Tyranid List help and Clean out time

Hello all:


I have been having a lot of fun playing my tyranid army.  Right now my list is as follows:

Hive Tyrant: bone sword, lash whip, scything talons, wings, old adversary, paroxysm, leech essence, adrenal glands, regeneration

Parasite of Mortrex: joins the gargoyle squad

3 hive guard

3zoanthropes in spore

10 termagaunts devourers

tervigon scything talons, adrenal glands, toxin sacs, cataclysm, regeneration

10 termagaunts: fleshborers

tervigon: crushing claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs, cataclysm, regeneration

18 hormagaunts, adrenal glands, toxin sacs

18 gargoyles: toxin sacs, adrenal glands

trygon: adrenal glands, toxin sacs, regeneration

Its a fun army.  The trygon does well, the guard are great, the zoanthropes haven't been stellar, but have been doing a lot of assists being part of a one-two punch with my trygon.  I like running the trygon up rather than deep striking him.  The parasite is working pretty well, and is very survivable in with all the gargoyles.  I am thinking I should take regeneration off of everyone since I have yet to see it do much.  I am also thinking about dropping the point hog tyrant, and going with a prime with warrior bodyguard. 
Any ideas or help on the list would be great.
Thanks

On a separate note,  I started the other night fixing up some old original tyranid warriors.  I started making some lash whips to go with their anemic bone swords and decided to finally get rid of the lot of them.  I don't like how they look, and am jealous of the great looking new models.  Same goes for my old raveners.  They have some great rules I would love to try, but my old, metal, original, raveners just aren't cutting it.  Need the new plastic, or at least the newer metal.  If anyone wants to trade let me know.

I have decided that if I don't like a model, then sell it.  Too much time goes into modeling and painting to use an ugly model.  So ebay here they come

Publish Post

Parasite of Mortrex

Another great Tyranid codex challenge.  An original tyranid warrior, a plastic hormagant, 2 new gargoyles, an old carnifex, and a trygon were mercilessly hacked to pieces for this parasite.  I like how he turned out.  I originaly had a old raverner head on, one with a big, open mouth full of teeth, but I like the Tyranid warrior head better.  I shaved the head crest down a bit to give it a little bit different look.  I added a brass tube to the end of the trygon tail to add the Hypodermic needle look to the tail. 

The wings turned out well.  I painted them with ork hide foundation paint, washed with baal red wash, and then drybrushed the arms with camo green.  Then I added some subtle stripes/veins with the dark green and red washes.  They are very faint, but are easier to see on the actual figure.

Tervigon MK 2 WIP

I needed another Tervigon, and decided that I wanted to try a different approach to him.  I have liked some of the upright Tervigons I have seen online.  This one takes a lot of ideas from terrorfex on warpshadow.com.  (link here spawnthis)  You can see it is based on the carnifex model with old genestealer arms.  I am going to magnetize the front arms again so I can switch out claws and talons.  I liked the head, until I saw online where someone had called it a bunny.  So all I see now is a bunny head on the monster.  I'll have to do something about that

I like the small, impotent looking arms.  They tend to draw your attention to the tail and head, and he doesn't look like a monster in close combat. 

I wanted it to have a grotesque egg-sack kinda like the brood mother on the aliens movie.  I think the second one.  So I brought in the beads.  I plan on covering them with greenstuff to make a sweet, bloated tail attached to the beast.  I am trying to decide to have one exit point for the termies out the end of the tail, or a couple spots along the tail with multiple tubes/exits.  The feeder tentacles are bass guitar strings that will be supplemented with green stuff.  Gotta cover the teeth and make 'em look more like tentacles.  I put him on a carnifex size base.  I need to take a pic of him next to a venomthrope, and my other tervigon for a nice family pic.

Tyranid resource

If you have been feeling the influence of the hive mind lately and need some advice, inspiration, or just need a fix, check out From the Warp's collaberative post called Inside the hive mind.
Inside the Hive Mind  There is a LOT of great stuff there.

Here is a new one from old school tyranids-where-to-go-in-blogosphere-for

Hive Tyrant conversion

I bought a Mcfarlane Dragon from my brother to turn into a winged hive tyrant.  He had a great model that fit the bill.  I wanted to do a lash whip, bone sword combo because it looks so sinister.  The double talons is probably the better tactical choice, but I wanted this guy to look mean, so I went with the lash whip.

 

  

  

  

The bone sword is an actual bone I found in the dirt a few years back, when I worked construction.  I hope it is a turkey bone, it doesn't look too human.

The bottom part is the tail of a termagant that was sacrificed in making the tervigon.   I added a small bass guitar string (the g-string) from the sword to his wrist to make it look more attached/organic.

The lash whip is made from the ends of the bass guitar strings, the E, A, and D string.  These are the ends that you cut off when you put the strings on the guitar.  I then just added on some extra trygon spikes on the end.  I drilled into his arm a bit to make it look like the whip was part of him.

Here is a pic for scale.  Kinda looks like St. George vs the Dragon, 40k style.  You can see I used raptor1313's idea to fill in a lot of the neck with hot glue before adding green stuff.  I have since greenstuffed the neck, sword, and lash whips.  I covered the ends of the whips to bulk up the last part of the wire where the coil stopped.  It also helped to make the spikes fit on the whip a little better.  I also finished the base, and have started the painting on the tyrant.  Hopefully he'll be done soon.  

He is rather big, but I know he will draw attention one way or another, so bring it on. 

Tervigon WIP 3 Done

 

He's done.  I finished him up this morning for the Bell of Lost Souls Nid competition.  I ended up cutting a piece of board the size of the Trygon base, and mounting a brass rod from the base into the gut of the Tervigon.  Then I wrapped the central birthing canal around the brass rod.  He is also the first model with my new lights for photos.  Now my pics won't all be so dark.  I am still undecided on whether I like the egg sacks on the back or not.  The next one I build will probably be the same, with the egg sacks only underneath.  

I am also going to do a step-by-step on painting my Trygon.  I learned a lot about painting big bugs on this guy.  

Tervigon WIP 1

Tervigon WIP 2 

Why do you play the army you do?

So why do you play the army you do? As a kid growing up in the eighties, I played some Dungeons and Dragons, much to the chagrin of my mother. For me the story behind each game is as important as the game itself.

I started in 1989 playing eldar because I liked the pirate/alien theme. I liked them even more when they became craftworlders fighting to stay alive in a hostile universe. Every eldar lost in battle is another little bit of beauty lost from the universe. When playing, or even painting the eldar, I have a feeling that we can restore the eldar to their rightful place as Masters of the Universe. (no not He-man)

While painting, modeling, or playing Tyranids I feel as though I am part of the Great Devourer and that all life needs to be consumed to feed the ever-hungry master. I have no remorse for any lost organism, as long as the others can continue to feed.

I have started a Marine army, and stall whenever I go to paint or play them. For some reason, I feel as if I am just a grunt doing my job for the Emperor I don't really know or care about. I feel like I am back at work, putting in the hours, because that is my job- to rid the universe of alien scum to protect people I don't know or will never meet. Once again I feel like I should punch a time clock and get paid for the time as a Marine general.

I have started with some Orks as well, and can't seem to wrap my head around them. Sure their models are great, but they just seem to be bungling, inept, destructive frat brats out to blow some things up. That is fun for some time, but also doesn't seem to hold my attention.

I tried starting some Tau, but again couldn't get into their history very much.

So why do you play the army you do? I know I am not the only one to feel some connection to why they play, so let me know.