyrant. As you can see, the Trygon model is pretty big.

Tyranid Trygon/Mawloc

I've finished painting my Trygon/Mawloc! As I've mentioned before, my concept for the paint scheme for my Tyranid army is that as the creatures age, their skin gets darker. I figured a creature as large as a Trygon much take a while to grow to adulthood, so I made it fairly dark. I think I'll go with the same color for my Carnifexes. It was done by base coating with Foundation Red, highlighting with Blood Red, and covering the whole thing with Leviathan Purple wash.

Tyranid Termagants with Stranglewebs

I've converted some Tyranid Termagants to have Stranglewebs, since there are no current models of them. The conversion was pretty simple. I started with a Termagant with a Fleshborer. I removed the ammo magazine part and replaced it with two large Carnifex Toxin Sacs glued together back to back. I extended the barrel with the carved down base of a Woodland Scenics tree trunk. You can read more about those trees in this post. I capped off the end of the barrel with half of the round piece from the bottom of some old Fantasy Chaos Warrior plastic weapons. Here are the results.

Old Tyranid Warriors

I just finished painting up an old unit of Tyranid Warriors. A really old unit, in fact. Actually, these were the very first Warhammer 40,000 miniatures I ever purchased. This was right after the Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition boxed game came out. I didn't even have the game yet, but I did get a box of plastic miniatures that included these Tyranid Warriors, some plastic Genestealers which I still use, some really awful plastic Space Marine Temrinators, and some plastic Space Marine scouts, all with mohawks, as was the style back then.

Tyranid Trygon/Mawloc

After magnetizing all my Tyranid Warrior weapon options and seeing how well that turned out, I've started thinking about magnetizing other things. When I put together my new Trygon, I decided I might as well use some magnets. There aren't really different options that can be switched out, aside from the different tail variants and different sized arms. You can't switch between a Trygon and Mawloc, but I thought that magnetizing the arms and tails would give me more variety. Also, magnetizing the two body sections together, and also the head, would make it much easier to store and transport.

Painting Tyranid Warriors

This is a step by step guide to how I painted my Tyranid Warriors.

Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report: Lost Company on Planet 18-D93

The Setup
This was another game played at the Battle Bunker using my Tyranid army, this time against a friend's Imperial Guard at 1750 points. It would be a continuation of my previous several battles, following the exploits of my Tyranids as they continue to devour Planet 18-D93. We decided this battle would take place on the continent already conquered by the Tyranids, and involve a small Imperial Guard force that had been left behind and somehow survived the scouring of the doomed continent.

We decided to play a Battle Mission, selected randomly from the Tyranid and Imperial Guard missions as normal. However, we agreed that regardless of the mission rolled, we would again treat all area terrain as dangerous, representing the fact that the continent is breaking apart and spewing up hot gasses, magma, jagged rocks, etc. The mission we rolled was a Tyranid one, called, ironically, First Contact.

Painted Tyranid Warriors

Just a quick post to show off some pictures of a first batch of newly painted Tyranid Warriors. I'm currently working on painting another batch of Tyranid Warrior bodies, after which I will paint up all the magnetized alternate weapon options. When that is finished, I'll put up a step by step tutorial on how I painted them.

Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report: Infestation of Planet 18-D93

The Setup
I played a four-player game recently, with 2500 points of Tyranids on one side, facing off against 2500 points of combined Space Marines (of the Black Templars chapter) and Space Wolves. I controlled half of the Tyranid army. We used the Battle Missions book to determine an army-specific scenario to play. The result was the Infestation mission.

Representing the late stages of a Tyranid invasion, the deployment had the defending Space Marines deploying in one corner, and the Tyranids deploying anywhere else. The entire defending army would benefit from the Preferred Enemy special rule, representing them having gotten really good at fighting Tyranids by this point. This would really help them out. The entire Tyranid army would get +1 to any cover saves, representing their adapting to the local terrain. Also, all area terrain counted as Dangerous Terrain, because the Tyranid attempts to strip the planet had started resulting in earthquakes, lava flows, and in this case poisonous/acidic water. Random game length would be used, and the side with the most kill points would be the victor.

Painting Tyranid Hormaguants

This is just a simple step-by-step guide to how I painted my Hormagaunts. They were reasonably quick to paint and turned out decent. I'm sure the same techniques would work just as well with other colors. All of the paints I refer to are Games Workshop/Citadel paints, though some are older versions or colors no longer in production. If you want to replicate my method but can't find a particular paint that I mention, deal with it.

Warhammer 40,000 Battle Report: Blitzkrieg on Planet 18-D93

The Setup
I recently played another game of Warhammer 40,000 up at the Battle Bunker in Downers Grove, Illinois. We agreed to 1500 points of my Tyranids against my opponent's Orks. The Battle Missions book had just been released, so I picked up a copy when I arrived at the store. It contains 30 new missions that don't require any special table setup or force organization chart or army selection, so we decided we would play one of those.

Each army had three missions in the book that are particularly suited to their style of warfare. If you wish to play one of these (as opposed to randomly playing any of the 30 missions in the book), you roll off with your opponent. The winner will play one of the three missions specific to their army. That player rolls a D3 to determine which of the 3 missions to play. You could accomplish the same thing by one player rolling a single D3 for which of the three missions, with an odd number meaning choose from one army's missions, and even meaning the other. Then again, if you didn't like a lot of die rolling, you wouldn't be playing this game anyway.

Tyranid Hormagaunts and Weights

I recently finished painting up half a unit of Hormagaunts with Toxin Sacs and Adrenal Glands. With these first eight Hormagaunts, I was trying to work out the color scheme I would use for all of the similar sized creatures in my Tyranid army. It turned out a little more orange and not as red as I think I'd like, but otherwise they look okay. Here are some closeup pictures of one of them.

Magnetizing Tyranid Warriors

Tyranid Warriors have a lot of options. I've had six unassembled Tyranid Warriors sitting around since the last edition of the codex, in part because I couldn't decide how I wanted to arm them. The new edition of the codex didn't make the decision any easier. I really want to try out using Tyranid Warriors, but don't know what weapons to give them. And what if after using them a few times with the weapons I chose, I decided I didn't like them? What if sometimes I wanted a shooty unit of Tyranid Warriors, and other times wanted to go all out for assaulting? I really didn't want to have to buy, and spend the time assembling and painting, several full units of Tyranid Warriors just to have all the options available to me, knowing I'd never use them all at once.

So rather than try to decide on weapon options that I'd use forevermore, I decided to try to magnetize my Tyranid Warrior arms. This way, I could easily switch out which weapons they used from game to game, and have more options available to me to try out. I mention all this because it pertains to the subject of this post, which is tips on how you can magnetize your own Tyranid Warriors. Through the process, I learned some helpful (and sometimes harsh) lessons on the subject, and being the helpful kind of guy that I am, I thought I'd share them with you.