Progress - Tyranids

So today I did some more tyranid work and I'm happy with the results. I don't know the name of the hive I'm painting, but it is an official hive and I think this will be a good army to help people learn to play as a strong offensive player.

Here is a picture of the detailing I'm attempting




I also figured I'd try a new trick I saw at the mall, hot wire cutting.
Now, I do not have a hot wire cutter, so I just picked a size 6 xacto blade and put it in a candle flame. Here are the results



So just to quickly go over what I did to get this clean cut and nice connection.

1. Cut a magnet into the devourer gun arm.
2. Cut a hole in the warrior torso that matched the angle and pitch of the arm magnet.
3. Put both arms in place, test fit position.
4. Applied plastic cement and super glue to the left warrior arm on both ends, sticking it in place to the gun arm (right arm).
   
5. I let it dry for 5 minutes.
6. Lit a candle.
7. Heated my blade for 10 seconds.
8. Place it in the spot shown above and pressed gently
9. Goto 7 until blade goes through arm.

At that point, since I had position the magnet very very carefully, I was able to place the arm back in place and have a near flawless reattachment, rather than having to magnetize two different arms. I like this result a lot and will do this from now on.

Warrior painting

So it is saturday, I am doing some painting today! I mixed up some liche purple with some fluid retarder, water and soap. The first application I've used (see below) appears to dark. I'm going to thin the mixture further and see what comes of it.

Tyranids

Tyranid Battleforce

After work I went and picked up a tyranid battleforce, to fill out the 3 armies that I will be bringing back to school. I always wanted to pick up one of these boxes, tyranids offer some of the easiest conversions, since they are alien bugs, nit picking isn't common. So I bring to you my first bunch of converisons on my HQ units, tyrand warriors.


The tyranid warrior above has a (checks codex) barbed strangler, it shoots barbs that explode, making it a very good ordance launcher [AP: 5, assault 1,/large blast, pinning].

This is the head on picture. I've mounted the gun on the lower arm slots and fitted those slots with magnets. What I have done since can be seen in the next couple pictures.





Here you can see what was on the model when it was spray painted. The one on the right is another warrior I have started to put together, however I have begun customizing it. On the white guy you can see I left a nub attached to the body and the arm goes to it. The other side if magnetized (see below). I set it up this way to that I could "stick" arms in there more easily, the first time the arms got stuck and I had to break them to get them off :(





If you look closely at the white guy, you can see the magnet in the bottom arm slot, that is what the barbed strangler attaches to. I am going to mod the venom cannon the same way so I can use that when needed.


Anyway, lets get to that guy standing on that thing. The thing is the power core from a thunderhawk that crashed on maccrage. Lt. Varras was transporting geneseed at the time and well, things went bad, he got surrounded by tyranid, and the ultramarines had to save him. Since I have an ultramarine succesor chapter going (Genesis Chapter) I thought it only fitting that a tyranid warrior would be foolishly standing on a nuclear bomb. Let's hope he doesn't crush it!

Oh, and what I did was I cut the 4 segments of his leg apart and put them back together, in a way that well, when I realized what I was doing, was truely insane.












Building things backwards is a bad idea, I'm amazed nothing broke that entire time!

BATREP 1/21/09

seize ground rules
spearhead
750 points

IG go first
[picture 1]


Turn 1 IG
Rhino hit with autocannon with 2 hits, weapon destroyed, immoblizied.
1 SM killed by chimera.

Turn 1 SM
:( bad rolls prevented mass damage, chimera is shaken by the t-l lascannon.

Turn 2 IG
Heavy bolter wounds 1 sm that is with the librarian.
Lesson: do not use gate of infinity without terminators.
multimelta destroyed in assault off dreadnought.

Turn 2 SM
Killed a bunch of IG in the middle with fllamer, because angry marines are angry all the time.

Turn 3 IG
Chris tried to kill my librarian, however librarians don't die, so he lived.

Distractions

So I made a 750 point tyranids list and I'm probably going to buy the battleset once I am given a day to turn my receipts in next week. The good part about the tyranids is that Justin already has some guys, so combined, we'd have 4 1000 point armies, which will definately lead to some awesome as hell games! That or I can have 4 way 750 point games at my house, which is what I'm gonna start with, all I need is another person to use the tyranids, hmmmmmm.

750 Point Tyranids

3 - Tyranid Warrior Brood
3x	Scything Talons
3x	Toxin Sacs
1x	Barbed Strangler
2x	Devourer
3x	Extended Carapace

7 - Tyranid Genestealer Brood
7x	Feeder Tendrils
7 - Tyranid Genestealer Brood
7x	Feeder Tendrils
9 - Termagant Brood
9x	Toxin Sacs
9x	Fleshborer
9x	With out numbers
9 - Termagant Brood
9x	Toxin Sacs
9x	Fleshborer
9x	With out numbers
8 - Hormagaunt Brood
8x	Scything Talons
8x	Extended Carapace
Carnifex
1x	Barbed Strangler
1x	Scything Talons
1x	Enhanced Senses

748 Points

Progress

My appoligies for not posting yesterday, I went to NYC on a whim yesterday and didn't paint.

Today though! I made progress. I have one complete marine, and 5 whose amices are bleached bone and awaiting bad moon yellow, here is a picture.

Daily Update

Tonight I continued finishing painting the 5 marines that I had finished for blood angel schemes, I'll post pics tomorrow. I also went to the mall and bought a space marine rhino, which now means I have everything for the bolter and chainsword librarium painting challenge.