Tyranids: First Contact

Hi all,

I haven't gotten much further with painting the hive tyrant but instead this week I managed to borrow some models off a friend and play a 1875pt game so thought I'd do a short one about my experiences so far.

I was using a flying hive tyrant with lash whip, bonesword and heavy venom cannon, 2 units of 30 termagants, a unit of 30 hormagaunts, 2 tervigons, 2 exocrines, a unit of 3 zoanthropes with neurothrope, a venomthrope, a unit of 4 warriors with 2 boneswords and lash whips, 3 deathspitters and a barbed strangler using a Combined Arms detachment.  I was playing against raven guard using a talon strike force with a pinion demi company, which mostly deep struck or outflanked, a librarius conclave of 3 and a shadowstrike kill team.

The battle went well, playing a maelstorm mission, my tervigons were disappointing as they did little before getting killed, while the gaunts of both kinds did very well holding up space marine units and even wiping some out after a few turns. I really liked the exocrines, their Ap2 high strength weapon really helped against the marines where other units just had to rely on weight of shot to do damage.

Another unit I like were the zoanthropes as they more than earnt their points back and worked well to anchor the back line of the army against the deep striking stuff and take on the librarians.

I didn't get much out of my tyrant till the last turn but I think I needed to play it more aggressively rather than holding it back in future games.

I definitely want to get an exocrine and loads of gaunts for this project as for me they're what worked well during the game so I'll probably look into the endless swarm formation, which allows gaunt units to go into ongoing reserves when destroyed on a 4+.

Hopefully I should have a guide for how I'm painting my Tyranids plus a fully painted Tyrant to show with it next weekend.

New Year, New Army: Tyranids

Hi guys

With 2016 being a month old now, I thought it was a perfect time to share on of my new projects for the year.  I was inspired by the "getting started" boxes that Games Workshop have release to start a new 40k army different from the many shades of power armour I normally do, so I'm starting to collect Tyranids.

For those who don't know Tyranids, they are a race of bio-weapons controlled by a central hive mind who's only aim is to consume biomass and increase their numbers.  They area a bug like swarm consisting of a multitude of differing creatures each suited to a particular role whether that be overwhelming with numbers, attacking from below, scouring the skies or killing people with mind bullets there's a Tyranid for every job, even their ammunition and ordinance are smaller Tyranids.  This race of bio-weapons also has no vehicles in their army list, rather they have a vast array of differing monstrous creatures which will be very different from any army I've collected before as I like my tanks.

As I mentioned above I've got the getting started box which contains a hive tyrant,3 warriors and 10 gargoyles to start my army with the plan being to expand from this to create about a 2000 pt army, maybe even taking it to tournaments and to use in a narrative campaign I have ideas for later in the year potentially.

The first model I've worked on is the Hive Tyrant which I've built on foot with bonesword, lashwhip and heavy venom cannon and for the colour scheme I picked black glossy carapace with orange accents, green fleshy parts and the weapons will be a dark red. The picture below shows the progress so far, the green is almost finished requiring a wash in the recesses to finish off and the black has been gone over.



There will be more progress on the painting side next weekend and I'm also hoping to write some reviews and tactica for units and formations.  Let me know in the comments if there's any particular unit or formation you'd like me to review.

Thanks for reading, you can find more posts about designing a game on the blog and more posts like this will be coming in the future.

A Belated New Year Post

Hi all

I haven't posted in a while as things have been busy with phd work and moving house but now being moved in I have some time again to do this blog so I thought I'd update you on what I have planned for the beginning of this year.

I have a new 40k and horus heresy project  for my games workshop stuff, plus have started playing infinity recently so will be sharing my experiences and models from that.
I hope also to continue my dropzone stuff  and write more about game design with potential for sharing some background for a game that I've been designing.

Keep an eye out for this future content.