More Epic Tyranids

As a part of the work on my Epic Tyranid army, I've been putting together some custom resin models of vehicle-sized creatures. There is a miniature maker in France named "Winterman" who makes incredibly detailed resin miniatures of "ground bugs", perfectly suitable for Epic scale Tyranid creatures.

I have three of these "big gun" creatures, which are around the size of vehicles in Epic. They are good proxies for exocrines. In fact, they look lean and mean, a lot better than the "slug" design of the original Epic miniatures.

Here is a comparison of the exocrine proxy versus a Forge World Tau Devifish APC. It's the perfect size for a medium vehicle.

A size comparison with classic Tyranid warriors. These "exocrines" will provide much needed armoured fire support for an Epic Tyranid army.

I also have some bigger creatures with large scything talons and lobster-like claws. These are good for Haruspexes, large close-combat monsters. Again, they fit the current Tyranid design much better than the old Epic "slugs".

A comparison with the exocrine proxy showing the slightly larger size.

Don't worry, soon I'll be showing more pictures of painted Tyranid units. I'm just still working on getting a playable army ready.

Game Night Nov. 3, 2015

Tonight at the game club, there were four games running - a Warmachine table, Dave C.'s Memoir '44, Bob's Viking game, and Stephen's Robotech RPG Tactics game. I've always been interested in the 1/285 scale Robotech miniatures since the game's kickstarter, so I joined in on that.

Stephen had some really nicely painted miniatures, and we went through a simple introductory game with a couple of Valkyries versus six Zentraedi battle pods.

The Valkyries were each represented by three miniatures showing the three modes familiar from the TV show - battloid mode (big robot), guardian mode (hybrid fighter/robot), and fighter mode (pure aircraft). Each had its strengths and weaknesses.

The battle pods were also faithful representations of the basic Zentraedi cannon fodder from the show. Stephen had the classic blue and white paint scheme for them.

The basic game is very quick-playing, and we went through it smoothly, with the Valkyries overwhelmed by superior numbers.  Overall, I thought it was a nice system, and a lot of depths can be added by various support mechas.

The miniatures, being 1/285 scale, were very intricate, as can be seen from the photos. Stephen said that some of the miniatures, especially the battloid versions, were a pain to assemble, with too many parts for such small models. I've read similar complaints online around the time of the kickstarter too. The end results look great though.

The introductory game has gotten me interested in this line of miniatures. Maybe I can get some to try out...