It’s feeding time
We were scanning through our email inbox this morning when we noticed an abundance of large Tyranid creatures lurking in the 'xenos scum' folder. Being the good Imperial citizens that we are, we couldn't let them breed in the darkness, so we purged them all. Here are a few snapshots of them before Servitor 13 was sent in to clean up.
Tyranid beasties come in a large variety of sizes, from the king-sized Hierophant to the fun-sized Termagants. The Tyrannofex sits quite happily at the larger end of the spectrum and actually rivals the Scythed Hierodule in size, as you can see from the picture above. Gareth Etherington painted this selection of Tyranids, though there are apparently plenty more of them in his collection (don't worry, we'll get pictures of them, too).
Gareth used this kit as a test model for the new Citadel paint range, and as you can see, the colours match the rest of his army very closely. The red skin was painted using a basecoat of Khorne Red, which Gareth highlighted up to Evil Sunz Scarlet. He then mixed a little Tau Light Ochre into Evil Sunz Scarlet for the highlights, followed up with Bloodletter Glaze to tie all the colours together.
Prepare for an assault of the senses because Ben Hodges is back with more bright pink aliens. In Ben's words: "I feel that this is the best Tyranid kit to date - it's big, gribbly and looks vicious. I plan to buy another three kits to build another Tervigon and two more Tyrannofexes. My tactic will be to swarm the battlefield with Termagants, giving them Feel No Pain from the Tervigons. Then in the next turn I'll spawn more Termagants, and then more the turn after that, and then... actually, I'd better start painting more Termagants."
It's alright, you can take your sunglasses off now, you've gone past the pink ones. Wade Piche sent us this picture of his Tervigon, which has a rather more muted colour scheme. What creeped us out though was the spawning sac at the front, which is completely covered in gore as the Termagants burst out of it. I hope you're not eating whilst reading this.
Christoph Henning send us a Tervigon too. Fortunately this one is rather less gory (though just as beautifully painted). The skin was painted using Mephiston Red as the basecoat, highlighted up to Evil Sunz Scarlet and shaded with a mix of Agrax Earthshade and Carroburg Crimson. The chitinous armour started out as a mix of Abaddon Black and Sotek Green painted in several stages to build up the striations on the carapace. The base was given a simple snow effect as Christoph didn't want it to attract attention away from the model. He also wanted it to represent one of the many creatures from Hive Fleet Behemoth, which attacked the polar fortresses of Macragge, making snow a very appropriate choice.
To finish off for the day, it may not be a Tervigon or a Tyrannofex, but this Carnifex was so nicely painted that we really couldn't leave it out. Nuno Lima has been collecting and playing Warhammer 40,000 for many years and is a big fan of the Carnifex kit, hence the phenomenal job he's achieved on it. One feature that really stands out is the face of the monster, which has a very slimy tongue snaking out from its fang-lined maw. After painting the tongue and the face, Nuno added strings of multi-purpose adhesive to the teeth to make it look like it was dribbling saliva everywhere. Apparently it aids digestion...
